The Price for Wolfowitz

The Europeans and the Japanese and the developing world should at least obtain a price for permitting Wolfowitz to take the world's top poverty-reduction post. They should require the Bush Administration to pledge publicly to increasing overseas developmental assistance to 0.7 percent of our nation's gross domestic product (GDP). And this figure should explicitly not include military assistance.

According to Reuters, "[w]hile the United States is the world's biggest donor of aid, it also has the world's largest economy and annually donates just 0.13 percent of its GDP to development aid, excluding gifts of food and aid to Iraq and Afghanistan."

0.7 percent is too low, of course. Martha Nussbaum in a new book suggests 2 percent. But 0.7 percent may be all we can hope for in the current political climate.