With the war in Iraq underway, and with all pundits predicting a quick resolution to hostilities, I thought it time to revisit the issue of Nation Building. So, the question still stands: Will the US help rebuild Iraq? I know that past performance isn’t a perfect predictor of future performance, but it’s often pretty close.
In recent history there have been many regime changes (e.g. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, Taliban Afghanistan, and soon Saddam's Iraq). We can learn from how the US, which caused directly or indirectly, partially or wholly, these regime changes, among others, reacted afterwards toward the post-regime nations. And the US response has varied significantly, from the Marshall Plan for Europe to MacArthur's authoritarian tutelage of Japan, from Clinton's co-dependent diplomacy of bear hugs for Yeltsin to Bush's outstanding promises to Kharzai. Based on these examples, and the trend they reveal, Iraqis can probably count on, but not too heavily, the US to help rebuild their country after Saddam is gone.
Remember 1991? It was only...
a dozen years ago and yet what a very different world. The UN and the US successfully acted together to evict Saddam’s invading army from Kuwait. Having relieved the symptom, the coalition of nations decided not to risk their own blood to root out the cause. So, instead, a lot of Iraqi blood was spilled in Kurdish and Shiite uprisings and the subsequent and brutal Baath crackdowns. The world community had expected Saddam to fall. He didn’t. There was no regime change. (Ergo today’s sequel.)
By contrast, only months later that same year, the Soviet Union underwent a regime change that was mostly unexpected in the West and mostly bloodless in Russia. Rather than muster a bold reconstruction plan, like the post WWII Marshall Plan, post-Cold-War America welcomed Russia into the free world with mostly open arms but mostly empty pockets.
I don’t want to leave the impression that the US didn’t help Russia. It did, but slowly, tentatively, and parsimoniously. By 2001, ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US gave more aid to Russia ($1.15 billion) than any other country, more than Israel ($967 million), Egypt ($799 million) and Ukraine ($282 million). In fact, America gave more ($10.9 billion) in total foreign aid than any other country in the world, more than Japan ($9.7 billion), Germany ($4.9 billion), the UK ($4.7 billion) and France ($4.3 billion).
We’re back to America the generous, right? Wrong, as a percentage of gross national product, America is the least generous of the developed nations. For perspective, the Marshall Plan amounted to almost $14B in 1950 dollars, which is nearly $124 billion in today’s dollars, over ten times what we allocate for foreign aid today.
So, will America help rebuild Iraq? Help, yes. But, with the federal government now running budget deficits for the foreseeable future, there will be no Powell Plan for Iraq as ambitious or as generous as the Marshall Plan was for Europe. Uncle Sam doesn't have enough money to keep America's house in the black, much less assume Iraq's remodeling expenses. Then again, some respected economists debunk the idea the Marshall Plan was the key to Europe's recovery. Generous though it was, the American money had only a marginal, though timely, impact to Europe's recovery. In the end, Iraq will need to rebuild itself.
Thanks to Joyce Park for providing some of the insightful new data points above.
The good news: Russia's birth rate is finally up to record levels.
The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union saw a dramatic drop in Russia's birth rate. (I tracked this statistic closely since I was the largest importer of condoms into Siberia during the same period.) As the years went by and few Russian babies appeared, there were cries--by adults--of an international conspiracy to depopulate Russia. But the sad truth is that abortion, the most common form of birth control during Soviet times, remained a modern Russian woman's first choice for birth control. The number of pregnancies ended by Russian doctors dwarfed the number of pregnancies (and infections of HIV) prevented from ever starting by the shipping containers full of condoms I managed to get to Siberia.
There was no international conspiracy, just extreme economic hardship that made having kids in Russia just too difficult for young parents. (Which is ironic given that demographers have observed a correlation between higher GDP/capita and lower birth rates, as witnessed in the US, Japan, Europe as opposed the high birthrates and low GDP/capita of, say, sub-Saharan Africa.)
The bad news: Russia's death rate also spiked to levels not seen since WWII.
The net result: Russia's population is at 143.1 million and still decreasing.
More revealing statistics.
Usually there are two types of statistics: those that bore and those that lie. However, when several boring but true statistics are juxtaposed, often they become much more interesting and insightful. The Harper's Index is the most famous, perhaps infamous, example of this technique. Using this technique, plus the Jeopardy answer-then-question format, I decided to put together my own index below:
Siberia is gigantic. It contains 1/12th of the Earth's landmass. According to Novosti, Siberia exported almost $11B (that's two ones and nine zeros) in 2002. By contrast, in 2001 the State of California, which is the 3rd largest state but only 1/10th the size of Siberia, had exports of the same amount ($10.8B)...to Canada alone.
Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому региону за 2002 год составил 12,7 млрд долларов
04.02.03 13:09
НОВОСИБИРСК, 4 февраля. /Корр. РИА "Новости" - Сибирь Наталья Решетникова/. Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому таможенному управлению /СТУ/ за 2002 год составил 12 млрд 778,3 млн долларов. В том числе экспорт - 10 млрд 881,7 млн долларов /85,2 проц от объема товарооборота/, импорт - 1 млрд 896,6 млн долларов /14,8 проц/.
Как сообщили во вторник корреспонденту РИА "Новости" в пресс-службе СТУ, по сравнению с 2001 годом стоимостной объем экспорта увеличился на 4,7 проц, а объем импорта снизился на 9,1 проц. В результате прирост товарооборота составил 2,4 проц.
По данным пресс-службы, из 116 стран - партнеров по внешней торговле /в 2001 году их было 120/ ведущими являются страны дальнего зарубежья. Торговля с ними обеспечила 89,2 проц стоимостного объема экспорта и 56,3 проц - объема импорта. Основными партнерами Сибири являются Китай, Великобритания, США, Япония, Нидерланды, Германия, Индия, Турция, Польша.
Среди стран СНГ главные партнеры по внешней торговле - Казахстан и Украина с удельным весом в объеме товарооборота 13,6 проц.