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The goal of U.S. defense policy in the post-September 11th world should be to maximize the security of U.S. citizens against acts of violence by terrorists. Thus far, U.S. efforts to achieve this goal seem to have been focused solely on military solutions to seek out and destroy terrorist organizations and the foreign governments that harbor these criminals. A lasting security, however, requires that the United States go deeper than simply eliminating the current crop of thugs to find the reasons why the United States is looked upon with such great animosity by so many people in the world. In large part, the hatred towards the U.S. stems from our great riches in the face of world where over a billion people live in near absolute poverty. The grim living conditions of the poorest countries in the world, such as Afghanistan or Yemen, make for fertile recruiting grounds for charismatic terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden. One positive step towards security that the United States should take in the wake of the September 11th tragedy is to commit our country to help alleviate poverty in the developing world as our efforts to date have been sorely lacking. Among the 21 countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranks dead last in the amount spent on foreign aid as a percent of national income and 20th out of 21 in the amount of aid per person. Total official development assistance given by the U.S. totals only than 0.1% of GDP, less than one-third of the average of the other 20 DAC member countries. While most Americans believe that foreign aid is a huge component of the federal budget, the amount of foreign aid given by the U.S. in 1998 was only $8.8 billion dollars, or about 0.3% of the federal budget. This figure amounts to about $29 per person. By contrast, Japan, Australia and the European Union average donations of about $77 per person despite having lower average incomes than Americans. Even the small amounts of aid given by the U.S. tend not to go to the most needy countries. Nearly a third of all U.S. aids goes to just two countries, Israel and Egypt, with only 15% of total aid flowing to places classified by the United Nations as the world's least developed countries. This percentage ranks the United States as tied for next to last among DAC countries. Bringing the United States' official development assistance spending up to the average levels of other DAC member states would require additional expenditures of about $20 billion per year, half of what Congress has pledged to President Bush last week to prosecute the war against terrorism and less than 7% of what the U.S. spends annually on the military. Security can be achieved through good-will as well as military might. Sharing the great wealth of the United States with the world's poor may serve to promote American security more than any amount of defense spending ever could.
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