Jeffrey Sachs: A Better Strategy for Afghanistan

Description

We will spend around $100 billion in 2010 on the military approach compared with just $2 billion or so on economic development in Afghanistan, a 50-to-1 ratio. If we raised the development budget to even $10 billion, and deployed it thoughtfully and consistently, the benefits for the Afghan people would be so strong that we could avoid the surge altogether, save $40 billion, and could quickly reduce the current level of military spending, saving even more money and lives, Afghan and American. Our existing troops would be more than sufficient to protect the development activities because the communities themselves would also strongly defend themselves and their economic gains. Indeed, with stronger and reinvigorated local communities, we could quickly and safely turn security efforts over to the Afghan people themselves.

So why do we ignore this more peaceful and less expensive path? Our country has relied so heavily on the military for so long - and despite so many failures by now -- that the public has completely lost the confidence, spirit, programs, memory and even human interest of fighting poverty as a strategy of consolidating stability and national security. The war industry, a mega-business out of all proportion to the miniscule "peace industry" composed mainly of NGOs, completely dominates the lobbying scene. The public opposes "wasting" a few billion dollars to help impoverished people, yet then supports wasting tens of billions of dollars on a military approach destined to fail.

Original URL

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/obamas-nobel-lecture-and_b_390820.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/obamas-nobel-lecture-and_b_390820.html