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Washington's turn-around has been welcomed by other First World nations, notably Western European countries that are much more vulnerable to commodity embargoes and trade disruptions than is the U.S. economy. Europe and Japan, unlike the U.S., possess few of the raw materials consumed by their industries. German officials actually call aid "a strategic element more than an ethical obligation."
In fact, First World aid has already been considerable. During the past 15 years, an era in which most of the Group of 77 gained independence, nonmilitary gifts to developing countries from the First World have totaled about $57 billion, and concessional loans have comprised some $84 billion. During the 1960s the U.S. contributed more than half of that assistance. Last year it gave 30% of the $11.3 billion in aid, $14 billion in private investment and $2.2 billion in the form of technical assistance that flowed from the First World to the poor.
As generous as this aid seems, it falls short of the goal set by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and accepted by all First World states—an annual transfer of .7% of its G.N.P. to developing nations in the form of grants or low-interest loans. Last year First World aid equaled only .33% of its combined G.N.P., down significantly from the .44% level of the mid-1960s; U.S. aid last year was .23%.
For all the complaints about First World aid, the poor seldom criticize the Second World's miserly transfer of a mere .1% of its G.N.P. as assistance to non-Communist LDCs in the past two decades: $10 billion from the Soviet Union and $5.5 billion from China. At recent U.N. sessions, both the Soviets and the Chinese failed to suggest any new proposals for development programs; their silence has since drawn increasing private criticism from LDC diplomats. The Soviet rejoinder: "The imperialist powers are responsible for the economic backwardness of the developing countries; it is their obligation to recompense them for their plunder of their wealth."
Another source of aid, still untapped by most underdeveloped states, is the bulging coffers of OPEC. This year the cartel's members are expected to earn $100 billion; even with the astronomical sums being spent on themselves, they will still have a balance of payments surplus of about $40 billion. While OPEC has promised assistance to many Fourth and Fifth World states whose economies have been ravaged by the high cost of imported oil, nearly all of the $2.2 billion it disbursed as aid last year went only to Arab and other Moslem countries.
In recent years, the First World's foreign-aid approach of the 1950s and 1960s has been widely criticized for frequently having been too politically motivated, too concerned with showy projects and inappropriate to the needs of the recipients. There is some truth to this, reports TIME New Delhi Bureau Chief William Smith: "The industrial plants the donors have supplied have been often technologically unsuited to the needs of the recipient. The imported factories may be capital-rather than labor-intensive, wrong for the climate and habits of the local workers and perhaps even designed to process raw materials of a different quality."
Even more serious has been the slighting of rural problems, particularly the necessity of helping developing