Approaches to Poverty Eradication and Economic Development I
Beware of the Natives!
As the Second World War ended, the uninformed would have been justified to think that all America breathed a huge sigh of relief. After all, the great danger had passed. The establishment of the United Nations by the victorious allies, with its Charter, and the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marked the dawn of a new age of world peace and freedom from fear. In any event, except for the attack at Pearl Harbour, the costly war had not touched the shores of America. The German submarines, the battleships, the new rockets, and the Luftwaffe could not cross the Atlantic to do damage to the American mainland. Neither could the Japanese war machine overcome the Pacific barrier and descend on California and the State of Washington.
And now, the Axis Powers had been routed. They had had no choice but to surrender unconditionally. The victors occupied their territories. The future of their peoples would be decided by the conquerors. They would have neither the right nor the power to threaten world peace again. Nevertheless, as the Second World War ended, a new fear gripped the United States - the fear of Communism. Nothing would stir American passions more than the alarm call - the Russians are coming! In this situation, Senator Joe McCarthy elected to cast himself in the role of the super-patriot. He determined that some ideas and activities, as he decreed, were communist and therefore un-American. He therefore embarked on a crusade to identify and persecute those he considered un-American Americans. Some Americans applauded or snitched on fellow-Americans, driven by the fear - the Russians are coming!
Outside the United States, a multifaceted struggle against the post-war enemy was waged, based on the three objectives of deterrence, containment and destruction. In time the Russians were defeated. What Winston Churchill had described as the Iron Curtain came down. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. Socialism in Europe collapsed. The United States and its allies had won the Cold War. They had defeated their Second World War ally who had turned into their post-war enemy. The communist threat was no more. When and if the Russians came, they would do so as friends and as the vanquished. The uninformed would have been justified to think that all America breathed a huge sigh of relief, content that with the fear of communism having been banished, there would not emerge another threat that would drive all patriotic Americans back to the barricades.
And, God willing, there would not emerge a new super-patriot like Senator Joe McCarthy, to threaten the civil liberties of American patriots, pretending to respond to the alarm call - the Russians (or other enemies) are coming! But the new-hopefuls would have been as wrong as were the hopefuls of 1945. A new fear gripped the United States because new enemies were on their way. The new alarm call was - the terrorists are coming! And then with deadly intent and results, they came on 11 September 2001. In their wake some evil-minded people used the US Mail to spread the poisonous anthrax, which claimed a few lives. This confirmed the alarm call - the terrorists are coming, armed with weapons of mass destruction! There was now no new United Nations with a new Charter, and no new Declaration on Human Rights to convey the assurance of world peace and freedom from fear.
And neither were the Atlantic and the Pacific too wide and too deep to block the arrival of the terrorists. Those elected to take charge of the United States decided that the new enemy had to be fought at home and abroad. At home the Homeland Security system was put in place and the Patriot Act passed. For the rest of the world, the doctrine of pre-emptive strike was adopted and implemented. This time there would be no space for the pursuit of the objectives of deterrence and containment. The enemy had to be destroyed before it could deliver its own mortal blow!
The threat of the poor
But necessarily the question had to be asked and was posed - but whence the terrorists! And so it came about that the poor of the world began to emerge as a threat to those who have much to lose. The March/April 2002 edition of the prestigious journal 'Foreign Affairs' published an article with the menacing title, "The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case of American Empire", written by Sebastian Mallaby, a columnist of 'The Washington Post'. He wrote about poverty producing violent disorder in poor countries, with the disorder leading to further poverty, instability and violence. To this he added the impact of high birth rates and AIDS, which he said further threatened social disintegration and government collapse, leading to the emergence of failed states. All this, he said, offers opportunities to terrorists to find sanctuaries. To save themselves, the US and its allies had to learn to love imperialism!
Thus Mallaby made the firm suggestion that in addition to destroying the terrorists through pre-emptive strikes, everything had to be done to deny them their sanctuaries. Obviously greatly disturbed, he said the chaos in the world was too threatening to ignore. The rich man could not but carry the burden of its elimination, in his own interest. And so by this circuitous route, we arrive at a variation of the policy of containment adopted by the US and its allies in its struggle against the Soviet Union and socialism. At that time, containment included denying the enemy, the communists, any sanctuaries. The opponents of the Soviet Union determined that poverty and failed economies would inevitably result in restlessness among the poverty-stricken masses and their seduction by the promise of a bright communist future.
What had to be done to save the United States and its capitalist allies was to rescue the poor from failed economies and poverty. Thus would they and the world be saved from communism. The collective of hungry stomachs in particular areas of the world became the rich man's burden. As a result of this, in the period since the Second World War, the world has experienced three successful development programmes specifically and consciously aimed at the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. The results they achieved demonstrated that it is indeed possible to eradicate these social ills. They also demonstrated that such success required the necessary political will on the part of the rich. They also told the plain story that for the rich to part with what they have, even in their long term self-interest, they needed to be frightened virtually out of their wits. And so we all learnt the lesson that a looming perceived defeat concentrates the mind wonderfully. To ensure that Western Europe avoided the clutches of the communists who sat in positions of power in the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern and central Europe, and had a large following within the countries of Western Europe, the US poured resources into these countries through the Marshall Plan.
A US State Department document dated 26 August 1947, entitled "Summary of Department's Position on the Content of a European Recovery Program", said of one of the fundamental objectives of the Marshall Plan: "Basic objective of program is to move entire area progressively from present condition to working economy independent of abnormal outside support, taking full account of basic changes in European conditions such as political developments in Eastern Europe, altered position of former colonial territories, and loss of overseas assets, merchant shipping and other prewar invisible exports." And, indeed, within a relatively short period of time, the economy of the entire area was moved from its immediate post-war condition of crisis, and re-established as a working economy, independent of abnormal outside support.
The same happy fate befell the Asian Far East. Again the overriding impulse to do in the Far East what had been done in Western Europe, was fear of communism. Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taiwan and other countries of Asia were seen as likely candidates for socialist revolutions. To contain any influence from the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, they too became beneficiaries of a development programme that resulted in the "Japanese miracle" and the emergence of the "Asian tigers".
The West European and Far East Asian Economic Recovery Programmes both met their goals and proved that it was possible to carry out successful development programmes to defeat poverty and underdevelopment. The third successful post-war development programme, a direct outgrowth of the Marshall Plan, with its political objectives, is currently being implemented. This is the European Union Regional Policy, which is focused on the eradication of the poverty and underdevelopment manifested in certain regions within the Member States of the European Union (EU). The 15-member EU had set itself the goal to achieve this objective in one generation. The 25-member Union says it will now achieve this goal in two generations, given the greater poverty and underdevelopment of the 10 new members.
Fear is the mother of invention
History has established the fact that fear is the mother of invention. It is therefore very tempting that we too, the African natives, should drive fear into the heart of the rich, to convince them to embark on yet another successful development programme to help rid our continent of levels of poverty and underdevelopment much worse than those experienced by the 10 new members of the EU. To do this we would have to convince them about what they suspect already, that among us, because of our poverty, lurk many terrorists that are intent on causing them grievous harm. We would have to sound the alarm bell - the Natives are coming!
We would so pound the African drum that the rich would scramble to embark on a new Africa Recovery Programme, drawing on the lessons of the West European and Far East Asian development programmes, with no need to impose on us a new American imperialism!
This time round, we would propagate the message that what has to be done to save the United States and its rich allies from the new threat, international terrorism, is to rescue the poor from failed states and poverty. However the idea that we would ever demean ourselves by assuming the guise of terrorists is repugnant in the extreme. The fact of our poverty does not make us terrorists. Our own experience of terrorism, including genocide and racist dehumanisation, make it impossible that we should seek freedom from want by defining ourselves as savages. And yet it is commonly agreed that Africa constitutes the biggest challenge in the global struggle against poverty and underdevelopment. Mallaby said existing methods for dealing with the chaos on our continent have been tried and found wanting. He urged the introduction of a new imperialism, when all he should have done was to call for the adoption for Africa, of the tried and tested development path represented by the Marshall Plan, the Far East Asian programme and the EU Regional Policy. The question must be posed and answered - what was done in these instances that produced the results which, strangely, it is argued are impossible to achieve in Africa, unless she is subjected to a new Scramble for Africa!
In his article "US imperialism, Oil, and Finance", Joseph Halevi of the University of Sydney provided one of the clues as to what was done and why. He writes: "Forrestal and Byrnes were, with George Kennan, the architects of post war US globalism. They are the ones who, after the collapse of the pound sterling in 1947 and the humiliating flight of Britain to non convertibility, decided to forcefully shift the US strategy away from Britain as a junior partner focusing it, instead, on Germany in Europe and on Japan in Asia.Their strategy was aimed at creating two regional growth poles both tied to the United States.The reconstruction of the world.fell exclusively upon the United States as a provider of credit, direct investment (in Europe not in Japan), capital goods, food, and as a guarantor of the supply of raw materials, oil above all."
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