Consider the country of Malawi. This landlocked African nation has the dubious distinction of being one of the poorest of the poor countries on this earth. Malawi has recently suffered through the perfect storm of maladies: drought, floods, crop failures, famine, malaria, and AIDS. This is a predominately Christian country, 55% Protestant, and 20% Catholic. The average life expectancy in Malawi is 37.8 years. The average person in Malawi lives on $210 A YEAR. The infant mortality rate is one in ten. AIDS has absolutely ravaged this already destitute country. Despite experiencing these crises, Malawi is expected to pay $66 million a year, mainly to wealthy countries and the IMF, to service their debt. There was an economics guru on the radio who was talking about world poverty. He was speaking about the 'ladder' a country needs to get on to start escaping poverty. He mentioned Bangladesh as a good example of a country that has placed itself on the first rung of the ladder. He said Malawi is not even near the ladder.
          Maybe what we ought to be more concerned about when we talk about "moral values" as American Christians is the extreme and dire situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, we crucify Bill Clinton over his sophomoric sexual behavior, or go apoplectic over Fred and Fred tying the knot. In any event, we failed to recognize Clinton's bigger moral crime: building over twenty B2 bombers at a cost of $1.2 billion apiece! One point two BILLION dollars PER PLANE. Now these planes, nice as they must be, can only do a little bit better the job our other ridiculously expensive planes that we have hundreds of can already do. The thinking here, I believe, is that since we usually sell last year's super-duper hi-tech killing machines to countries who might be next year's enemies, we have to keep building killing machines that are one chapter ahead in the technology manual. This has led to the un-peaceful fact that the United States is by far the largest arms dealer on the planet.
          For the cost of two of these B2 bombers, we could supply every man, woman and child in Malawi with a year's worth of income.
What about the next year, and the year after that?
          That's a valid question. What Malawi really needs is an education. They need a generation of engineers, scientists, computer programmers, and civil servants to help build an infrastructure to begin to dig themselves out of this deep, deep hole. They need tractors and modern farm equipment, doctors and teachers. For the price of one B2 bomber, we could send 500,000 Malawi students to almost any university in the world for one year, or 125,000 students for four years. This is what I don't understand. Wouldn't the world be more inclined to follow our leading/like us/stop blowing up our buildings if we sent 125,000 Malawi kids to four years of college so that they could go back to their country with some practical skills instead of buying another $1.2 billion dollar high-altitude killing machine?
Why would we spend all that money to send Malawians to college when there are lots of kids in our own country who can't afford to go to college and there aren't enough scholarships or grants?
(That's a fair point, and if we decided to send 125,000 more poor Americans to college rather than build another B2 bomber, I wouldn't complain.)
          This raises the issue of how we can help the children of Malawi make it into their late teens so they might have a chance at this mythical college education. This is no easy matter. According to the World Health Organization, 500 million people each year are infected with mosquito-borne illnesses: dengue, malaria, yellow fever, and various forms of encephalitis, including West Nile virus. More than 2.5 million die, many of them children, most of them in the poorest equatorial regions. For around $5 apiece, a treated mosquito net can cut the chances of contracting one of these diseases by fifty percent. It sounds ridiculous, but for the price of one B-2 bomber, we could provide the continent of Africa with 240 million mosquito nets! How do we want OUR money spent, on bombers or mosquito nets? After all, it's our money that the government is spending. We elected them, and we have more to do than we think in deciding what they're going to spend our money on. Obviously, we have to have enough modern military hardware to defend ourselves. Just as obviously, it's not as simple as mosquito nets versus B2 bombers. It's more the basic philosophy behind each of these items. Personally, I have to separate myself as a Christian from being an American.
How can you do that?!?
          I am a Christian FIRST. As a Christian, I would rather my tax dollars go towards relieving poverty and disease than towards being the policeman of the world. As an American, I realize that there are global responsibilities that a nation of our size and strength has to bear, but I also think that if we as a country acted more like followers of Jesus, and less like policemen, we would probably have less need to act like policemen.
           If certain Christian communities vote as a bloc for a particular party, that's fine, but our responsibility doesn't end there. Christians are still a powerful bloc between elections. It's really dangerous for politicians to assume that because we voted for them, that this gives them the right to do whatever they want, and we will meekly assent to whatever they do. It's hard for me to see how putting massive resources to work solving hunger and disease is not as important an issue for Christians as whether Mike and Mike get married. How much did we hear about that in the last election, and how much did we hear about hunger, poverty, and disease? What’s also interesting is that when the election is over, we stop hearing about Mike and Mike.
Hey Mother Theresa, in 2004 the United States spent some $3.2 BILLION dollars in aid to Sub-Saharan Africa. By your calculations that would buy around 640 million mosquito nets, or almost enough to cover the whole continent in a Christo-type wrapping.
          That's very funny. It is true that the U.S. gives billions of dollars in foreign aid each year.  This would also be a good time to point out that President Bush pledged an unprecedented fifteen billion dollars towards combating the AIDS virus in sub-Saharan Africa.  However, numbers are tricky things. You can find a set of numbers that will support almost any idea, cause, or ideology that you can dream up. Here are some more numbers: 
          Among the twenty-two richest nations in the world, in 2004, the United States ranked first in total amount of dollars spent on foreign aid. That should warm the cockles of any liberal's heart, shouldn't it? However, as a percentage of GDP, which is the percentage of foreign aid compared to the size of our economy, the United Stated ranked twenty-first out of the twenty-two, barely nudging out Italy for the first time in several years in 2004. Keep in mind that the U.S. considers reconstruction money in Iraq part of its foreign aid, as well as money given to Pakistan for its assistance in the War on Terror.
          Another factor, which is dealt with in greater detail elsewhere, is that most poor nations spend a large percentage of their current foreign aid paying down their previous debts. The G-8 Summit in Scotland in 2005 made some strides in beginning to eliminate these crushing burdens. The fact remains that almost none of the 22 wealthiest nations are living up to the targets on Official Development Assistance that they set in 1970 at the United Nations General Assembly. It was there that the donor governments pledged to spend 0.7% of their GDP per year on poverty reduction. In 2004, only five nations reached that goal: Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, and The Netherlands, with Portugal coming close. Aid flows are largely dictated by geo-strategic concerns rather than efforts to reduce poverty, as the seven largest recipients of ODA in 2004 were: Egypt, Russia, Iraq, Congo, Israel (?!?), Pakistan, and Jordan.
Those Europeans nations can spend that much on foreign aid because they know that we are largely providing for their defense.
          A good point. Wouldn’t we all agree that with a population of 460 million, and a GDP that is equitable to the United States, the European Union should be capable of managing its own defense? The idea that we have to watch Europe’s back seems born of another era.



          Did you know, by the way, that the average subsidy of a European cow is more than the median income of the average Sub-Saharan African? Or that we spend more on dog and cat food each year in America than it would take to eliminate the worst of the world's poverty? I don't place too much stock in anecdotal statistics like these, because as stated earlier, one can find statistics that will make almost any point that one chooses to make. Factoids like these do tend to linger in your brain longer than dry statistics.
          Here's a really wacky idea. Our "Defense" budgets are generally around seven times larger than the next largest country's. That figure is close to $400 billion a year, sometimes more, sometimes less. This, as most people probably know, is not primarily spent on 'defense', unless you subscribe to the saying that "the best defense is a good offense." For the most part, this figure does not include paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; those funds are included in a separate Supplemental Spending bill. I realize that to propose a one-year moratorium on "defense" spending would be heretical lunacy, not to mention un-American, but let's say for the sake of argument that for just one year, all we spent on 'defense' was as much as the country that spent the 2nd most spent, or around $50 to 60 billion. Now I know that a billion dollars isn't what it used to be, but $60 billion dollars is still nothing to sneeze at, and probably would be at least enough money for maintenance.
          What to do with $350 billion? Since we don't seem as a nation or a government to be all that concerned with our own budget deficit, we'll forget about that. What used to be called the Third World, and is now better known as the Developing World, or the South, (as opposed to the affluent North) is suffocating under a massive debt load. These debts were brought on by huge loans from the International Monetary Fund and various Western and oil-producing nations in the 1970's and 80's, and often taken on by prior military rulers and dictators which Western countries put into power as a bulwark against communism.
          Here are some facts about this debt: the forty-seven countries most in debt have a debt load of $422 billion as of 2001 (this figure is certainly higher now). The Developing World spends thirteen dollars servicing this debt for every dollar it receives in foreign aid. Sub-Saharan Africa spends over $10 billion a year servicing their debt- four times the amount that is spent on healthcare and education combined. (Keep in mind that these figures are constantly changing estimates, and even then vary from source to source.) Along with these loans, the IMF and the World Trade Organization have imposed stringent economic guidelines and crushing shock therapies on nations already in too much poverty and disarray.
          What might have worked in the defeated nations of Germany and Japan, two countries with well-educated populations, a history of industrialization, and a civil service long in place, has not worked in these poorer underdeveloped places. Japan was given the advantage as well of being able to impose trade barriers on imports coming into their country while flooding our market with their goods in exchange for allowing American bases in their country in perpetuity.
          Imposing our version of capitalism, free trade, and privatization on these developing countries has been mostly a disaster. Privatizing basic industries formerly owned by the state, where there isn't enough homegrown wealth or capital to buy these industries, has opened the door (actually the door was opened by "free" trade) for multinational corporations to swoop in and gobble them up. "Free" trade, on a level playing field and with semi-equal trading partners, is not, in and of itself, a bad concept. There is nothing level or equal about the version of free trade the wealthy North imposes on the poor South. It's like having a ten-lane superhighway going in, and a dirt road coming out. There is the now-infamous example of the region in Bolivia known as Cochabamba, which was forced by the IMF to privatize their water utilities. The price of water, determined then by a subsidiary of the American giant corporation Bechtel, became so steep that almost no one in the region could afford water.
          Poor countries can't dig themselves out of their deep holes because so much of their money goes to servicing previous debts. Undoubtedly, mismanagement and corruption of the original loans played a key part in most of these countries being in the position they are today. But imposing harsh conditions is making a bad situation worse. According to the group Christian Aid, sub-Saharan Africa is a massive $272 billion worse off because of "free" trade policies forced on them as a condition of receiving aid and debt relief. "The reforms that rich countries forced upon Africa were supposed to boost economic growth. However, the reality is that imports increased massively while exports went up only slightly. The growth in exports only partially compensated African producers for the loss of local markets and they were left worse off."
           I don’t believe that our road into these countries has been deliberately paved with bad intentions.  The greedy leaders of these sub-Saharan nations deserve a hefty amount of the blame for their countries' dire predicaments.  I think, rather, that it is more likely the stubborn one-size-fits-all mentality of those who preach the gospel of Free Trade. What if we took the $350 billion dollars from the one-time moratorium on Defense spending and applied it to Developing World debt? There would be no strings attached.  This is what Bono has been running around the world trying to get the Western politicians to do.  The money would go back into the coffers of the institutions that originally made the loans (meaning that US banks would get a large percentage of it). Combined with similar gestures from other prosperous Western nations and Japan, we could erase this crushing burden entirely. This would be a huge step towards beginning to level the playing field for the type of capitalism that we would like to see these nations embrace. The goodwill that this gesture would create is incalculable, and would make it less likely that we would be targets of the hatred that spawns terrorism. It also seems to me to be the Christian thing to do. After all, we are supposed to speak for the last, the least, and the lost.
          I know this little fantasy will never happen, Republican, Democrat, or Martian in the White House. The arms industry has become too vital a part of our economy, and that is sad. Guns and movies are our two greatest exports. Ironically, in this most capitalistic of all countries, the arms industry operates for all practical purposes as a state-run operation. It has basically one client–the Pentagon, which operates as a built-in, fail-safe market. The arms industry knows that year after year, through the ups and downs of our economy, the Pentagon is going to be buying their wares at almost whatever cost they put on these items. If they don't buy, the excess or the old inventory is simply sold to the highest bidder on the Pentagon's list of countries in need of more weapons.
          It doesn't matter who is in the White House; the Defense budget is only going to vary by a small degree, because no administration wants to be known as being "soft on Defense." The whole idea of calling it the Department of Defense is kind of nutty, anyway. They used to call it the Department of War, which is a more appropriate nomenclature. We've actually had more wars since it's been called the Department of Defense. When it was the Department of War, we didn't have an industry devoted entirely to the tools of war. If a war arose, the country would have to retool some of its industries to produce armaments, i.e., the automobile industry into tank production. After World War II, however, the industry was just too much a part of the US economy and made too much money to stop. We have been on a perpetual war footing ever since. President Eisenhower warned us about this back in 1959. There was a time, not too long before that, when people might have actually listened to him.                  With Germany and Japan becoming among our closest allies, one might wonder why we're still maintaining an almost occupying-size army in each country. Oh, for the Cold War? The struggle that ended SIXTEEN years ago?? What are we still doing with over 60,000 troops in Okinawa? If the Chinese want to take Taiwan by force, 60,000 American troops aren't going to stop them, anyway. I thought that's what our over 10,000 nuclear weapons were for. What if the Chinese were to put 60,000 troops on Bermuda? That would add to world peace and stability, I'm sure. The sad fact is our overseas troops aren't going anywhere. Oh, they might shift around, as some troops have finally left Germany this year.  But guess where one of the newest, biggest, most expensive bases is? It's called Camp Bondsteel, and it cost over one billion dollars to build and it's in..... Kosovo. We helped drive the Serbians out of Kosovo and we decided to.... stay. We drove the Taliban out of Kabul and we've decided to stay in..... Uzbekistan, where we've built a new base that rivals Camp Bondsteel. This is but two examples of a trend that is repeating itself all over the globe. So, for those of you who think we're going to leave Iraq anytime soon, like in the next fifty years, think Kosovo, think Uzbekistan. (* Update–the Uzbekistan government has asked us to leave. Oh well, there's always Kyrgyzstan, next door.)
          President Bush spoke famously of the Axis of Evil, which was supposed to be Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The Military-Industrial Complex, which is another name for the Pentagon/Arms Industry partnership, is always in need of enemies to slay. There will always be someone. You can count on that. China is looming large over the horizon, and if I may try my hand at predictions, this relationship will become testier and testier over the next ten years until it becomes a crisis. The partnership is counting on it.
          Meanwhile, the real Axis of Evil in this world is environmental degradation, pandemic poverty, and a world awash in weapons. We as Christians need to wake up to this reality, and lead the chorus calling for solutions to these most moral of problems, rather than submitting meekly to the call for more bombs and more bloodshed in the name of 'freedom' and 'democracy'.