The Washington Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy

Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article that caught my eye. It concerns a recent Harvard study contending that US aid is tied to vote-buying in the UN Security Council. In brief, the study claims that the United States uses aid to persuade non-permanent members of the Security Council to support its position on key resolutions. (It also suggests that the US uses UN agencies as conduits for this vote-buying.)

I find this article a little perplexing, because it contains a strange mix of the mundane and the very silly.

First, the mundane: the claim that the US uses aid to buy votes on the Security Council is certainly true – and should come as no surprise. Every country ties its aid contributions to its foreign policy goals, even the goody two-shoes Scandinavians. And why shouldn’t they? Money is an important way – sometimes the only way – to influence governments to act in ways they might not necessarily want to. Money can be the carrot or the stick, and it’s particularly effective against those who don’t have much of it. Of course, there are good ways and bad ways of exercising this influence. When the EU uses access to its markets to convince Turkey to improve its human rights record, that’s good. When the US uses economic sanctions that hurt the poor to express its frustration with Cuba, that’s bad.

The problem arises when that behaviour gets out of hand, when “rich means right” becomes such an ingrained part of political culture that economic superpowers think they can use their clout however they wish, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the world. The Washington Post article implies that this is what’s going on in the Council right now, and that we should be worried about it. What if the US uses money to persuade current Council members Ghana, Slovakia and Congo to support a resolution calling for the invasion of Iran?

Such a scenario is certainly scary. Fortunately, it’s also silly. Assuming the US was so irresponsible as to attempt something like that, there’s still the pesky problem of the veto held by permanent members France, the UK, Russia and China. Even if the US got every poor country on the Council to toe the line (which itself assumes that no economic countermeasures were being taken by other states), it wouldn’t matter a damn so long as even one of the permanent members decided to say “no”. The unfortunate truth about the Council is this: when it comes to the big issues of the day, the high-politics questions of war and peace, the non-permanent members are just so much window-dressing, whether they’re rich (like Denmark) or poor (like Congo). For proof of this, look no further than Iraq; however much money the US may have spread around (and there is absolutely no proof that it did), the Council still refused to sanction military intervention. Simply put, why would the US spend billions to buy votes that really aren’t worth anything?

I haven’t read the study, so I can’t be sure to what extent it falls into the spurious correlations trap. The Post article may not do justice to the authors. That said, the study seems to grossly overstate the issue and to assume, rather than prove, causality. Simply showing that the US spent more aid money on Country X while Country X sat on the Council proves precisely nothing. There are a whole host of factors that could – and do – account for this.

Most significantly, a seat on the Council is a way, perhaps the best way, of profiling one’s country. The presidency of the Security Council rotates, meaning that each country gets the chance to set the agenda and moderate the discussions, formal and informal. They also get to interact with the big dogs, since even the permanent members field their top diplomats to the Council. The Permanent Representative of Ghana, with all due respect to His Excellency, doesn’t get that many chances to spend a little quality time with John Bolton. Being on the Council gives him that chance; the Ghanian mission will host parties, run meetings and working groups, side negotiations and formal sessions. It’s a fantastic opportunity to put your country on the map and advocate for funds. Did the study track whether other donors showed similar spikes in aid to countries sitting on the Council? I wonder.

What is my point here? I’m not sure I ever had one. Maybe I’m just tired of the US-bashing, the UN-bashing, and the general bad political mood in this country right now. It’s just so disingenuous, all this characterizing political behaviour that is fundamentally old news as something new and insidious. I’m not sure how we got to this place, where even Harvard and the venerable Post seem content to draw half-assed conclusions about evil politicking. All I know is it’s pretty sad.