Almost got ya

According to what I find via CNN,

U.S. to Begin New Approach on Foreign Aid

Washington (AP, January 4) - A revolution in U.S. foreign aid, rewarding countries for how they govern, is finally ready to get under way, almost two years after first promised by the Bush administration. ...

It contemplated $5 billion annually for the program starting in 2006, a 50 percent increase over the base foreign aid budget of $10 billion.

Wait a minute. You mean that the Bush administration is proposing putting some real money into a plan that involves criteria beyond short-term politics? That actually factors human rights into foreign aid? Really?

Well, according to the government website on the plan, the criteria involve

ruling justly,

Wow.

investing in their people,

Cool!

and encouraging economic freedom.

Hold it.

Such "freedom" is further described as "e.g., open markets, sound fiscal and monetary policies, appropriate regulatory environments, and strong support for private enterprise." Or, as AP put it, being "welcoming hosts for foreign investment."

For all the talk about battling "poverty, weak institutions and corruption" that Bush spouted in proposing this so-called "Millenium Challenge Account" two years ago, this just works out to another attempt to get poor nations to blend into the WTO world of the economic hegemony of transnational corporations, this time via the carrot rather than the stick.

I know that sounds terribly doctrinaire but I believe it to be accurate. We have too much experience with the ability and tendency of large-scale foreign investment to distort and undermine local economies in the service of that investment in ways that look oh-so-good macroeconomically and are oh-so-destructive microeconomically to think anything else.

Targeting foreign aid on the basis of a government's commitment to the welfare of its own people is a good idea. Targeting it on the basis of a government's commitment to the welfare of foreign investors is not.

Unintentional Humor Dept.: Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee,

finds fault with the Bush program's eligibility criteria and its proposed organizational structure. Otherwise, Lantos said, the proposal is long overdue.

"It's set up wrong and it's geared wrong. Otherwise, it's great."