Using aid to project power is immoral and ineffective

21 May 2024 – Mukesh Kapila

First published 21 May at Daily Maverick

The Drogheda United football club’s  crescent and star emblem is unusual for Catholic Ireland. The story goes that this pays tribute to the Ottoman Empire that sent food aid during devastating 19^th-century famines. Was this to embarrass  the British Empire that misgoverned the Irish at that time or was it expedient collaboration between  Ottoman and British allies in confronting  their common adversary, the Russian Tsar?

Why are historians  so cynical as to even ask such questions? Why can’t they believe that the kindly Turks were simply moved by the plight of a million starving Irish?

Ambivalence has always accompanied humanitarianism. Whose agenda does it serve and why? That was a central question during the Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West for the hearts-and-minds of developing countries. Or now with humanitarian relief trickling into Gaza: is this genuine concern for its appalling suffering  or a political plaster to make Israel’s war more palatable?

Benefactors and  beneficiaries always have mixed feelings towards each other.  On one hand, all faiths prescribe generosity to qualify for entering the Kingdom of God. But the virtue-seeker  is miffed if the recipient does not grovel in gratitude.  However, recipients feel humiliated when their distress is blatantly rubbed into their face. The temptation to bite the hand that feeds you is understandable.

Also, there is the stigma hanging around the victims of wars and disasters, even as they are pitied. Perhaps they were rash in going down the path of aggression?  Or careless towards their environment and invoked the wrath of the gods with floods and other disasters? Or were they too feckless to save during good days for lean times?  Thus, even as dribs of humanitarian relief are bestowed, a subconscious cloud of blame-and-shame hovers overhead.

Such psycho-dynamics – to give is noble, to receive is demeaning – are inherent in human makeup  even as we recognise them as unworthy sentiments.   Consequently, a huge global humanitarian industry has grown with norms, principles, laws, and institutions, to bridge  our cognitive dissonance by trying to foster respect and dignity for those who suffer misfortune.

But we face an uphill struggle as testified by daily headlines of frontline humanitarians risking their lives and enduring more-and-more obstacles to deliver less-and-less succour.

That is not helped by the prevailing tendency of Western foreign policymakers to co-opt humanitarian aid in projecting soft power. Especially when hard power via military or economic coercion fails. Whenever politicians, soldiers, diplomats, and money controllers fail – which they often do in our multipolar, fractured world  – humanitarians are despatched.

Enter the humanitarians

 Aid is increasingly, therefore,  a placeholder for doing something when nothing else works.

Worse is when humanitarian soft power is deployed alongside hard power bullying. This is part of the doctrine of many armies who even have dedicated civil affairs battalions.  The military view this as force protection through winning community trust in conflict zones by building  schools, providing medical care, and so on.

The optics of humanitarian work are also useful to warmongering politicians to counter protests  by their own appalled publics.  Meanwhile, investors and entrepreneurs salivate at the prospect of the lucrative post-war reconstruction bonanza. After all, wars are good business for those who have capital and contacts to exploit the opportunities that flow from destruction.

So they plan and prepare ahead – as earlier in Iraq and now in Ukraine  – by getting close to – and possibly subverting or corrupting the aid system.

But receiving populations  are quite sophisticated.  They recognise self-serving intentions and become suspicious of humanitarians operating alongside actors with different aims.

The post 9/11 Afghanistan debacle with the NATO – commanded International Security Assistance Force is the perfect illustration of the problems of intimate military-civilian cohabitation.  The same has happened with multi-mandated UN peace support operations in, for example, DRC, Haiti, Iraq and South Sudan, or earlier with West African military peacekeepers in Liberia.  The intervenors quickly outlived their original welcome before themselves becoming part of  the problem.

In short, our painful experience is that instrumentalising humanitarian aid in conflict contexts to serve  security, economic, or political goals is ineffective. It could even deepen or prolongs crises such as Syria or Yemen.  It is also immoral to exploit human desperation and suffering for wider leverage.

Donors and agendas

 Humanitarians should, therefore,  be left alone to pursue their sole objective to save lives and relieve suffering. Those with other goals – however valid – such as countering terrorism  or negotiating peace  deals can best help humanitarians by not distracting or co-opting them.

There is a wider geo-political insight. Countries that are relatively un-influential in terms of security, economic, or political clout can boost their image through humanitarian soft power.  But only if they wield this with subtlety and integrity. Perhaps that is why  Scandinavian donors rank highly in global public perception although their aid provision is quite small in absolute dollar terms.

That contrasts to much bigger humanitarian contributors like the US and UK who are actively disliked in many quarters.  Perhaps because their aid-diplomacy-security nexus is too intertwined and seen to serve their own interests.

The world’s second-biggest donor – the European Union – subjugates its humanitarian generosity to intense domestic pressure for migration control. That involves striking shabby carrot-and-stick deals with southern Mediterranean neighbours.

Conditioning aid in this way undermines the moral leadership that the EU desperately seeks.

Pursuing consistency and coherence  to tackle  complex  world problems such as conflicts, climate change, poverty, suffering,  injustice and inequalities is well-intended logic.  But, in our world of numerous contradictions, a wholistic or comprehensive approach where all problems and solutions are interconnected is inherently risky.  It means paralysis to progress where we can because of being held back elsewhere. Especially when divergent national interests are in contention.

Rising influence of new donors

As traditional Western donors come to the limits of  leveraging humanitarian assistance for political and security ends, what are the newly assertive Asian powers doing?   Their enormous clout as the world’s second and fifth biggest economies raises expectations that China and India can contribute much to relieve global suffering.

However, it is early days as their humanitarian  budgets are still small and their focus is more on development and trade through, for example, China’s Belt-and-Road initiative or the marketing of India’s IT proficiency and medical products and services.  The Covid-19 pandemic had a strong influence on their humanitarian policies with China providing  protective supplies and India manufacturing vaccines in large quantities. Both of these great nations seek stronger world influence and their foreign policies explicitly include aid in their toolkits.

However, the Asia-Pacific is dominated by  increased securitisation because of its many international disputes.  Accordingly,  new offensive-defensive  alliances have sprung up, also incorporating foreign aid.  Meanwhile, humanitarian assistance has always been militarised  as Chinese and Indian forces and logistics have long been first responders to disasters, both at home and abroad.

While emergency humanitarian relief is usually welcomed by those in desperate need,  it does not always buy trust. Both China and India must be disappointed in their competitive quest  for hearts-and-minds around the developing world with public opinion surveys, especially in Africa, indicating a mixed picture,  Suspicion of motives is the underlying concern.  Just as it is for Western donors.

Other donors such as UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are analysing the lessons from West and East.  They also have strong, interventionist foreign policies with diplomatic and security components, even as they  seek influence through generous foreign aid. Perhaps because this is shaped by their Islamic tradition, it  is relatively smart  through paralleling – not merging – the hard and soft power tracks, at least in terms of public perception. That does not remove their foreign  policy contradictions but it is a right step towards protecting the integrity of humanitarian aid.

The newer donors from the Middle East and Asia must avoid the mistakes of the older Western ones. Not least because their  aid-receiving African and other clients are not so naive and blindly trusting as in the past.  They have more choices nowadays on who they want to receive help from, and on which terms.

Therefore, it is wiser for donors from all corners of the world – despite the different geopolitical pressures on them – to always make ethical and moral partnerships that benefit the poor and suffering for its own sake and resist the temptation of  gaining leverage from this in the political, security or economic spheres.

That is not just a pious wish. It could be a win-win for all countries to achieve their own legitimate  interests as  members of our – albeit fractured – community of nations.