JOHN MCCAIN
expanding the empire
John McCain has is a rare breed-- a relatively honest politician. Throughout his senatorial career, he's supported unpopular initiatives, most recently immigration campaign finance reforms, despite knowing full well that doing so wouldn't benefit him politically. In short, the man's got convictions. My foremost contention with Bush and his policies is that too often they're designed for his own political benefit, and curiously favorable to special interests. If nothing else, McCain has demonstrated a willingness to do what he genuinely believes to be in the best interest of the country, politics and lobbyists be damned.
But his foreign policy scares the figurative bajeezes out of me. To be sure, it's not that I do not value security, and I am hardly anti-military. My father earned the rank of LT-03 in Vietnam, and both of my grandfathers served in WWII. But there is an easier and more cost-effective way of achieving safety and peace. In FY 2007, our country spent $471 billion defense (over $1500 per capita), greater than the combined federal outlays dedicated to education, employment training, social services, environmental protection, transportation, international affairs, and administration of justice. All of this to support what has basically become a military empire. We currently hold 702 foreign bases in 130 different countries.
The effectiveness of these policies is certainly open for debate. It is certainly plausible that 50+ years of military expansion and interventionism has left us with more enemies, not fewer. Either way, we should consider, if nothing else, whether or not more cost-effective approaches exist. According to a CIA report, nearly all instances of U.S. military deployment over the last hundred years occurred in direct response to what the CIA termed "state failure." To highlight a few obvious examples, the economic instability of post-WWI Germany gave rise to Hitler, the Bolshevik response to poverty in Russia created Leninism, ditto with Castro's rise to power in Cuba and Ho Chih Min in Indochina. Even limiting our focus to 1960 onward, 25 separate U.S. military campaigns were launched within five years of economic collapse.
If we shifted a fraction of current defense spending to promoting international economic and political stability, we could reduce the number of potential foreign enemies at a much lower cost. Economic development thwarts terrorism because increased wealth raises the opportunity cost of committing an act of terrorism or harboring a terrorist. If you are poor, illiterate, and living in a country with a life expectancy under 50, you don't sacrifice much by becoming a terrorist. Simply looking at a map reveals that the countries with the highest rates of terrorism are overwhelming poor. Even if the Giuliani school of thought is correct-- that terrorism arises out of resentment towards Western wealth and freedom-- it would seem to lend itself to a solution that better promoted wealth and freedom.
Jeffrey Sachs, a macroeconomist who serves as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia and Special Adviser to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, estimated that ending extreme poverty worldwide would cost $135 billion per year until 2025. That seems like a lot, but the U.S. currently spends almost 30 times more on defense than it does on Official Development Assistance. If the cost is split among the 22 nations which comprise the Development Assistance Committee, $135 billion amounts to less than 0.6% of GNP, or just six cents out of every ten dollars. It would cover the cost of universal primary education, access to safe drinking water, basic infrastructure like paved roads and electricity grids, and distribution of medical treatments to subdue the AIDS and malaria pandemics.
This would not be global welfare. It would be an investment into the safety and to the well-being of the 1.1 billion people currently living in poverty. And it's worked before. In the decades following WWII, the U.S. had two starkly different approaches to combating Communism. One was foreign aid, embodied by the Marshall Plan, the other was military invention, embodied in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Bay of Pigs. The Marshall Plan succeeded in preventing Communism in every single country receiving aid. Conversely, military intervention utterly failed to prevent Communist rule in Korea, Vietnam, or Cuba. Those three campaigns cost nearly $500 billion dollars and 91,000 American lives. The Marshall Plan? $13 billion, 0 American fatalities.
John McCain (and most Republicans) are married to our current foreign policy, which is imperialistic, heavy-handed, ineffective, and astonishingly expensive. If he wants to preserve this nation's future prosperity, and I wholeheartedly believe that he does, he should shift his perspective and consider using other means. Simply put, beating the world into submission is not working.
expanding the empire
John McCain has is a rare breed-- a relatively honest politician. Throughout his senatorial career, he's supported unpopular initiatives, most recently immigration campaign finance reforms, despite knowing full well that doing so wouldn't benefit him politically. In short, the man's got convictions. My foremost contention with Bush and his policies is that too often they're designed for his own political benefit, and curiously favorable to special interests. If nothing else, McCain has demonstrated a willingness to do what he genuinely believes to be in the best interest of the country, politics and lobbyists be damned.
But his foreign policy scares the figurative bajeezes out of me. To be sure, it's not that I do not value security, and I am hardly anti-military. My father earned the rank of LT-03 in Vietnam, and both of my grandfathers served in WWII. But there is an easier and more cost-effective way of achieving safety and peace. In FY 2007, our country spent $471 billion defense (over $1500 per capita), greater than the combined federal outlays dedicated to education, employment training, social services, environmental protection, transportation, international affairs, and administration of justice. All of this to support what has basically become a military empire. We currently hold 702 foreign bases in 130 different countries.
The effectiveness of these policies is certainly open for debate. It is certainly plausible that 50+ years of military expansion and interventionism has left us with more enemies, not fewer. Either way, we should consider, if nothing else, whether or not more cost-effective approaches exist. According to a CIA report, nearly all instances of U.S. military deployment over the last hundred years occurred in direct response to what the CIA termed "state failure." To highlight a few obvious examples, the economic instability of post-WWI Germany gave rise to Hitler, the Bolshevik response to poverty in Russia created Leninism, ditto with Castro's rise to power in Cuba and Ho Chih Min in Indochina. Even limiting our focus to 1960 onward, 25 separate U.S. military campaigns were launched within five years of economic collapse.
If we shifted a fraction of current defense spending to promoting international economic and political stability, we could reduce the number of potential foreign enemies at a much lower cost. Economic development thwarts terrorism because increased wealth raises the opportunity cost of committing an act of terrorism or harboring a terrorist. If you are poor, illiterate, and living in a country with a life expectancy under 50, you don't sacrifice much by becoming a terrorist. Simply looking at a map reveals that the countries with the highest rates of terrorism are overwhelming poor. Even if the Giuliani school of thought is correct-- that terrorism arises out of resentment towards Western wealth and freedom-- it would seem to lend itself to a solution that better promoted wealth and freedom.
Jeffrey Sachs, a macroeconomist who serves as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia and Special Adviser to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, estimated that ending extreme poverty worldwide would cost $135 billion per year until 2025. That seems like a lot, but the U.S. currently spends almost 30 times more on defense than it does on Official Development Assistance. If the cost is split among the 22 nations which comprise the Development Assistance Committee, $135 billion amounts to less than 0.6% of GNP, or just six cents out of every ten dollars. It would cover the cost of universal primary education, access to safe drinking water, basic infrastructure like paved roads and electricity grids, and distribution of medical treatments to subdue the AIDS and malaria pandemics.
This would not be global welfare. It would be an investment into the safety and to the well-being of the 1.1 billion people currently living in poverty. And it's worked before. In the decades following WWII, the U.S. had two starkly different approaches to combating Communism. One was foreign aid, embodied by the Marshall Plan, the other was military invention, embodied in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Bay of Pigs. The Marshall Plan succeeded in preventing Communism in every single country receiving aid. Conversely, military intervention utterly failed to prevent Communist rule in Korea, Vietnam, or Cuba. Those three campaigns cost nearly $500 billion dollars and 91,000 American lives. The Marshall Plan? $13 billion, 0 American fatalities.
John McCain (and most Republicans) are married to our current foreign policy, which is imperialistic, heavy-handed, ineffective, and astonishingly expensive. If he wants to preserve this nation's future prosperity, and I wholeheartedly believe that he does, he should shift his perspective and consider using other means. Simply put, beating the world into submission is not working.
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