A quick quiz for this holiday season: What portion of our country's gross national product might it be appropriate for Americans to devote to helping poor countries develop? One percent? Maybe a third or a half of that?

Here's the actual portion for 1999: one-tenth of 1 percent.

This is tiny, but not anything new. It's the end point of a decades-long process of congressional cutbacks - with successive administrations going along. In 1970, aid was three-tenths of 1 percent. In 1990, two-tenths.

Now, as an urgent part of our antiterror campaign, Congress and the executive must work quickly to jack aid up considerably. The United Nations is asking rich countries to allocate 0.7 percent of their GNP to overseas development aid. We should aim at getting close to that goal - fast!

Our aid's 30-year decline has not served American interests well. The shockingly low level of aid throughout the 1990s prepared the ground for the kind of chaos and social despair in which the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and their ilk have flourished. This is not to excuse those groups' actions. But their operatives were able to organize their hate-filled acts undisturbed while living in communities that didn't feel like they had much stake in a world system that seemed to treat them so poorly.

President Bush is right to pledge that the United States will not "walk away" from the needs of Afghanistan's people, as it seemed to in the early '90s. But the problem is far broader than Afghanistan. Hundreds of millions of people live in failed and failing states around the world. Many feel they have little stake in the stability of the world system. If we want to prevent those countries from continuing to incubate desperation and cruelty, we need to think soberly about how to give those people such a stake.

That will take, among other things, a sustained investment in overseas development aid. The needs seem most pressing in Afghanistan, which could fall back into warlordism, opium production, and terrorism if we and other donors turn our backs again. But it is also urgent in 15 to 20 other countries. Many are in Africa; some are already accused of having links to Al Qaeda.

Regarding Afghanistan, UN development chief Mark Malloch Brown has stressed that aid donors need to prepare for a long-term commitment to national rebuilding - as well as "instant" donations to meet urgent needs. After a recent visit to Afghanistan, he said, "I have a sense of a great national U-turn at the grassroots level; of ordinary Afghans rejecting the cycle of war and decline, and wanting to seize this moment to make a nation where their kids - girls and boys - can go to school; where mothers and fathers can go to work in the mornings and expect to come home in the evening ... without threat of violence."

Page: 1 | 2