Jeremy Kinsman

July 26, 2025

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the two Live Aid concerts, one in London at Wembley Stadium and the other in Philadelphia at JFK Stadium, that mobilized an A-team of rock ‘n’ roll icons — David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Bryan Adams, Joan Baez, Neil Young, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Queen, and more — to raise funds to end a famine in Ethiopia that was first brought to global attention by CBC correspondent Brian Stewart.

Jack Nicholson, who emceed the Philadelphia show, told his mostly young audience, “This is your Woodstock…and it’s overdue.” But it was Woodstock with a compassionate cause, mass starvation in a distant country where civil war (1983-85) had killed and displaced millions. The crisis had far outstripped the capacity of the chronically underfunded humanitarian agencies to cope.

Spectators flocked hopefully to the venues in South Philly and Wembley on July 13, 1985 in the spirit of an awakened, shared generational identity, in the spirit of the lyrics of the Michael Jackson-Lionel Richie anthem We Are the World, recorded that January:

“There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying…

We are the world…
we are the children
We are the ones who make a better day
So let’s start giving…”

Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, the main orchestrator of the Live Aid events much later recalled, ”We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda and through the lingua franca of the planet — which is not English but rock ‘n’ roll — we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.” Today, the world needs a major, remedial dose of Geldof’s tonic.

Only four years later, the Berlin Wall would fall, leading to the end of the four-decade Cold War and crushing the ideology of expansionist communism.

The two concerts were watched by 1.9 billion people in 150 countries. It was an event that transcended pop culture — as attested by this summer’s 40th anniversary CNN documentary series, Live Aid: When Rock ‘n’ Roll Took on the World. The event raised a reported $127 million (in 1985 dollars), but more importantly, raised consciousness among millions of people that we could all do better, in human solidarity. Only four years later, the Berlin Wall would fall, leading to the end of the four-decade Cold War and crushing the ideology of expansionist communism. The competing US-led ideology of open markets and capital-friendly democracy seemed then poised to sweep the world and it did. For a decade or so, until enduring human realities of clash of civilizations, tribes, sects, nations, the greed of the rich, and the rise of disinformation made terror and violence once again signature features of the human condition.

Was that optimistic decade — marked also by the 1988 and 1990 Free Mandela concerts that helped liberate an anti-apartheid icon — an aberration in human conduct? Was it just a sudden swing of the pendulum to the arc’s extreme of beneficial social justice, before events and human impulses swung back toward the human norm of competition and struggle? History has never moved ahead in a straight line: steps forward alternate with steps sideways and backward. “The past is never dead,” Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.”

The harsh facts are that the world today has over 60 state-involved conflicts, the most severe of which are causing starvation and suffering on a global scale that outdoes the Ethiopian calamity of the 1980s by orders of magnitude never seen before. Is there a mobilization of public will that could address the horrid situation today?

Live Aid context and highlights video/Band Aid

In the case of the war in Gaza, 25 normally pro-Israel states plus the European Union made clear in a joint statement July 21 that Israel had crossed the line, in the spirit of a May declaration by President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Ministers Keir Starmer and Mark Carney; that the level of human suffering in Gaza is “intolerable.” Such critical language may mollify their own somewhat agitated publics. But statements of objection on grounds of international humanitarian law won’t move Benjamin Netanyahu off of his policy of all-out war, lashing out at adversarial neighbours in all directions.

Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump’s evangelical ambassador to Israel, called the statement by the democracies “disgusting”. But while polling shows US opinion is softening, Trump seems determined to revert to 19th century mores of “might makes right,” favouring entitled spheres of influence and musing about “annexing” America’s closest neighbour and democratic ally. He professes to lament the killing in Ukraine and Gaza but refuses to use US power and influence to bring it to a halt, while at home he ticks box after box from 1930s Germany as he tries to dismantle America’s democratic protections.

Trump will probably not succeed in smothering the historic grandeur of the American people’s belief in freedom, a force more powerful than his own inchoate will to dominate all that he surveys.

But the chaos he sows at home is turning American eyes and hearts from the enduring sadnesses of our world, which are now overwhelming the global capacity to cope. Aid budgets of the international donor community of nations are being slashed, partly to palliate Trump’s insistence that NATO allies lift military spending to 5% of GDP over the next 10 years. If his helter-skelter, illegal tariffs rationalized to make the US as “wealthy” as possible proceed, meeting that demand will be all-but impossible.

As political scientist Donald Savoie pointed out on July 22 in the Globe and Mail, Mark Carney’s order to his ministers to cut budgets by 15% over three years will hardly begin to cover costs of additional military spending that will soar into hundreds of billions, requiring new taxes on Canadians. European allies went along with the slogan commitment of 5% by 2035 to give Trump “a win,” because it’s the kind of time frame that can be swallowed, even though they and Canada will also have to pay for the defence and ultimately some of the reconstruction of Ukraine, from which the isolationist Trump administration and its MAGA nativist base have coldly defected.

Trump will probably not succeed in smothering the historic grandeur of the American people’s belief in freedom, a force more powerful than his own inchoate will to dominate all that he surveys.

Europeans do assess that Russia is likely to be a long-term threat, requiring solid investment in defence, but slashing humanitarian assistance and development support is also a matter of real security. The Wellcome International Trust sums up the likely effect: “International aid cuts by rich nations threaten to be deadlier than the Covid-19 pandemic” in poorer regions of the world. Slashed international financing for vaccines, anti-HIV medication, and other health campaigns, will cause millions of deaths.

Prof. Jennifer Welsh, director of McGill University’s Max Bell School on Public Policy and eminent Canadian expert on international governance, says “something cognitive has happened” to western donor sensitivities to the misery of others. Outrage over Gaza seems the exception, not the rule.

Consider how public support of programs to counter climate change has suddenly waned amid the fierce economic urgencies of now. Recent decades of political polarization, depletion of trust, the stress of reduced economic expectations, the day-to-day struggles of non-wealthy majorities, and the impact of mass migration (that will only now increase) are all factors.

Right-wing nativist political groupings depict the poor of the world — from what Trump termed “shithole” countries — as “losers,” destined to “suffer as they must” as the strong impose their will in non-enlightened self-interest, making altruistic citizens feel helpless.

Church groups, international NGOs, and advocates of conscience continue to argue for better, but too many people everywhere defer instead to fear they won’t make ends meet, or of crime stalking their lands. Corruption and deceit do stalk, but most vividly from states, via truth-destroyers like Trump, Orban, Putin, and Netanyahu. Publics keep their heads down.

The international protective and remedial system in which Canada has believed for three quarters of a century is collapsing. Vital relief programs like the World Food Program or the UNHCR or the WHO that have lost US backing can’t cope with the global emergency affecting hundreds of millions.

Where is the remedy? We could start by to reviving the lost spirit and solidarity of Live Aid.

Leadership counts. We need strong leaders who will speak truth to publics rather than pander to a wayward, bullying, and chaotic US President. But to save the world, they need to lift the confidence of their publics that it is doable and that it matters to them. They need to answer Pierre Trudeau’s timeless query, “Who is my neighbour?” by looking to the human condition, and not just playing against the bully next door.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He also served as minister at the Canadian embassy in Washington. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.