Should Global Poverty Be Considered a U.S. National Security Issue?
Commentaries by Vincent Ferraro, Carol Lancaster, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Jeffrey D. Sachs, John Sewell

August 08, 2003

The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) was a watershed document in a number of ways—-including its assertion that addressing global poverty is important to U.S. national security.

For example, the NSS Introduction by President George W. Bush stated that, while poverty does not directly lead to terrorism,“poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.” The NSS went on to highlight the importance of African development for U.S. security as well as to argue that, while freedom “has been tested by widespread poverty and disease…humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s triumph over…these foes,” and that “[t]he United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.”

In addition, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a separate July 2002 article that “sustainable development is a security imperative. Poverty, destruction of the environment and despair are destroyers of people, of societies, of nations, a cause of instability as an unholy trinity that can destabilize countries and destabilize entire regions.” Yet at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United States delegation made little mention of either terrorism or how addressing poverty and its attendant issues might fit into an overall security strategy. The Bush Administration has also been accused in many quarters of underfunding both its own Millennium Challenge Account initiative as well as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis.

Given these policy tensions, ECSP invited analysts to address whether global poverty should and can be a U.S. national security issue. Is poverty alleviation crucial to national and global security—and if so, which policies should be highlighted? Or would “securitizing” such efforts weaken both the drive against poverty and the drive for security? And can poverty be linked to anti-terrorism efforts?

The commentaries below provide an excellent and overdue entrée into these debates.

Commentaries
Globalizing Weakness: Is Global Poverty a Threat to the Interests of States?

Vincent Ferraro is the Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where he has taught courses on world politics, international political economy, and American foreign policy since 1976. He has written on issues of global poverty, the debt crisis, and the international trading system.
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Poverty, Terrorism, and National Security

Carol Lancaster is a professor in the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Her public service has included positions as Deputy Administrator of USAID, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa. She is the author of Aid to Africa: So Little Done, So Much to Do (University of Chicago) and Transforming Foreign Aid: U.S. Assistance in the 21st Century (Institute for International Economics). She is currently writing a book entitled Fifty Years of Foreign Aid: Policies, Purposes, Results.
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Eradicating Poverty and Hunger as a National Security Issue for the United States

Per Pinstrup-Andersen is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at the Division of Nutrition, Cornell University. He is also professor of Development Economics, The Royal Vetr. and Agr. University, Copenhagen as well as a Distinguished Professor, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Pinstrup-Andersen was also the 2001 World Food Prize Laureate and past director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
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The Strategic Significance of Global Inequality

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University as well as a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on a group of poverty reduction initiatives called the Millennium Development Goals.
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The Realpolitik of Poverty

John Sewell is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is a former president of the Overseas Development Council.
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