Change We (and others) Can Believe In: A Different Sort of Endorsement

Below is an excerpt from Columbia Professor Jeffery Sachs' book, The End of Poverty, which I found particularly relevant given the upcoming election and ongoing financial crisis.

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Will the rich world act to help save the poor? The cynics say no. Why should we? Poverty is not our problem; it is theirs. What can the poor do to us, or for us? When has any country done anything out of altruism for others? How can we fight poverty when we have to fight terrorism? How can politicians ask the public to give more for Africa when the public is already feeling squeezed economically? These are questions I hear daily.
They are also particularly American questions these days. Many Americans do not see economic assistance as having much to do with their national security. For that they have put their faith in the military.
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The American investment decision to back military rather than other approaches to international relations reflects several mistaken ideas. The first is that we are already doing all that we can do to help the poor. Public opinion research conducted over the past decade illustrates, time and again, that the American public greatly overestimates the amount of federal funds spent on foreign aid. In a 2001 survey, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland reported that Americans, on average, believed that foreign aid accounts for 20 percent of the federal budget, roughly twenty-four times the actual figure. PIPA found essentially the same result in surveys in the mid-1990s.
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The second fallacy is a widespread view that the U.S. military can achieve security for Americans even in the absence of a stable world. It is the same mistake that led Americans to believe that the United States would be greeted as liberators in Baghdad, that the capture of Saddam Hussein would stop the Iraqi violence, or that one more assault against al Qaeda will end the terror. Whether terrorists are rich or poor or middle class, their staging areas—their bases of operation—are unstable societies beset by poverty, unemployment, rapid population growth, hunger, and lack of hope. Without addressing the root causes of that instability, little will be accomplished in stanching terror.
The third fallacy is the “clash of civilizations,” the belief that the world is entering a war of cultures. For many in America this is a literal war, the war of Armageddon. Millions of Americans, though just how many is unclear, believe that we are approaching the “end days” of biblical prophecy. This millennial belief has returned in waves in American history, but never before with the United States as a nuclear and global superpower. It is terrifying for those of us who would rather use rationality than scriptural prophecy to determine U.S. foreign policy.
Hard evidence has established strong linkages between extreme poverty abroad and the threats to national security. Poverty abroad can indeed hurt us at home, and has repeatedly done so. To answer the earlier question, yes, countries do occasionally act altruistically, helping other countries to address their basic economic and social challenges. Indeed, they have done so for generations, as with the magnificent U.S. Marshall Plan. Foreign policy strategists have long recognized that acts of altruism—ending the slave trade, supporting countries in their independence from empire, extending assistance for reconstruction and development, providing humanitarian relief after natural disasters—are also acts of enlightened self-interest. That self-interest does not diminish such generous acts. Moral precepts, after all, are riles of behavior that establish a basis for cooperation and reciprocity on which civilization depends.
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The ideas that failed states threaten U.S. and European national security and that support for economic development is also support for national security are not wild-eyed left-wing propositions. They have become standard fare of strategic analysis. The problem lies not with the concept of linking poverty and national security, but with the follow-through. U.S. development policy in recent decades—in both Democratic and Republican administrations—can be measured more in sound bites than in assistance that is truly scaled to the size of the challenge.
Here is an example of the disconnect between foreign policy rhetoric and foreign police follow-through. In a speech to the Inter-American Development Bank on the eve of the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, President Bush said:

"Poverty doesn’t cause terrorism. Being poor doesn’t make you a murderer. Most of the plotters of September 11th were raised in comfort. Yet persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens for terror.
In Afghanistan, persistent poverty and war and chaos created conditions that allowed a terrorist regime to seize power. And in many other states around the world, poverty prevents governments from controlling their borders, policing their territory, and enforcing their laws. Development provides the resources to build hope and prosperity, and security…
Successful development also requires citizens who are literate, who are healthy, and prepared and able to do work. Development assistance can help poor nations meet these education and health care needs."

So far so good. Then, the president introduced a new aid program, the Millennium Challenge Account, that would increase U.S. annual aid by $5 billion per year:

"America supports the international development goals in the UN Millennium Declaration, and believes that these goals are a shared responsibility of developed and developing countries. To make progress, we must encourage nations and leaders to walk the hard road of political, legal, and economic reform, so all their people can benefit.
Today, I call for a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developed nations. The Unites States will lead by example. We will increase our development assistance by $5 billion over the next three budget cycles. This new money is above and beyond existing aid requests—is above and beyond existing aid requests in the current budget I submitted to Congress."

The problem is the complete disconnect between the extent of the initiative--$5 billion more per year by the third year—and the needs of the poor countries (on the order of $100 billion more per year between 2006-2015 to meet the Millennium Development Goals) and with the commitment of the United States to make “concrete efforts” to target 0.7 percent of GNP. The $5 billion represents less than 0.05 percent of U.S. GNP.
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The failure of the United States to follow up on the Monterrey Consensus has no direct political fallout in the United States, of course, because not one in a million U.S. citizens even knows of the statement. But we should not underestimate the salience that it has abroad, where the terms of the Monterrey Consensus are a matter of life and death not only for other governments but also for their populations. Spin as we might in the United States about our generosity, the poor countries are fully aware of what we are not doing.
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My hope is that America's political leaders and citizens make a critical choice not to lose sight of the importance of solving a crisis that has existed for much longer and is much cheaper to solve than our current financial one.

I believe Americans will make this choice on Nov. 4th whether they know it or not.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been at the forefront of the U.S. Senate's effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Obama introduced a bill, now known as the Global Poverty Act, late last year requiring that the President follow through on a strategy to meet these goals, namely that of reducing by half the number of people who live on less than $1 per day by 2015. Through the Foreign Relations Committee, Biden got this bill on to the Senate's calendar, where it sits to this day. By electing Obama/Biden, Americans will be indirectly ensuring that the single biggest factor in world-wide poverty reduction, U.S. foreign aid, will be given a much needed boost in the right direction. I expect Obama and Biden, equipped with a much higher degree of political power, will do all they can to follow through on their previous efforts as Senators.

Click here to read the December 2007 press release from Obama's Senate Office regarding the proposed Global Poverty Act.

Click here to read the full text of the Global Poverty Act - put forth by Biden in April of this year.

OBAMA '08!