Colin Powell was right. When it comes to providing relief to millions afflicted by natural and man-made disasters, the United States is anything but stingy. Each year, our government provides well over $2 billion for lifesaving relief activities throughout the world. Our contribution to the World Food Program represents more than half of the organization's resources, and we provide the office of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees with nearly one-third of its annual budget. The disaster assistance response teams of the U.S. Agency for International Development, already assessing conditions and providing relief in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka following last week's undersea earthquake, are among our most dedicated and effective public servants. Their efforts are supported by a network of U.S. private voluntary organizations providing food, shelter, sanitation and emergency health assistance.
I am convinced of the Bush administration's commitment to this tradition of U.S. leadership, as I was involved in the administration's first effort to respond to a major natural disaster. On Jan. 26, 2001, shortly before the end of my eight-year tenure as the National Security Council official responsible for humanitarian aid issues, a major earthquake struck Gujarat, India. I was certain that both the U.S. military and our civilian aid providers had roles to play, but I didn't know what to expect from a new administration that had campaigned hard against the involvement of the military in operations other than war. My doubts were dispelled when both the new national security adviser and her deputy pressed successfully for a generous response that included U.S. troops.
Reaching out: An unprecedented worldwide effort that began last week with bottled water and bags of rice will have to be sustained for many years to come.
(Gurinder Osan -- AP)
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It was therefore hardly surprising when U.S. officials took umbrage last week at comments by Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, who suggested that the United States and other governments are tightfisted with foreign assistance. But before dismissing Egeland's comment, it is worth noting that it was focused not on the immediate relief effort but on what comes next -- after the crisis abates, after CNN departs and after the attention of the world is focused elsewhere. Will the United States sustain its willingness to help meet rehabilitation and development needs in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other affected countries in the months and years to come?
This is a perfectly reasonable question. Over the past several decades, the United States, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has been far better at responding effectively to natural disasters and man-made emergencies, from the Balkans to Africa, than it has been at addressing the needs that follow. Even with the president's proposal in 2002 to increase substantially the U.S. commitment to development assistance, the United States was still spending less than 0.2 percent of its gross national income ondevelopment aid in 2003, putting us at the bottom of the 20 or so industrialized countries.
With hundreds of thousands of people in dire need in the tsunami area, it is difficult to focus on anything other than the immediate relief and recovery challenge. Nonetheless, the United States and other donors must also organize themselves for longer-term challenges, such as reconstructing homes, schools and factories, disaster mitigation training and the creation of an Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system. The key is to focus on both the short and long terms, but with a keen awareness that we are better at the former than the latter.
Even in a natural disaster, without the political and security complications that come with a man-made humanitarian crisis, there are dozens of daily decisions that involve a wide variety of civilian agencies and the military -- to say nothing of judgments that must be made in the field. This has been severely complicated by catastrophic damage in not one, but at least four countries. What are the affected governments telling us they need, and how does that square with what we are being told by our own experts? Are governments willing to accept assistance from our military; what U.S. military resources might be available; and do we have legal and funding authority to make use of them? What should be the components of a special aid package, and how do we engage Congress on this issue? How do we interact with U.N. agencies? And how can we accomplish any of these objectives when the information is inexact, and the numbers of killed, missing and displaced are changing hour by hour?
It is no small matter to organize a coherent response. In many cases, the Clinton administration tended to opt for a strong White House leadership role. President Bush has more often turned to the agencies, as reflected in his announcement last week that Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman would lead an interagency task force to coordinate the U.S. response. While either model can work, Grossman will need to be more than a coordinator, driving the process -- effectively as a "Tsunami Relief and Reconstruction Czar." He will need to have quick access to the Oval Office in order to resolve critical issues.
Speed in preparing a package of assistance is also essential. Existing U.S. disaster and development assistance accounts, annually funded at about $340 million and $1.5 billion, respectively, are already stretched to the breaking point, and depleting those accounts for assistance to countries affected by the tsunami would mean denying assistance to other parts of the world. Moving fast will help to ensure the most generous response from Congress, which will be more inclined to act while awareness of this tragedy is high.
After Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 10,000 Central Americans in October and November 1998, we in the Clinton administration thought we were moving pretty quickly when we presented the Congress with a special aid request in February 1999. But even that was not fast enough. By then, members of Congress felt less urgency, and passage was delayed until May. President Bush should make clear his intention to reach agreement with congressional leaders on the outlines of a special, supplemental aid request within the next few weeks -- and, ideally, prior to a major international donors conference so we come to the table with something to offer and encourage others to do the same. He should also stress that our commitment will last for years, which will require revising the 2006 budget request to be presented to Congress in February.
Speed in developing an aid proposal should not come at the expense of quality -- and one way to ensure that is to consult closely with U.S. private voluntary organizations. During my tenure at the NSC, we turned to these groups time and again for information, advice and assistance. Their expertise runs from immediate relief to long-term development. Whether it was their proposals on northern Iraq that informed the U.S. decision to rescue some 6,000 Kurdish refugees in 1996, their insistence on robust responses to humanitarian crises in East Timor and the Horn of Africa, their advice on debt relief or, more recently, their involvement in the development of the global AIDS and Millennium Challenge assistance legislation, this community is a critical but often underused resource in crafting and implementing effective aid policies. Their involvement now would help to guarantee the long-term sustainability of aid programs by ensuring they will be developed in coordination with indigenous communities. It would also demonstrate that the U.S. experience with economic assistance to Iraq, where private corporations with few ties to indigenous communities have largely supplanted private voluntary organizations, was an exception and not the new rule.
Finally, the personal engagement of the president is critical. On this point, I'd suggest that the president take a page from his predecessor's playbook. Administration officials were correct when they said that actions speak louder than words. But words -- and gestures -- do matter. In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, President Clinton's visit to the site of the Casita volcano in Nicaragua, where a mudslide killed some 2,000 people, sent a powerful message of U.S. solidarity to the people of Nicaragua and the region. While now is certainly not the moment for governments in areas devastated by the tsunami to host a presidential visit, the president's continued visibility would help to communicate clearly our sympathy and support to the people of India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other affected countries. It would also help to ensure support from Congress and prompt other donor governments to give generously. And it would embody the values that reflect our highest ideals and aspirations.
Author's e-mail: eschwart@princeton.edu
Eric Schwartz, who was the National Security Council's senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs in the Clinton administration, served last year as the second-ranking official at the office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights in Geneva.
