Everywhere, it seems, the concept of big, paternalistic government is in retreat. Government spending is being slashed, civil servants are being laid off, and programs are being cut.
Clearly, some short-term discomfort is needed to correct past excesses in both spending and taxation. The cost of servicing government debt had approached the point where it threatened the future of basic social programs like medical care.
Yet there are also serious dangers in over-reaction. The short-term budgetary gains of reducing basic agricultural research, for example, can lead to major longer-term losses in productivity and exports. Without decades of preceding research, the immense canola industry would not have developed.
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While the benefits of public investment in areas like agricultural research can eventually be demonstrated by measurable economic grains, the same cannot be said for spending on global humanitarian aid and development.
Yet, in the long run, such spending is an equally valid investment. Sustainable global prosperity cannot be attained while war, starvation and disease continue to wrack huge regions.
The most dramatic recent example is in Zaire, where many people have been slaughtered and perhaps a million refugees have fled the civil war.
Similar suffering has hit other regions of Africa, raising the spectre of an entire continent in chaos.
Less dramatic, but perhaps more dangerous, is the continuing chaos in Russia. The former superpower still possesses nuclear weapons, but is unable to pay its military personnel.
So far, the fragile Russian democracy is holding together, despite the traumatic change to a free-market economy and severe anti-inflation measures. Recent estimates are that a quarter of the workforce has not been paid for three months, prompting this week’s widespread protests.
Meanwhile, ailing president Boris Yeltsin is due for heart surgery and found it necessary to fire his popular security chief, Aleksandr Lebed, for intrigue and insubordination.
If Yeltsin dies or is sidelined too long, Lebed and other would-be authoritarian leaders will quickly be locked in a power struggle, watched by a volatile, resentful electorate.
As if that weren’t enough, lurking in the background is the fast-growing “Russian mafia” and the ever-present threat of secessionist groups.
There may be few votes to be won by spending on international development. But the West’s political leaders would be negligent if they ignored the examples of Zaire and Russia.
