The Marshall Plan 1948-1951 was an unselfish effort to restore Europe’s industry and infrastructure destroyed in the Second World War. For many years, organized groups have advocated a second Marshall Plan to eradicate poverty everywhere. Since there are about three billion people living in poverty, a business as usual approach will not eliminate poverty. The rich countries have to make a concerted effort. The United Nations Millennium Goals aim to do this. There is at least one nongovernmental organization, Global Marshall Plan (www.globalmarshallplan.org) that has been pursuing this goal for years. The second Marshall Plan will be more expensive, complicated and longer than the first one. Since the Apollo 11 rocket had two million moving parts, I do not want to hear complexity as a fatalistic excuse not to engage in the effort.

Where would the money come from? Reduce the world’s military budget by 10% and invest the new 10% in poverty reduction. This is a security investment in reducing conflict and the terrorists’ recruiting pool. Any foreign aid with some due diligence will work better than military expenditures as seen in the total failure to achieve peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In some countries, foreign aid helps dictators stay in power. In the second Marshall Plan, funders must look to countries where some success is possible, where governments are more responsive and less corrupt. Where aid has had a negative impact, I recommend eliminating aid altogether.

There has to be international reform in lending practices. Currently, governments and banks give loans to notoriously corrupt dictators with massive human rights atrocities. The dictator and his assistants put their money in Swiss bank accounts or tax havens. When a reform group sweeps the dictator from power, the creditors look to the new government to pay the dictator’s loans. The proposed international rule is that banks lending to dictator governments may only seek payment from the dictator and his followers and the new government is not held responsible for the old debts.

William Easterly, in his book The White Man’s Burden: Why The West’s Efforts To Aid The Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good, recommends a bottom-up approach rather than top-down. For example, churches, community groups and other entities would draw up proposals for schools, electrification projects, wells, infrastructure, health facilities and everything else. The new agency would give the funds directly to the entity. This would certainly avoid some corruption from governmental entities. In much the same way, the US Education Department gives donations to school districts for specific programs or computers.

To insure transparency, American rabbi Michael Lerner recommends a board of directors for each country that will include farmers, clergy, teachers, labor union members and not just people from the financial community.

There have to be institutional reforms in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that exist largely to protect creditors. The hypocrisy is that when a financial crisis hits a poor country, these institutions demand a balanced budget and slashing programs for the poor. The United States government, except during the Clinton years, has produced record deficits. What is needed is funding social programs for countries in crisis as well as debt assistance. This means a much longer payback period but a lower price in human suffering.

Earth Policy Institute president, Lester Brown, in his book Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, proposes the following funding for a second Marshall Plan:

Goal Funding (billion dollars)

Universal Primary Education 15
Adult literacy campaign 4
Reproductive health and family planning 10
Closing the condom gap 2
School lunch programs for 44 poorest countries 6
Assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in 44 poorest countries 4
Universal basic health care 21

Total 62

Individual countries will ask for additional funding for environmental projects and social programs.

People new in Twelve Step programs learn early an informal definition for insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Our human society needs institutional reform and smart foreign aid to lift some three billion out of poverty. With business as usual, there will be increasing poverty and a recruitment pool for terrorists. By abolishing poverty, remembering Winston Churchill’s most famous speech, all humans will “walk in sunlit uplands.”

Formerly a Houston resident, Ed O’Rourke is a certified public accountant, now living in Medellin, Colombia.