National Security Also Depends on International Development

For those who read last week’s entry, Dirt Work, I have an update: Kristen Glenn called me last Friday and we talked for 15-20 minutes about RepresentativeTom McClintock supporting the Education For All Act of 2011. I sent Kristen an e-mail on Thursday night to warn her that I’d written about her. Alas, she had not read my blog entry, so I gave her my views on how national security was based on three Ds: Defense, Diplomacy, and international Development.

Kristen thought her boss, Rep. McClintock, would agree that defense was part of national security and that diplomacy was also important, but she didn’t think he would agree that development, i.e.,  foreign aid, was important. In fact, she expressed that Rep. McClintock believed it wasn’t the role of the federal government to use taxpayer resources to develop the domestic programs of other nations. From prior conversations with her, I understood that her boss believes that helping other countries handle their impoverished citizens was the role of non-profit groups like churches, aid organizations, and business. Kristen went on to say that in today’s fiscal climate of deep government debt, there just wasn’t enough money to support all the programs.

During the call, I thanked her for her honesty and for expressing her boss’s views.  I mulled over what she had said for a couple days. On Sunday evening–the evening of September 11–I send her an e-mail. There’s a couple paragraphs from that e-mail I want to share with my readers:

As I write this, it’s the evening of 9/11. I woke up this morning thinking about that day 10 years ago and about the need to write you this e-mail and about an exchange I had with a coworker 10 years ago. At the time I was working at Providian Financial in downtown Oakland. In the week or so after the attacks, it became known that the attacks were launched by al-Qaeda in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. I was talking with one coworker and we jokingly agreed that we should nuke Afghanistan unless they stopped sheltering al-Qaeda. Another co-worker heard us and said that she was proud of what al-Qaeda had done in her country. I was confused and asked her what they’d done that deserved her support. She told me that al-Qaeda had built schools in Afghanistan after the Soviets left and that al-Qaeda helped those in poverty survive. Because of their helping the poor in her country, my co-worker was unwilling to condemn al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks.

Another reason is one of the letters I gave you last June we we met in DC. The letter was cowritten by retired General Michael W. Hagee (Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps from 2003-2006) and retired Admiral James Loy (Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard from 1998-2002). In that letter they wrote:

When we entered the military, the world was a very different place. The threats and the world we faced were defined by the Cold War and the prospect of military conflict between nations. Today’s interconnected world knows no borders, and the United States must use all of its tools of national power and influence to foster political and economic stability, strengthen our allies, and fight complex threats such as the spread of disease, poverty, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Development and diplomacy keep us safer by addressing threats in the most dangerous corners of the world and by preventing conflicts before they occur. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian-led programs are especially critical at a time when we are asking them to take on greater responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Addressing today’s challenges with civilian tools costs far less than it does to send in the military in dollars and, more importantly, in terms of the risks to the lives of our men and women in uniform. At just over one percent of federal spending, the International Affairs Budget is a strong return on our investment.

Now I don’t know how many Afghani women Rep. McClintock has talked to or how many U.S. military flag officers he has talked to, but based on his background I wouldn’t guess many. According to his website biography, he got elected to the California Assembly in 1982 at age 26. Except for a four year stint between 1992 and 1996  in which he directed a couple conservative public policy organizations, he stayed in the state legislature until 2008. At that time he was elected to the House of Representatives and has served there since. While in the House he has served on the Education and Labor, Natural Resources, and Budget committees.

So in the areas of tax policy and natural resources, I would consider Rep. McClintock an expert. In the area of national security–not so much. I hope by providing more information in support of international development, especially from generally conservative points of view (like military flag officers), I can  show Rep. McClintock that investing in development is important to the security of the United States.