Western Irresponsibility
Some time ago a young American dropped by our bureau and said, “I work for the X Foundation which collects money abroad to buy Y materials for Ukrainian children. I just wanted to pick your brains about what you think about Y-type aid to Ukraine.”
“Still have to pay to get it in?”
He saw I understood and warmed to the topic. “Yeah, not as openly as before; now we can mask it as a business trip to the US or something, but yeah. And we know that 70% of what we send here will be stolen. If we can get 30% to the people we want to, we think we’re doing good. You know, sometimes I feel a real moral dilemma in doing good and collaborating with evil, whether the good you do really outweighs the evil you have to subsidize.”
“I can’t give you any advice,” I said.
Soon thereafter I heard that the young man had followed the dictates of his conscience and found other employment.
In my years in Ukraine I have seen countless situations like the one this man described and tried to think deeply about why. I suspect it comes from the mentality needed to survive the Soviet system, the demands of which could not be met without in one way or another breaking its rules.
This applies above all to foreign loans under government guarantees, which observers have for years been equating with a license to steal. The latest example is provided by the World Bank, which has extended fourteen loans for Ukrainian projects under such guarantees, and the eleven such projects that defaulted will cost Ukrainian taxpayers $9.5 million. Now it plans to plow another $250 million into Ukraine’s agribusiness sector, the creditworthiness and accountability of which will be clear to any who recalls the Land and People scandal some years ago. Am I wrong to suspect that this is yet another transfer program whereby they give to the rich and steal from the poor?
Of course, as an organization created by donor states, the World Bank has to be governed by the strict criteria agreed upon by those who pay its bills, and according to such criteria, if the loan is paid off, no matter how or by whom, everything is fine. Still, the bank itself and the states to which it is responsible should think whether that is enough. After all, the goal of foreign aid is to help the recipient nation get on its feet, not just to line the pockets of a few individuals and drag the rest down further.
