This Time, Blair Seeks U.S. Support

When Prime Minister Tony Blair meets with President Bush today, he might feel justified in posing this question: What does faithful support through two difficult wars earn a loyal ally who is looking for help for the world’s neediest continent?

Britain is seeking a consensus among the leading industrial nations and Russia to forgive billions of dollars in debt and double the developed world’s foreign aid budget for Africa. So far, the White House answer has been cautious at best. As Blair left for the United States on Monday to pitch his Africa agenda, he and his finance chief, Gordon Brown, were garnering vocal support -- and some skepticism -- at home over their debt relief plan.

What Brown called the “modern Marshall Plan for Africa” has become the centerpiece of Blair’s ambitions for Britain’s presidency of the Group of 8 nations, which will begin their annual summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, on July 6.

Blair and Brown are hoping to get Bush and other G-8 leaders to agree to a doubling of foreign aid to Africa -- to roughly $80 billion a year by 2010 -- and 100% debt relief, as well as an end to agricultural subsidies in developed countries that in effect shut out African produce.

They would also like to use projected foreign-aid flows to anchor loans that would then finance child vaccines and jump-start large infrastructure projects in Africa.

A swelling army of individuals and nongovernmental organizations in Britain is joining the charge for more assistance for Africa to break the gripping poverty that enshrouds much of the continent.

In addition to orchestrating a five-city, globally broadcast concert for Africa dubbed Live 8, Irish rocker Bob Geldof has called for a million supporters to descend on Edinburgh, Scotland, to underline to the G-8 leaders the urgent need for humanitarian action. (Queen Elizabeth II decided to postpone her annual early-July visit to Scotland.)

So far, however, Blair’s ambitions for a dramatic boost in aid have run up against tight budgetary constraints in the United States and Japan. The other G-8 members -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Russia -- are more inclined to act. But they too have been reluctant to do as much as Blair and Brown advocate.

Thomas Cargill, the Africa program director at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, believes that despite the intense British push, the G-8 countries this year may end up doing even less for Africa than they have in the past.

The Washington meeting is key, said Max Lawson, policy advisor for the British charity organization Oxfam. “I think the rest of the G-8 could go it alone without Bush, but that would be a disappointing outcome for Blair and Brown, who spent a lot of time lobbying the U.S. government.”

“If anybody can do it, he can,” Dana H. Allin, an expert on transatlantic relations at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said of Blair. “But my understanding is there is a resistance -- doubling of foreign aid budgets are problematic in the best of circumstances.”

No one doubts that Blair and Brown are emotionally committed to African development. During his years as prime minister, Blair has maintained that stronger nations are sometimes duty-bound to intervene to protect the weak, a philosophy partly shaped by his religious beliefs.

Blair, who is in his last term of office, backed the U.S. in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Improving the lives of sub-Saharan Africans would be a desirable legacy after taking a beating from Britons who accused him of blind loyalty to Bush, largely because of his support for the Iraq war.

Brown, Blair’s unofficial heir apparent, visited Africa earlier this year. The chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, follows in the Labor Party’s tradition of anti-colonialism and support for the underdog, and he also wishes to show leadership in an international arena.

“This is not a time for timidity nor a time to fear reaching too high,” he said of the Africa initiative in a speech in Edinburgh last week. “This ... is our chance to reverse the fortunes of a continent and to help transform the lives of millions.”

In statements last week, White House officials noted that the Bush administration had already boosted U.S. assistance to Africa significantly, including promises of $15 billion over five years to fight the AIDS/HIV epidemic. The United States is already the largest single donor to the continent, although its contribution lags Britain and other European countries when expressed as a percentage of national income.

Blair has urged that the G-8 members work toward giving 0.7% of their gross national product in foreign aid. Developed countries now average 0.24%, said Oxfam’s Lawson.

“We’ve never been richer and we’ve never been less generous,” he said. The U.S. gives 0.16%.

But some have raised questions about whether additional aid money to Africa would be well spent.

Michela Wrong, an author and journalist who has written on Africa, argued in the Observer newspaper Sunday that the West should not put blind trust in the new generation of African leaders.

“This doesn’t mean we should give up on aid, abandon the campaign to write off debt or stop trying to level the playing field when it comes to trade,” she said. “But it means that the same tedious, carping rules apply. Conditions on aid will have to be set and strictly policed. Donors will have to keep a sharp eye out for ever more sophisticated scams, as quick to apply the stick as to offer the carrot.”

A Sunday Telegraph poll, meanwhile, indicated that four out of five Britons were not confident that increased aid would be spent wisely. Brown has promised that any aid would be accompanied with requirements for clean government and anti-corruption measures.

Cargill, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said he expected there would be some goodwill gestures from Bush, but that in the end, Blair would be disappointed.

“It is all very interesting because Blair has had so much pressure to secure something from Bush -- with Geldof, [along with] everyone else, saying Bush owes him this one,” Cargill said.

“But from what I can see of the American position, they just don’t see it in those terms. They don’t feel like they owe anyone anything.”

The U.S. already has rejected key points of the Blair plan, Cargill said. “So I can’t see what Bush could offer that could satisfy the British electorate and could be spun by No. 10 into something that is a meaningful concession.”