Foreign Aid, Neocolonialism and Peacebuilding
In this blog, Visualising Peace student Sofia Lobue discusses foreign aid models that are designed to promote peace and security but can also reinforce systems of dependency and colonialism.
When beginning my research into the impact of foreign aid on the peacebuilding and peacekeeping processes in various countries, I quickly discovered the seemingly endless list of exogenous factors that influence these interactions. Whether the aid reaches those most in need, what kind of aid a country provides, and how aid is distributed and managed after being allocated are all variables that complicate our understanding of the link between economics and peace. However, I was especially struck by the length of time some countries had been receiving aid. This prompted me to consider the neocolonial and imperial dynamics behind foreign aid aimed at promoting peace, and further how the entire program of peacebuilding as an international project may reinforce stereotypes and hierarchical power relations.
As the resources outlined below underline, neocolonialism is manifested in the distribution of aid in two paradoxical ways. First, it reinforces systems of dependency by marginalizing the voices of those receiving aid, imposing donor interests on the peacebuilding process. However, it simultaneously assumes aid alone will provide enough support to countries struggling to reconcile with the long-lasting ramifications of exploitation and colonialism. This contradictory system of degradation and oversimplification characterizes many attempts made by foreign governments to foster peace around the world, resulting in further inequality and raising questions about the role of international involvement in the peacebuilding process as a whole. As I have continued my research, these dynamics have prompted me to consider my own biases when analyzing the impacts of foreign aid on peace, what peace looks like, and how I perceive nations receiving aid.
What is neocolonialism?
The concept of neocolonialism roots the relative ‘underdevelopment’ of certain countries in factors external to the country itself, pointing to Western biases in the concept of development, the structure of the world into ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, persistent inequality in the world market, and the inability of the periphery to effectively combat the world system and its elements that perpetuate the harmful cycles of dependency between countries. Further, this paradigm focuses on the ways in which formerly colonized countries continue to experience marginalization and inequality as both a result of and reproduction of colonial power dynamics. Specifically, the study of neocolonialism critically examines how economic relations between states continue to mimic those of colonial times, with traditionally dominant, colonial powers determining the strength of former colonies and enforcing hierarchies of state power in the international community.
Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory (WST) proposes that the ‘core’ nations, often rich, Western countries, succeed only because of the continued exploitation of ‘periphery’ states, often non-Western former colonies. WST acknowledges the overall development of the world, conceding that periphery states have not remained ‘traditional’, but also asserts that core states have shaped their modernization process in a way that inherently benefits the unequal distribution of power and reinforces the system of exploitation of periphery states. As a result, though they experience economic and political development as measured by the West, periphery states will always remain subordinate to the core states they support. Therefore, under this theory, no amount of aid or basic material assistance could substantially change the circumstances of periphery states because the very system in which they operate is engineered to preserve their subordination.
Throughout my reflection, I will reference the concepts of development, power relations, and other terms that are rooted in Western biases. I believe these connotations are incomplete and may contribute to further ignorance regarding the diverse manifestations of development and the persistence of patronizing characterizations of non-Western countries. However, in order to more fully interact with the interwoven systems of aid and development present today, I will employ these terms and concepts as they are used in practice. I believe that this approach will allow me to critically examine the entire paradigm in which the system of foreign aid operates rather than foreign aid as an isolated phenomenon, broadening our understandings of aid and peace in the context of the wider international system.
Foreign aid and dependency systems
Foreign aid, and specifically aid aimed at poverty alleviation and development assistance projects, often reinforces dependent relationships between aid recipients and donors. Dependency theory, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s amid the decolonization movement during which many former colonies won their independence from their European colonizers, examines the continued inequality between these groups and the widening gap between rich and poor nations. Dependency, though, does not express simple economic dynamics of strength and trade, but also includes the political and social structures that interact with the economic dimension of this issue. While not directly addressing foreign aid, Dependency theory provides insight into the role it plays in maintaining these hierarchies. Scholars Mark Langan and Ngaire Woods, in their respective works, discuss these impacts by drawing attention to the ramifications of misuse of foreign aid across multiple spheres of influence within a recipient country.
Firstly, the basic economics of foreign aid faces numerous challenges from misallocation of aid to decreasing supply caused by increasing international debt, which put stress not only on the providers of aid, but also more acutely affect recipient nations. Because of the system of continued aid built by Western providers, any shift in their economic environment is inevitably magnified for countries that depend on money provided to support government processes and grassroots organizations. Further, aid has often been used as a tool for donors to see their interests expressed in recipient countries. These ulterior motives shape the policies, initiatives, and outcomes within the recipient country as donor countries, at times, overrule the authority of local leaders to implement their interests by carrying out land grabs and other displacement operations. These actions, rather than achieving the poverty reductions goals they claim to hold, only reinforce the continued oversight of traditionally silenced voices. Additionally, under some aid initiatives, Western providers have overstepped the boundaries of state sovereignty in the name of international development assistance. As a result, recipients of aid are denied autonomy and control over the financial and political systems within their own country, which prevents constructive, lasting change that fosters concrete peace. Because of these interdependent political and economic challenges, then, foreign aid may fail to effectively assist countries achieve peace in the form of poverty reduction and government stability, instead reinforcing the dependency and lack of autonomy characteristic of the neocolonialist world system.
Foreign aid as an incomplete solution
Foreign aid may also perpetuate systems of inequality through its dismissal of the historical power structures that prevent aid from affecting substantial change. Despite positive intentions, aid can fail to positively impact a targeted area because of the governmental, social, and cultural institutions that diminish the power of foreign aid. In his article “The Obstacles to Foreign Aid Harmonization: Lessons from Decentralization Support in Indonesia,” Matthew Winters asserts that bureaucratic and self-serving structures within aid agencies have not effectively coordinated with governments of recipient countries, causing foreign aid to be rendered ineffective at times. Even aid aimed at supporting local, grassroots organizations may not reach the intended recipients due to political, economic, and social barriers within the country caused by historical legacies of exploitation and inequality. Without close monitoring, well-intentioned aid may fail to support the causes it claims to, undermining the purpose of foreign aid and resulting in a more unstable, untrustworthy system of aid allocation. Decades of mistrust between aid recipients and donor nations have prevented this necessary collaboration, though, as many countries, while accepting aid, remain hesitant to allow increased Western involvement in peacebuilding processes. Further, because of the nature of foreign aid, which approaches development through a wholly economic lens, it is unable to target deeper sociocultural structures, norms, and institutions. Despite this ineffectiveness, Western providers often directly benefit from aid programs, using them to legitimize their superior, altruistic, position in the international community. As a result, the hierarchical organization of the international community is maintained, with Western donors at the top of the order touting their support of the “underdeveloped” countries at the bottom.
In contrast to critiques surrounding the violation of state sovereignty by aid providers, this perspective highlights the inadequacies of initiatives that view financial aid as the most efficient means of promoting productive governments, communities, and peace. While some have criticized foreign aid programs because they allow Western nations to directly influence the domestic economic and social policies of the countries they provide aid to and thus undermine state sovereignty, others point out that aid cannot effectively cause the change it proclaims to and thus does not reach far enough. Both perspectives, though critical of opposite issues in the foreign aid system, point to its deep flaws and reinforcement of neocolonial dynamics by preserving historical hierarchies of power and strength. In his article “Foreign Aid as Mechanism for Perpetuation of Neo-colonialism and Dependency: An Interrogation of Issues and Way Forward for Developing Economies,” Eneasato Benjamin Onyekachi demonstrates how these paradoxical forces actually work in tandem and interact to perpetuate these systems of inequality. He asserts that neocolonialism acts through the foreign aid system because of aid’s inability to target deep-rooted political, social, and economic legacies of colonialism that is easily mismanaged and manipulated by corruption in a way that preserves inequalities between and within nations.
These critical perspectives on foreign aid challenged me as I researched the connection between foreign aid and peace. As I investigated the systems of aid from different countries, I acted under the assumption that increased funding for government and grassroots projects would most likely interrupt the dynamics of neocolonialism between countries. However, these criticisms confronted my own biases and prompted me to think about the weaponization and strategic use of economic tools by powerful countries on the international stage. They have led me to consider how foreign aid programs not only affect peace within a recipient country but also its relationships with donor nations and the wider international community. Therefore, my research will act only as a small part in the much larger discussion of the economics of peace that must consider the traditionally overlooked results of foreign aid.
Is foreign involvement harmful to peace?
Should these deep-seated issues prompt states to cease providing aid? As I have learned about the closely connected histories between aid providers and recipients, I have struggled with this question. The notion of ceasing all international aid originating from government entities may appear appealing because it could break down mechanisms of inequality enforcement between countries, but it more likely would disrupt a meticulously balanced system of state survival and could have catastrophic effects on the most vulnerable countries. Without a complete overhaul of the international system, a withdrawal from the neocolonialist practice of foreign aid could result in devastation throughout the world as famine, environmental challenges, poverty, and a multitude of other threats would likely be exacerbated. Still, this reality is wholly unsatisfactory to me and many others because of its complacency in the deeply flawed status quo.
The complex, frustrating dynamics of aid allocation both reflect and contribute to the broader struggle for peace and peacebuilding on international, national, and local levels. Foreign aid has aimed at promoting peace in post-conflict communities for decades, with many scholars rooting the current aid system in the post-World War II Marshall Plan, through which the United States provided over $12 billion to Western European nations with the intention of stimulating industrialization in order to strengthen the economies of these nations while also supporting US anti-communist interests on the European continent. This plan, because of its all-encompassing nature, resulted in the total rehabilitation of recipient nations. In contrast, modern foreign aid tends to operate on a smaller scale, targeting specific program interests and goals and often failing to produce the same overwhelming success, a phenomenon that highlights the importance of cultural, political, and social literacy when providing foreign assistance. Because of the legacy of colonialism, the distinct economic, social, and political systems it produces, and the complex relationship between providers and receivers, foreign aid has faced considerable challenges regarding peacebuilding around the world. As Johnathan Goodhand stresses in his article “Aiding violence or building peace? The role of international aid in Afghanistan,” only a comprehensive, Marshall Plan-style aid program could effectively facilitate the complex, multilevel transition from conflict to peace in countries such as Afghanistan. Further still, aid programs must mold to the specific circumstances of the recipient country, acknowledging the unique factors at play in the peacebuilding process.
As I have examined the relationship between aid and peacebuilding, these interactions and challenges have highlighted the importance of empathy, listening, and collaboration in any peacebuilding process. Just because foreign aid tends to operate on the international stage does not necessarily mean it must be impersonal, removed, and purely economic. While I began my project considering solely measurable economic and political factors, I have appreciated the intangible, immeasurable factors that influence the effectiveness of aid programs. Further, I have learned that despite its role in maintaining power imbalances, foreign aid continues to play an integral part of the stability of many nations and cannot be entirely separated from the pursuit of peace around the world.
References
Langan, Mark. “Neo-Colonialism and Donor Interventions: Western Aid Mechanisms.” In Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of ‘Development’ in Africa, pp. 56-72. London: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2018.
This article addresses the complexity behind Western development aid projects in Africa, engaging with the effectiveness of its poverty reduction mechanisms. Specifically, it examines three modes of development aid: traditional policy-oriented aid, governmental programming support, and aid combined with private-sector resources. By approaching the issue from multiple levels of analysis, author Mark Langan effectively discusses the impacts of aid on many of the levels of peace the Visualising Peace project also interacts with, paying close attention to both top-down and bottom-up strategies used by these foreign aid mechanisms.
Langan approaches these dynamics by citing scholars of neocolonialism and neoliberal perspectives, drawing attention to the numerous actors and interests involved in aid distribution and use. He acknowledges that both African and foreign elites demonstrate their interests through strategic aid distribution and employment. Especially in the case of foreign governments, development aid continues to function as a tool through which the interests of the country are fulfilled in projects throughout Africa, ultimately failing to achieve the goals it professes and harming the communities it aims to assist.
The critiques highlighted in this article draw attention to the Visualising Peace project’s focus on whose peace is important and who benefits from the peacebuilding process. Langan asserts that the current paradigm of foreign aid serves the interests of donors and their sponsors, imposing the goals of Western corporations and companies on aid distribution in “developing” nations and reinforcing exploitative economic systems.
Woods, Ngaire. “The Shifting Politics of Foreign Aid.” International Affairs 81, no. 2 (2005): 393-409. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2005.00457.x.
Ngaire Woods’s article on the current challenges to international aid systems focuses on political barriers that have arisen since 2006, when monetary aid rose in importance around the world. He points to three obstacles that have threatened the integrity of the global aid system. First, he points to the problem of the goals of aid, asserting that donor nations may use aid to achieve their own security interests rather than investing in the improvement of the recipient nation. Next, he highlights the issue of global finance and debt. Modern operations like the US War on Terror, during which the US engaged in large-scale military operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq, have put many Western donors in debt, which pulls attention and funding away from aid programs and towards debt reduction projects. Finally, he points to the miscommunication between donors, recipients, and aid organizations as a weak point in international aid structures. Rather than operating through existing institutions, donor nations have increasingly concentrated their operations within their individual pathways and institutions, preventing simple collaboration and forcing recipient nations to coordinate with each donor individually, an inefficiency that can cause major delays in the aid distribution process.
Woods then points to two actions donors should take to recenter human development in their aid programs: increased coordination between donors in order to make space for the voices, interests, and agency of recipient nations, and a mechanism of providing stable, long-term aid to recipient countries. This article reflects the challenges to peacebuilding, as various political and economic factors interact to build barriers to long-lasting peace, and highlights the importance of a comprehensive, multidisciplinary perspective on peacebuilding and its various elements.
Winters, Matthew. “The Obstacles to Foreign Aid Harmonization: Lessons from Decentralization Support in Indonesia.”Studies in Comparative International Development 47 (2012): 316-341.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-012-9114-7.
Matthew Winters’s article builds upon the conclusions reached by Ngaire Woods in “The Shifting Politics of Foreign Aid”, exploring more barriers to effective foreign aid. Specifically, Winters examines the lack of harmonization within recipient governments that is essential for the success of aid programs. He asserts that because of the dominance of strategic interests from donor nations, recipient governments are incentivized to decentralize their aid reception mechanisms, a phenomenon that decreases their effectiveness. Bureaucratic structures of aid agencies directly prevent coordination within recipient governments and complicate foreign aid programming. Using Indonesia as an example of this complex and multileveled issue, Winters highlights the challenges originating from both sides of the international aid system. He assigns responsibility to both the donor countries’ self-serving interests and the overcomplicated, biased bureaucratic structures within recipient countries’ governments, demonstrating how both contribute to the unsuccessful outcomes of many aid programs.
Like Woods, Winters offers potential solutions to these challenges, targeting both donors and recipients. On both the donor and recipient sides, countries should streamline their classification processes, working within government structures that have already been well-organized in order to harmonize interests across disparate agencies and sectors. Importantly, Winters specifies that donors should not assign aid responsibilities to highly politicized sectors that threaten mismanagement of funds. Further, he stresses the need to reduce transaction costs for aid programs, also claiming that harmonization will contribute to reducing these costs and in turn alleviating poverty and producing economic growth.
Onyekachi, Eneasato Benjamin. “Foreign Aid as Mechanism for Perpetuation of Neo-colonialism and Dependency: An Interrogation of Issues and Way Forward for Developing Economies.” International Network Organization for Scientific Research Arts and Humanities 6, no. 1 (2020): 101-112. https://www.inosr.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/INOSR-AH-61101-112-2020.pdf.
This article by Eneasato Onyekachi offers an overwhelming critique of the foreign aid system that arose following World War II. Onyekachi demonstrates that foreign aid, as it is largely controlled by the US and Western Europe, operates under Western standards of the superiority of capitalism and democracy. He then explores how donor countries employ foreign aid to enforce the implementation of these systems within African countries. Further, Onyekachi highlights the continued legacy of exploitation that characterizes the foreign aid systems. He approaches the debate over whether former colonial powers can distribute aid to former colonies in complete good faith, rid of any ulterior motives, and concludes that the foreign aid system is tainted with the continued inequalities of colonialism, preventing the seemingly pure intentions of aid programs to result in such good faith outcomes. Onyekachi also draws on dependency theory, asserting that foreign aid acts as an illustration of dependency theory in action.
In response to these structural issues of the foreign aid system, Onyekachi offers his perspectives on the future of aid. He asserts that widespread domestic and international reform must occur, targeting domestic tax and revenue collection systems, domestic and international institutional reform and corruption prevention, and improvement in infrastructure and human investment paradigms. These changes, he says, will begin the process of breaking down the neocolonialist role foreign aid plays.
Goodhand, Johnathan. “Aiding Violence or Building Peace? The Role of International Aid in Afghanistan.” Third World Quarterly 23, no. 5 (2002): 837–859. https://doi.org/10.1080/0143659022000028620.
In this article, author Johnathan Goodhand examines the challenge of how to best assist Afghanistan following the fall of the Afghan Interim Administration to the Taliban in 2021. Since this shift, which marked a pivotal moment in which the Taliban reclaimed control over Afghanistan for the first time since the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, the task of administering humanitarian support to the people of Afghanistan has proved difficult. Goodhand traces the history of conflict and peace in Afghanistan, highlighting the complex relationship between military conflict, humanitarian crisis, and foreign intervention at play in the country throughout the 21st century. Further, Goodhand examines the process of peacebuilding directly in relation to foreign aid, exploring the historical and current situations in Afghanistan from a perspective not widely employed. He accounts for the various government projects that have interacted with a number of levels of Afghan society, from blanket aid packages to specific, project-oriented aid, engaging with the concept of aid in Afghanistan in a comprehensive manner. He criticizes both top-down and bottom-up aid when used as the exclusive aid mechanism, pointing out that both orientations fail to adequately target the various levels from which peace must originate. As a result, Goodhand advocates for a Marshall Plan-style program of aid distribution within Afghanistan, urging for a large-scale, comprehensive package aimed at completely rehabilitating the country from the national and local levels.
Like his contemporaries, Goodhand notes the diverse and deep-seated challenges to aid in achieving peace. He highlights how the political frameworks of aid, donor interests, and corruption and mismanagement within aid agencies affect the viability of aid programs at inciting change and producing the positive effects it aims to achieve. In doing so, Goodhand exemplifies the complex relationship between peace and aid. While he advocates for a more complete approach to aid in Afghanistan, he recognizes the struggle to ensure that aid would positively affect the country and benefit the people and sectors that the plan targets. These delicate dynamics characterize not only the situation in Afghanistan, but also the wider system of foreign aid worldwide.
Other sources used:
Angotti, Thomas. “The Political Implications of Dependency Theory.” Latin American Perspectives 8, no. 3/4 (1981): 124-137. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2633475.
Chirot, Daniel, and Thomas D. Hall. “World-System Theory.” Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 81–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945989.
Hills, Jill. “Dependency Theory and Its Relevance Today: International Institutions in Telecommunications and Structural Power.” Review of International Studies 20, no. 2 (1994): 169-186. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097366.
Office of the Historian. “Marshall Plan, 1948.” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State. 2017. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan.