A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Bottom Billion By Paul Collier

Around the world right now, one billion people are trapped in poor or failing countries. How can we help them? Economist Paul Collier lays out a bold, compassionate plan for closing the gap between rich and poor. Paul Collier’s book The Bottom Billion shows what is happening to the poorest people in the world, and offers ideas for opening up opportunities to all. Author Howard French writes an article “Banishing Congo’s Ghosts” that is describing the poverty and violence in the bottom billion, specifically in the Congo. French considers different approaches to end the continuous vicious cycle of violence and poverty.
In Collier’s the bottom billion he discusses the political and economic problems of the very poorest countries. This being,
50 societies in sub-Saharan Africa that are stagnating or declining, and taking a billion people down with them. In his book he identifies four traps that keep these countries in poverty, and discusses a way to help the countries actually develop with a mix of direct and external support for internal change.
Collier argued that civil wars in developing countries can leave long lasting legacies of poverty, violence and corruption. The economic costs of a war often continue well after the war ends. Corrupt officials can flood informal markets with cheap military weapons. Armed groups may use violence and extortion to make a living. These effects can last for decades. This civil war and continual violence is exactly what French is discussing in his article. Collier outlines one of the solutions to this is to help financially and to help with some kind of economic stabilization via the financial assistance. In lecture, McCarty discusses how there really is lack of efforts in these countries because we label them “failed states.” The countries termed as a failure scares businesses and other investors or any kind of aid. French discusses this exact scenario in his article. After decades of misrule observers had given up on Congo and its population, by 2012, of 65 million. They even argued that the country, once a possession of King Leopold II of Belgium, no longer meaningfully exists as a state and that the international community should stop pretending that it does. This is exactly
what McCarty discussed in lecture that essentially these countries are such a failed entity that there is no hope, therefore no investment from others. The recent military developments show the emptiness and that the people of the Congo have given up, because who knows whose fighting for who anymore after civil wars continually overlap each other. They also show that keeping a Band-Aid on the festering wounds of the Congo costs more, in lives, not just money, than taking resolute action. The passive, old approach involved nearly 20,000 peacekeepers who never managed to keep a lid on things, much less really keep any peace. When the M23 sacked Goma, the biggest city in the east, last year, the Congolese Army ran away and peacekeepers passively stood by. Then a new tactic began earlier this year, the United Nations brought in a tough-minded general from Brazil, Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, to lead the peacekeepers. Their consent changed to encourage engagement. Which means, the act of actually going after the “bad guys.” Meanwhile, motivated and disciplined combat units from South Africa and Tanzania were pushed to the fore. “Seeing professional troops doing the right thing day after day has had a really important effect,” Laura E. Seay, an assistant professor of government at Colby College who specializes in the Congo. “If you think of the history of the Congolese military, the opportunities for this sort of role modeling have been very rare.” So here French discusses this alternative method for a way to develop the country by starting with the basics. It is worthwhile to pursue these ideas, because clearly pumping money into it is not working, and not offering any aid at all isn’t working either.
The plan mentioned previously tackles the moral side in hopes to end and decline the murders, rapes, violence, and other inhumane occurrences. Another necessity is to help these countries develop in the ways possible, because there are reasons which Collier discusses why the development and financial aid has not played out in the past. Economically, a major consideration is geography: access to the ocean. A third of Africa’s countries are landlocked, a feature that silently imposes huge handicaps on their development. In addition to French, Collier described a number of development traps, conditions that can keep poor countries from developing which one of those traps is being landlocked. In the congo there is only a tiny outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, and would merely create more landlocked countries, making it harder to build a viable economy.
French believes the international community should build on Congo’s success in defeating the M23 militia by helping it meet the first condition of statehood: a government monopoly over the legitimate use of force.
However, building on this will require more security developments. French moves on to say that the ultimate step toward a coherent Congolese state is the provision of services and the collection of taxes. The Congo clearly does not have experience with either. The population relies in large part on foreign aid and the delivery of services by a huge patchwork of foreign charities, and this is from those that are willing to aid a “failed state.” However well intentioned, French states that this has become part of the problem. Ultimately under this system, the Congolese governments have little incentive to actually govern. In conclusion, French believes this pattern can only be broken if the West begins to demand performance from the corrupt and atrophied Congolese state itself. This will require as much discipline from investors as it does from the recipients. Capital has to be gradually moved away from yearly stipends of life support to longer-term plans for real development, with binding expectations and benchmarks. This is what French believes to be the solution. Collier argued that bad governance can impact development in poor countries with increased debt, it allows corruption to increase, it enriches the upper class, and essentially diverts resources to
conflict. So there needs to be a viable solution that includes effective governance, and also an economic standpoint that is stable for the countries potential.

Works Cited
McCarty, Philip. “Global 155.” 2013. October- December 2013. University of California Santa Barbara. Global 155 Lecture.
Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California, 2003. Print.
Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are failing and What Can Be Done about It. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
French, Howard W. "Banashing Congo 's Ghosts." The New York Times [New York] 17 Nov. 2013: n. pag. Web.
"Paul Collier: The "bottom Billion"" TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. .