[NYTr] Jeffrey Sachs: Amerika's Failed Foreign Policy

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Daily Times (Pakistan) - Nov 27, 2007
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C11%5C26%5Cstory_26-11-2007_pg3_5

Op-Ed:

America’s failed foreign policy

A more peaceful world will be possible only when Americans and others
begin to see things through the eyes of their supposed enemies, and
realise that today’s conflicts, having resulted from desperation and
despair, can be solved through economic development rather than war

by Jeffrey D Sachs

Many of today’s war zones — including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran,
Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan — share basic problems that lie at
the root of their conflicts. They are all poor, buffeted by natural
disasters — especially floods, droughts, and earthquakes — and have
rapidly growing populations that are pressing on the capacity of the
land to feed them. And the proportion of youth is very high, with a
bulging population of young men of military age (15-24 years).

All of these problems can be solved only through long-term sustainable
economic development. Yet the United States persists in responding to
symptoms rather than to underlying conditions by trying to address
every conflict by military means. It backs the Ethiopian army in
Somalia. It occupies Iraq and Afghanistan. It threatens to bomb Iran.
It supports the military dictatorship in Pakistan.

None of these military actions addresses the problems that led to
conflict in the first place. On the contrary, American policies
typically inflame the situation rather than solve it.

Time and again, this military approach comes back to haunt the US. The
US embraced the Shah of Iran by sending massive armaments, which fell
into the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Government after 1979. The US
then backed Saddam Hussein in his attack on Iran, until the US ended up
attacking Saddam himself. The US backed Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan
against the Soviets, until the US ended up fighting bin Laden. Since
2001 the US has supported Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan with more than
$10 billion in aid, and now faces an unstable regime that just barely
survives.

US foreign policy is so ineffective because it has been taken over by
the military. Even postwar reconstruction in Iraq under the US-led
occupation was run by the Pentagon rather than by civilian agencies.
The US military budget dominates everything about foreign policy.
Adding up the budgets of the Pentagon, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,
the Department of Homeland Security, nuclear weapons programs, and the
State Department’s military assistance operations, the US will spend
around $800 billion this year on security, compared with less than $20
billion for economic development.

In a stunning article on aid to Pakistan during the Bush
administration, Craig Cohen and Derek Chollet demonstrated the
disastrous nature of this militarised approach — even before the
tottering Musharraf regime’s latest crackdown. They show that even
though Pakistan faces huge problems of poverty, population, and
environment, 75 percent of the $10 billion in US aid has gone to the
Pakistani military, ostensibly to reimburse Pakistan for its
contribution to the “war on terror,” and to help it buy F-16s and other
weapons systems.

Another 16 percent went straight to the Pakistani budget, no questions
asked. That left less than 10 percent for development and humanitarian
assistance. Annual US aid for education in Pakistan has amounted to
just $64 million, or $1.16 per school-aged child.

The authors note that “the strategic direction for Pakistan was set
early by a narrow circle at the top of the Bush administration and has
been largely focused on the war effort rather than on Pakistan’s
internal situation.” They also emphasise that “US engagement with
Pakistan is highly militarised and centralised, with very little
reaching the vast majority of Pakistanis.” They quote George Bush as
saying, “When [Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says...there won’t be
a Taliban and won’t be al-Qaeda, I believe him, you know?”

This militarised approach is leading the world into a downward spiral
of violence and conflict. Each new US weapons system “sold” or given to
the region increases the chances of expanded war and further military
coups, and to the chance that the arms will be turned on the US itself.
None of it helps to address the underlying problems of poverty, child
mortality, water scarcity, and lack of livelihoods in places like
Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, Sudan’s Darfur region, or
Somalia. These places are bulging with people facing a tightening
squeeze of insufficient rainfall and degraded pasturelands. Naturally,
many join radical causes.

The Bush administration fails to recognise these fundamental
demographic and environmental challenges, that $800 billion of security
spending won’t bring irrigation to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and
Somalia, and therefore won’t bring peace. Instead of seeing real people
in crisis, they see caricatures, a terrorist around every corner.

A more peaceful world will be possible only when Americans and others
begin to see things through the eyes of their supposed enemies, and
realise that today’s conflicts, having resulted from desperation and
despair, can be solved through economic development rather than war. We
will have peace when we heed the words of President John F. Kennedy,
who said, a few months before his death, “For, in the final analysis,
our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We
all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we
are all mortal.” —DTPS

Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia University