Based on recent donor commitments, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) now estimates that ODA flows to developing countries will increase by $50 billion by 2010. Sixteen of the world's 22 major donor countries have pledged within a decade to devote 0.7 percent of their GNI to ODA. The major outlier is the United States. President George W. Bush has ruled out raising the United States from the current 0.16 percent of GNI spent on ODA (second to last among OECD donors) to the Monterrey target of 0.7 percent, or committing to any other aggregate assistance goal.

On the eve of the G-8 Summit, Bush pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010, but relatively little of that additional $4 billion represents new money. Rather, the president can keep this promise simply by meeting his as yet unfulfilled pledge to fully fund his Millennium Challenge Account and HIV/AIDS initiative. Overall, the U.S. ante toward the G-8 goal is small compared to Europe's and falls well short of the customary U.S. contribution to multilateral funding instruments of at least 25 percent, in this case $6 billion. Partial debt cancellation and relatively modest aid increases to sub-Saharan Africa seem to mark the current limit of the Bush Administration's will to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. Meeting those goals would lift more than 500 million people out of extreme poverty and allow over 300 million to live without hunger by 2015. It would also enable universal primary education and reduce by two-thirds mortality rates for children under five.

In reality, however, it will take much more than large, well-targeted aid flows to "make poverty history." The most important ingredients are improved economic policies and responsible governance in developing countries. Yet those alone will not suffice. Developed countries will need to drop trade distorting subsidies, further open their markets, encourage job-creating foreign and domestic investment, cancel more debt, combat infectious disease, prevent and resolve conflicts, and assist the recovery of post-conflict societies.

For the United States to meet this challenge, it will require a near tectonic shift in our national security policy. Policymakers and lawmakers must come to view transnational security threats as among the foremost of our potential enemies. They must then embrace a long-term strategy in partnership with other developed countries to counter these threats, based on the imperative to strengthen weak states' legitimacy and capacity to control their territory and fulfill the basic human needs of their people. This strategy must be built on the twin pillars of promoting sustainable democracy and development. Finally, the president and Congress must commit the resources to finance this strategy and see it to fruition. While it will be expensive and perhaps unpopular to do so, Americans will almost certainly pay more dearly over the long term if our leaders fail to recognize the risks and costs to the United States of persistent global poverty.

 

Susan E. Rice is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

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