Full Bellies or Full Bombers: Reevaluating Our Commitment to Global Wellbeing
By Benjamin Hand
At the present, both the United States and the larger industrialized world find themselves in unstable financial times. In many parts of our country, the unemployment rate has climbed above ten percent, and many family’s individual budgets have never been so bleak. However, these concerns overshadow the larger danger of our global financial crises. What should really concern us is the sheer number of people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition around the world every single day, and how little we continue to do about it. The Borgen Project, a United States based global poverty organization, estimates that 25,000 people die every day across the world just from hunger. (Malnutrition and hunger are different statistics. Malnutrition deals with overall health, and hunger means that the body is not consuming enough food to survive.) 10.9 million children under the age of 5 die each year from malnutrition. Borgen also reports that as many as 684,000 of those children under the age of 5 could have been saved with proper access to Vitamin A and Zinc.
It does not take sophisticated moral pondering to come to the conclusion that people around the world are suffering and something should be done about it. But is it not a Herculean task? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it has so far been too difficult for anyone to accomplish. And no, because it is clearly within our means to accomplish. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that eliminating global hunger and malnutrition around the world would take $30 billion a year. Sound like a lot of money? Well again, it is and it isn’t. To put $30 billion a year in perspective, let me compare it to other costs. For instance, the United State’s Department of Defense budget for the fiscal year 2009 was $541 billion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were allocated $170 billion. (The 2009 budget designed under President Bush had yet to include the wars in the Middle East in the actual federal defense budget, something that will now be done under the current administration). So all together, the United States will spend at least $711 billion this year simply on national defense. That is to say, we currently spend almost 24 times the cost of feeding everyone in the world on national defense.
I compare the costs between these two budgets because they are undeniably linked. Studies have shown time and time again that poverty is tied with the spread of radical ideologies and terrorism. Both the 9/11 Commission Report and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have called for an increase in poverty aid for exactly that reason. It’s far easier to recruit potential terrorist or pirates when their children are dying at an unfathomable rate from starvation. The world would be a much safer place if everyone had enough to eat. But what is currently being done? Well, for a comparison in priorities, it currently costs the United States $4.4 billion to build two B-2 bombers for our Air Force. The entire annual budget for the World Food Program, the worlds’ largest aid program that serves 104 million people in 81 countries, is only $3.2 billion. I can’t help but think that 104 million fewer starving people in the world might make us more safe then two B-2 bombers.
It is often argued that this vision of a progressive future is misguided in its design and philosophy. Critics point to past failures of international aid programs and foreign intervention. And it would be wrong to brush these concerns aside as baseless or meaningless. There are indeed legitimate criticisms to be made of the efficiency of different types of foreign aid and international intervention. But these worries should be taken as helpful guidelines for directing foreign aid, and not a reason to avoid action. All too often critics use the difficulty of aid as an excuse to do nothing and turn a blind eye to suffering and inequality in others parts of the world. It would be a mistake to fall victim to such arguments. We should instead reaffirm our commitment to providing aid for those suffering all across the globe, and at the same time commit to doing so responsibly and with care. But something should be done, and we have more then the means to do it.