Is it a Trump backlash, or recognition that U. S. didn’t use much of the Katrina aid?
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, more than 150 countries offered volunteers, supplies and cash to the United States. Among the donors:
After Harvey? Not crickets exactly, but close. Few countries have publicly offered aid.
The European Union sent satellites. Mexico offered «help and coordination» to Harvey-ravaged Texas, though the statement didn’t go into specifics. Canadians are shipping supplies like baby bottles, formula and bath towels, and Taiwan reportedly offered $800,000. Venezuela promised $5 million, but it’s unclear whether the U. S. will accept that funding.
At a White House briefing, spokesman Thomas Bossert said Mexican and Canadian leaders have called the president but that they didn’t discuss how those countries might help. «The president didn’t get into the specifics, and neither did the heads of state calling. So I think their primary purpose was to express and extend their prayers and their thoughts and their condolences to those that lost their lives, » he said.
Bossert also said the White House would turn over to FEMA and the State Department any «actual concrete» offers. FEMA did not return a request for comment. State directed questions to FEMA.
It’s possible that more offers of aid are forthcoming, and that countries are simply waiting to see how things play out. But Markos Kounalakis, a professor at Central European University, has a different theory about what’s going on.
«Maybe a distracted State Department experiencing attrition is unable to process foreign offers and aid. But it might also be that Trump actively alienates American friends and allies, boasts he is cutting U. S. aid and makes clear that America First translates into an aid policy of every nation for itself, » he wrote in the Miami Herald. «Countries seeking political payback, or simply eager to make a point, by sitting silent is a conceivable, if cruel, reaction to a White House that has been deliberately self-centered and dangerously provocative.»
There’s another possibility. The United States struggled to make use of the foreign aid donated after Katrina. According to a 2011 Heritage Foundation report, just $115 million of the $850 million offered in Katrina relief was used. About $400 million of oil aid sat untouched.
There were other snafus, too. Britain donated 400,000 ready-to-eat meals. But some contained beef, banned at the time because of fears of mad cow disease. So the food sat in a factory in Arkansas.
At one point, the State Department suggested that countries funnel their donations directly to organizations such as the Red Cross, where they’d be put to better use.
At the time, the Bush administration explained things this way. «There is a process of matching needs with expertise and the donations that have been made, » State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told The Associated Press. Decisions about what to accept are based on need, he said, not politics. Germany’s high-speed pumps, for example, were eagerly accepted. Cuba’s offer of 1,100 doctors, not so much.
But in its review of the Katrina response, the administration said it needed a plan to manage donations and inquiries. «The Department of State, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, should review and revise policies, plans and procedures for the management of foreign disaster assistance, » the report read.
In 2010, the United States had a chance to prove that it had learned its lesson. That year, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the largest oil disaster in U. S. history. At least 30 countries reached out to offer aid. Sweden, for example, offered to provide specialized equipment designed to clean up oil spills; its offer went unanswered.
Eventually, the Obama administration took some countries up on their offers. Mexico sent skimmers., and the Dutch offered machines that attached to ships to suck up oil. But the U. S. government largely relied on BP to decide what it needed. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was frustrated by the administration’s response to aid offers.
«The U. S. remains ill-prepared to accept offers of foreign aid and put them to use in a way that will save lives and property, » the Heritage Foundation report found. «U. S. officials are taking inadequate advantage of the assets available from the international community.»
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Story by Amanda Erickson.
