Investment in Global Poverty Prevention Should be the United States Foreign Policy Priority
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736 million people live in extreme poverty worldwide and millions more are impacted by unstable regional conflict, lack of clean water, and lack of educational opportunities. Investing in global poverty solutions goes beyond aid but impacts national security and national economies worldwide. Furthermore, if the United States wants to continue to be a world power the US must continue to invest in aid and development for countries across the world and make sure global poverty prevention is a top foreign policy issue.
According to Susan E. Rice a Research Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, “a country at GDP per capita of $250 has, on average, a 15% risk of experiencing civil war within the next five years. At a GDP per capita of $5,000, the risk of civil war is less than 1%.” For the United States and other world powers, this investment in global poverty prevention furthers national security efforts by decreasing the likelihood of conflict throughout the world and in turn decreasing military spending due to conflict. As Robert Gates former Secretary of Defense states, “The way you do that is through development.
Development creates stability, it contributes to better governance. If you are able to do those things, if you are able to do it in a focused and sustainable way, then it may be unnecessary to send soldiers.” International assistance especially when it comes to poverty reduction plays a large role in national security, lessening the frequency of conflicts in unstable regions and therefore decreasing the security spending of developed nations such as the United States.
Although the United States benefits greatly from a national security standpoint our economy would also benefit from this type of aid investment. When a developing region goes from a low-income to a middle-income economy the types of goods they are using change dramatically from basic survival goods to higher-value items such as technology. This not only boosts the economy of the nation in question but also the international community and the United States who send exports to developing regions across the world. This economic growth due in part to poverty prevention policy increases the international economy and creates more jobs for regions around the world. The United States should put global poverty prevention at the forefront of foreign policy because of the huge national security, economic, and diplomatic benefits. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it best, “Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.”
