Foreign Aid for Foreign AIDS

There has been a movement recently to cut all foreign aid from the U.S. budget.  The argument is logical enough.  With the economy stagnant and Americans struggling at home, it is said that we ought to care for our own before committing to improving the lives of anyone overseas.  This argument also encompasses military engagement and nation building in some circles.  It has become an increasingly more populist stance to take in America's newly declared war on spending, and it is a fundamental plank in Ron Paul's "non-interventionist" platform.

The arguments in favor of such a policy are strong, even sensible with respect to nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where our aid dollars do nothing but strengthen the corrupt people in their government.  In some African nations, our aid to the impoverished has actually helped to trigger civil wars where criminal states pillage their own people.  As with all donation schemes, oversight of the funds is paramount to success.  From supporting oil oligarchs in the Middle East to paying for President Diem's concentration camps in South Vietnam, the negative consequences of U.S. aid have often been conspicuous abroad.

However, to end foreign aid entirely could prove a grave misstep whose effects would be conspicuous locally.  I am not referencing direct government aid or humanitarian relief, which are steeped in fraud; I am referring to initiatives like President Bush II's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  This, by the way, is not to suggest that PEPFAR has either been entirely free of fraud (it hasn't) or completely effective (it could definitely be improved).

Funding the prevention of HIV overseas is not just a humanitarian effort, it is a matter of enlightened self-interest.  In today's interconnected world, a person can go to sleep in Zimbabwe and wake up in Prague, and then take a train to Paris.  The only way to avoid interacting with people outside of America would be to shut down every seaport and airport in the country.  Therefore, it is in our national interest that the spread of dangerous and deadly diseases abroad be mitigated if we have the resources to do it.  This, incidentally, is also one reason why I believe in both universal healthcare and municipal firefighting.  When one person's problem (whether through irresponsibility or not) is eminently contagious, it is prudent to put out the conflagration first and wag fingers later.

Bush II once said, to paraphrase, that we are fighting the terrorists overseas to avoid fighting them in the streets.  Now, I do not necessarily agree with this credo...but substitute "terrorists" for "deadly diseases," and it makes far more sense.  As Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death demonstrates, the Red Death claims even Prince Prospero in the end.