I have an entire shelf of books dedicated to the economic development that ISN’T happening around the world. They have titles like: The Elusive Quest for Growth, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, The End of Poverty, The Mystery of Economic Growth, and The Bottom Billion. I took classes at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that further chronicled what we don’t know about how to pull people and nations out of poverty. The good news about all this is that many intelligent and caring people are spending a lot of time trying to figure this out; the bad news is we still can’t seem to get it done. As globalization makes the world increasingly interconnected, it has become apparent that our security and prosperity are directly tied to that of poor nations we once thought insignificant and beyond our vital national interest. In short, we now know that lifting dozens of nations and more than a billion people out of poverty is of practical, vital, and moral importance, but we don’t know how to get it done.
 
In defense of our ignorance and failure, it’s not an easy task. The last few decades have been filled with ideas and efforts to raise the standard of living of the poorest of the poor, and some have been moderately successful. But every good idea seems to run into obstacles. Some solutions create more problems than they alleviate, some work in a limited area but fail on a broader scale, and some are unsustainable. The World Bank has made great efforts to direct development on a large scale within struggling nations, and social entrepreneurs have had success on an individual level with tools like microfinance – and yet more than a sixth of the world’s population still lives in poverty most of us can’t even comprehend. One of the above mentioned Harvard classes, taught by Ricardo Hausmann and titled, “Why Are So Many Countries Poor, Volatile, and Unequal,” helped me understand the complexity of this issue. Dr. Hausmann discussed how the issue of development needs to be approached like the art of medicine, carefully diagnosing each nation’s ailments before prescribing a cure. The remedy may be any combination of infrastructure investment, education, institution strengthening, access to finance, or a number of other factors – but the wrong application of any may be wasted effort or even counterproductive. What makes the process even more difficult is that there are often dozens of uncoordinated, though well intentioned, agencies, governments, institutions, and organizations working independently on these problems.
 
I hope I made the point in my last post that the economic development of struggling nations is even more important than the spread of democracy. I’d like to go further in this post and claim that getting international development right should be the single most important focus of our foreign policy. Not only will a focus on development make the spread of liberal democracy and human rights more likely and reduce the threat from poor and failed states, but America taking a lead in this venture will increase our image, influence, and standing in the world. America has always demanded success in every major endeavor it has undertaken, and I believe it is time to declare international development this generation’s great endeavor. Like our 20^th century struggles against imperialism, Nazism, and Communism, we cannot fail in our 21^st century struggle for development. We can’t sit back and claim it’s not our problem or that there’s nothing we can do. September 11^th taught us that a world class military can’t be our only defense in the 21^st century. The world is too interconnected and increasingly asymmetric to ignore the billion people living on less than a dollar a day and the dozens of nations struggling to keep up with modernity. So what do we do?
 
I’m not going to claim to know more than the dozens of books and professors that still haven’t figured out the development puzzle; but I do believe America is up to the task if we simply make it a priority. It’s time to stop thinking about defense only in terms of military strength. It’s time to demand the same level of proficiency from agencies engaged in development as we demand from the military—and most importantly provide them the same level of resources. We need to enlist and deploy economists, statesman, and diplomats with the same urgency and expectation of success with which we deploy soldiers. We need the same level of international cooperation and coordination in poverty stricken nations that we expect from a NATO military campaign. I don’t believe successful foreign policy in the 21^st century will be measured by wars won and lost, but rather by the number of nations we’ve drawn into the modern economy. Clearly our current economic condition makes it impractical to embark on any new expensive projects, but I believe our nation would be more secure even if we diverted significant resources from traditional hard power (military) to build our soft power capabilities without increasing our total expenditures.
 
Just as I grew up learning about the generations of effort that secured democracy, contained communism, and spread freedom; I hope my grandchildren’s history books will teach them about the great effort in our generation that made the world more secure through economic prosperity. Let us not think that we’re not up to the task or that it’s not worthy of our effort.