West Virginia University students got a taste of a strange case of international foreign aid gone wrong last night.
Janine Wedel gave a lecture on Western aid to Eastern Europe in the Lugar Courtroom in the West Virginia University Law Center.
Wedel, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of  Pittsburgh, spoke for more than an hour about what she calls mistakes made by the United States in giving aid to Eastern Europe, particularly the former Soviet Union.
“In Russia, U.S. aid has contributed to the economic decline,” Wedel said. “The standard of living has dropped since 1989 and over one-third of the population is living in poverty.”
Wedel, who holds a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying aid efforts in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989, and has been following aid in Russia and Ukraine since 1992. Her analyses of aid issues have been published by the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Atlantic Council, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal Europe, the Nation and other publications.
Wedel contributes the failure of U.S. aid to the former Soviet Union to the United States using “political aid disguised as economic aid.”
“The main purpose of aid to Russia was to foster the friendship between the United States and their former arch rival,” said Wedel. “The U.S. chose Harvard University’s Institute for International Development, a private entity, under cover of economic aid to delegate foreign policy in a crucial area, involving complicated and controversial choices.
“Harvard in turn chose to deal with the Chubais Clan (the primary Russian brokers with Western countries) and they directly and indirectly gave millions of dollars in U.S. aid through a variety of institutions and organizations set up to perform privatization, develop capital markets, form a Russian security and exchange commission and related activities,” said Wedel.
The main problem with this, Wedel said, was that the Russians never received any of the money. The Chubais Clan disappeared with the money and now the Russians are left to pay back the money to the United States, she said. Wedel stated that several off-shore banks are being investigated for the laundering of the money, including the Bank of New York City. The Harvard University’s Institute for International Development is also being investigated.
The main points of Wedel’s lecture can be found in her most recent book, “Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998.”
Robert Blobaum, a WVU professor of history, stated in his introduction for Wedel, “her book has become one of the most discussed books in Washington.”
Wedel currently serves as a consultant to the World Bank on the social organization of state and markets and has also worked as a consultant for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.