Reluctant Aid Or Aiding the Reluctant?

Reluctant Aid Or Aiding the Reluctant?
Author: Steven Varnis
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1990-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781412833035

"Makes a persuasive case that the Marxist government of Ethiopia induced famine and was reluctant to obtain or use this benevolent aid to provide effective relief until its contribution to the achievement of revolutionary goals could be assured. . . . Varnis skillfully documents the intricacies of PVO (private voluntary organization) actions to merge government donor and recipient policies. In so doing, he successfully refutes Third World dependency theory doctrines but paints a gloomy picture of continuing food deficits in Ethiopia's future." --T. M. Vestal, Choice "A welcome contribution. He provides a detailed, clear-headed, and accurate analysis of U.S. famine relief to Ethiopia in 1983-86, when good aid was used by the Marxist-Leninist regime for political, military, and ideological ends. Asks all the rights questions and provides most of the right answers." --Michael Radu, Orbis This book undertakes a systematic analysis of responsibilities for the 1983-86 Ethiopian famine and its relief, drawing upon a wide range of materials and personal observation in Ethiopia itself. The policy sources of the famine are described in detail, assessing regional variations in Ethiopian food policy and the inducement of famine.

The Political History of American Food Aid

The Political History of American Food Aid
Author: Barry Riley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2017
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190228873

American food aid to foreigners long has been the most visible-and most popular-means of providing humanitarian aid to millions of hungry people confronted by war, terrorism and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat-often the reality-of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not-well-understood and often highly-contentious political processes which have converted American agricultural production into tools of U.S. government policy. In The Political History of American Food Aid, Barry Riley explores the influences of humanitarian, domestic agricultural policy, foreign policy, and national security goals that have created the uneasy relationship between benevolent instincts and the realpolitik of national interests. He traces how food aid has been used from the earliest days of the republic in widely differing circumstances: as a response to hunger, a weapon to confront the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a channel for disposing of food surpluses, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a means for securing the votes of farming constituents or the political support of agriculture sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters and shippers. Riley's broad sweep provides a profound understanding of the complex factors influencing American food aid policy and a foundation for examining its historical relationship with relief, economic development, food security and its possible future in a world confronting the effects of global climate change.

Enlightened Aid

Enlightened Aid
Author: Amanda Kay McVety
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199796939

Enlightened Aid is a unique history of foreign aid. The book begins with the modern concept of progress in the Scottish Enlightenment, follows the development of this concept in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century economics and anthropology, describes its transformation from a concept into a tool of foreign policy, and ends with the current debate about foreign aid's utility. In his 1949 inaugural address, Harry Truman vowed to make the development of the underdeveloped world a central part of the U.S. government's national security agenda. This commitment became policy the following year with the creation of Point Four--America's first aid program to the developing world. Point Four technicians shared technology, know-how, and capital with people in nations around the world. They taught classes on public health and irrigation, distributed chickens and vaccines, and helped build schools and water treatment facilities. They did all of this in the name of development, believing that economic progress would lead to social and political progress, which, in turn, would ensure that Point Four recipient nations would become prosperous democratic participants in the global community of nations. Point Four was a weapon in the fight against poverty, but it was also a weapon in the fight against the Soviet Union. Eisenhower reluctantly embraced it and Kennedy made it a central part of his international policy agenda, turning Truman's program into the United States Agency for International Development. Point Four had proven itself to be a useful tool of diplomacy, and subsequent administrations claimed it for themselves. None seemed overly worried that it had not also proven itself to be a particularly useful tool of development. Using Ethiopia as a case study, Enlightened Aid examines the struggle between foreign aid-for-diplomacy and foreign aid-for-development. Point Four's creators believed that aid could be both at the same time. The history of U.S. aid to Ethiopia suggests otherwise.

In This Land of Plenty

In This Land of Plenty
Author: Benjamin Talton
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812296338

On August 7, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland departed on a flight from Addis Ababa, with his thirteen-member delegation of Ethiopian and American relief workers and policy analysts, bound for Ethiopia's border with Sudan. This was Leland's seventh official humanitarian mission in his nearly decade-long drive to transform U.S. policies toward Africa to conform to his black internationalist vision of global cooperation, antiracism, and freedom from hunger. Leland's flight never arrived at its destination. The plane crashed, with no survivors. When Leland embarked on that delegation, he was a forty-four-year-old, deeply charismatic, fiercely compassionate, black, radical American. He was also an elected Democratic representative of Houston's largely African American and Latino Eighteenth Congressional District. Above all, he was a self-proclaimed "citizen of humanity." Throughout the 1980s, Leland and a small group of former radical-activist African American colleagues inside and outside Congress exerted outsized influence to elevate Africa's significance in American foreign affairs and to move the United States from its Cold War orientation toward a foreign policy devoted to humanitarianism, antiracism, and moral leadership. Their internationalism defined a new era of black political engagement with Africa. In This Land of Plenty presents Leland as the embodiment of larger currents in African American politics at the end of the twentieth century. But a sober look at his aspirations shows the successes and shortcomings of domestic radicalism and aspirations of politically neutral humanitarianism during the 1980s, and the extent to which the decade was a major turning point in U.S. relations with the African continent. Exploring the links between political activism, electoral politics, and international affairs, Benjamin Talton not only details Leland's political career but also examines African Americans' successes and failures in influencing U.S. foreign policy toward African and other Global South countries.

Children in the International Political Economy

Children in the International Political Economy
Author: G. Kent
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1995-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230375537

The first line of responsibility for children lies with their parents, but what if the parents fail to look after their children? Who else is involved, and what should they do? Children in the International Political Economy examines the moral responsibilities of different individuals and agencies towards children and argues that some responsibilities should be codified as concrete legal duties. If all else fails, children must look to the international community for help. Thus international agencies should recognize specific obligations to look after the well-being of children around the world.

Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer

Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer
Author: Alberto Ledesma
Publisher: Mad Creek Books
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780814254400

From undocumented to "hyper documented," Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer traces Alberto Ledesma's struggle with personal and national identity from growing up in Oakland to earning his doctorate degree at Berkeley, and beyond.

The EU and China in African Authoritarian Regimes

The EU and China in African Authoritarian Regimes
Author: Christine Hackenesch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-05-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319635913

This open access book analyses the domestic politics of African dominant party regimes, most notably African governments’ survival strategies, to explain their variance of opinions and responses towards the reforming policies of the EU. The author discredits the widespread assumption that the growing presence of China in Africa has made the EU’s task of supporting governance reforms difficult, positing that the EU’s good governance strategies resonate better with the survival strategies of governments in some dominant party regimes more so than others, regardless of Chinese involvement. Hackenesch studies three African nations – Angola, Ethiopia and Rwanda – which all began engaging with the EU on governance reforms in the early 2000s. She argues that other factors generally identified in the literature, such as the EU good governance strategies or economic dependence of the target country on the EU, have set additional incentives for African governments to not engage on governance reforms.

The Battle of Adwa

The Battle of Adwa
Author: Paulos Milkias
Publisher: Algora Publishing
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 0875864147

Ethiopia trounced the Italians in 1896 in the greatest African victory over Europe since Hannibal, but failed to prevent the loss of Eritrea. The event was a powerful constitutive force in the rise of modern Africa and pan-Africanism and resounds in the shared memory of Africans and Black Americans even today.