3 Voices For Foreign Aid

Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) Co-Chairs David Beckmann, George Ingram and Jim Kolbe have stated the importance that foreign development aid has for the US. These three people have very different backgrounds: Rev. David Beckmann is the president of Bread for the World, George Ingram is co-chairman of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and Jim Kolbe is a former Republican congressman from Arizona who works as a senior advisor at McLarty and associates. But they agree in how relevant foreign assistance is for the US and the whole world.

The most important thing for them is to transmit to the average American citizen true and valuable info and facts about foreign assistance. For instance, a lot of Americans still believe the US spends up to 25% of the budget on aid when it is currently less than 1%. According to these three experts, development aid is a key component of US foreign policy, together with defense and diplomacy. The modest investment in development pays huge dividends in terms of security, prosperity and global leadership.

In the security area, the numbers could not be clearer: "development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers," Secretary Robert Gates recently outlined. The outcomes in stability, governance and moderation of extremisms are much greater than the costs. For economic prosperity, development aid improves conditions in countries, allowing them to trade with the US, thus opening new business opportunities and political ties. Furthermore, aid is not just exporting dollars. Much of what is spent actually stays in the country in the form of wages of contractors or in payments for US made goods to be sent overseas. Finally, programs like vaccination campaigns that save thousands of lives or investment in agricultural development reinforce the image of the US and its global leadership to the eyes of the World.

It is also recommended that the aid has to be more effective and accountable, better measured and evaluated, and also more responsive and adapted to local initiatives and priorities. The role of private and public investors and donors has to be better shaped too. And with all these facts in hand, a honest debate can begin among the American public.

- David Nebreda

SOURCE: MFAN

Military Investment VS Foreign Aid

Although this point has been raised repeatedly here at The Borgen Project, we can’t say it enough – it is absurd that the U.S.’s military budget is more than 10 times the budget for foreign aid. New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof recently shed light on the U.S.’s overinvestment in our military:

“The U.S. spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined…we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.”

Addressing poverty is just as crucial to our national security as military/intelligence spending. Paradoxically, as Kristof points out in his column, it is often the people with expertise in military who also have the insight to warn against overinvestment in arms. President Dwight Eisenhower once said:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

President Eisenhower’s bold and wise words have been echoed by others, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has argued for more investment in diplomacy and development aid. It is time for President Obama to take heed of these words and emphasize development, rather than requesting to increase military spending (which he did this year).

-Clare O.

SOURCE: NYTimes

Military Officials Agree: Diplomacy Necessary for National Security

According to findings released last week, 90 percent of active and retired U.S. military officers surveyed agree that a strong military alone is not enough to ensure national security. 83 percent of these officers agree that humanitarian aid in the form of health care, education, and economic development are vital to national security.

75 percent of these officers said that, in their military career, they had personally seen non-military tools like diplomacy and development make their work more efficient or effective. Furthermore, a majority of officers agreed that an increase in non-military funding (funding for diplomacy and development) would help them achieve their national security objectives.

Today, U.S. outreach to developing nations ranks last among high-income countries. As of 2008, Americans spent just 0.16% of their national income on diplomacy, equivalent to $73 per American per year -- military spending, on the other hand, adds up to $1,763 per American. Visit The Borgen Project's website to learn how you can help urge Congress to correct this imbalance by funding tools of diplomacy and development, increasing stability and justice at home and abroad.

-Elizabeth Newton

SOURCE: U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, Guardian

$100 Billion, Putting the Puzzle Together

Just one week before the UN meets for an assessment of the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that 100 billion dollars will be needed over the next five years to meet the goals. In 2011, 26 billion dollars would be needed in the poorest 49 countries, with another 42 billion needed by 2015, the target date for full implementation. Despite these large figures, he is optimistic about the ability of the international community to meet its goals, set in 2000. Why would Ki-moon be so optimistic?

Let's put the 100 billion figure into perspective with another news article this week, this time from the New York Times. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has received praise and criticism in the past few years for attempts to make defense spending more efficient. He set out a goal "to save $100 billion over the next several years and use that money to continue the Pentagon's modernization programs, including the design of a new nuclear missile submarine and long-range aerial strike systems." The U.S. military has a half-trillion-dollar military budget (not counting the cost of the wars).

Despite recently admitting in a recent Foreign Policy Magazine profile that the U.S. needed to shift military spending away from big, Cold War-esque purchases, it appears that this is exactly what is happening. Why spend billions on nuclear submarines (the U.S. has over 20 already), when many people agree that this kind of weapons spending will not be useful for the security of the U.S. in the future?

In a time when U.S. National Security emphasizes the importance of development to global security, government spending does not reflect this. The $100 billion needed to achieve the MDGs in the next several years can easily come, at least in part, from planned cuts in military spending. This is not only in the interest of the U.S. but also saves and improves the lives of billions globally.

SOURCE: NY Times, AFP

-Erica Stetz

Defense Funding for Israel to Increase

According to BBC, negotiations between Obama and Congress are in the near future to decide whether or not to fund an Israeli rocket defense system.

"The system is designed to shoot down mortars and rockets from Gaza or Southern Lebanon with guided missiles."

Not only could US funding toward defense against Palestinian territories hinder the indirect peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, but also will drastically increase military funding from 2.55 billion in 2009 to 3.15 billion in 2018.

Increase in funding for Israeli military could very well decrease the likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

-Leah Kelly

SOURCE: BBC