Rethinking Foreign Policy
Posted on | February 25, 2009 | No Comments
The war in Iraq has cost the United States more than a trillion dollars so far by conservative estimates. Such unprecedented spending has left us economically vulnerable — and no matter how much blame we care to pass around at shady practices on Wall Street and credit lending schemes, we’ve got to be open to the possibility that among other things, our war bubble has popped. In our open embrace of the military-industrial complex, the inextricable ties between corporate America and the battle field have left us vulnerable to a pervading sense of hopelessness that couldn’t benefit the enemy more unless they had planned it themselves.
What’s more disturbing than the price tag of war are the virtues we forsake to afford it. In the so-called War on Terror, the American people are expected to believe that a forced, relentless presence in a country which does not wish to host us will set the foundation for peace.
Global military expenditure reached $1.2 trillion in 2006 (the United States is responsible for about half of that spending.) Meanwhile, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. Less than one percent of what the world spends every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000, but it didn’t happen.
This war is just a continuation of past wars, and continues on into the inevitable, fanning the flames so that they’ll singe at the heels of our children and theirs. Instead of coming closer to peace, it ensures a persistence of slaughter that only evolves as our exponentially increasing global military spending finds grander, more elaborate ways to kill each other off.
Our defense model has to be restructured if we want to competently fight the hostility and resentment that is at the root of all terror. Instead of a foreign policy which threatens to crush our enemies, we could maneuver ourselves into a position of fostering positive relationships that could potentially diffuse powder keg countries interested in our continuing aid.
Case-in-point: the approximate price of a B-2 bomber is $2 billion. If we produced just three less of these war planes per year, we could double the entire world’s contributions to basic education.
Instead of supplying their armies with weapons and training, we could supply countries vulnerable to insurgencies with increased education and the provision of basic needs. Less hungry, less thirsty, and more educated, a people might become less anxious for a fight and more inclined to diplomacy.
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