Aid, not military spending, will make the world safer

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most broadly supported, comprehensive and specific poverty reduction targets the world has ever established, said a report of the UN Millennium Project. The Jakarta Post's team of journalists interviewed Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the project, about the challenges facing the achievement of the MDGs. The following are highlights of the interview.

There has been criticism that the rich countries are not doing their part in helping developing and least developed countries achieve the MDGs. What are your views?

There has been some progress, but mainly in Europe, and to some extent with Japan. And the progress with the United States I've not found to be adequate at all.

So, Europe has been committed to the timetable of reaching 0.7 percent (of gross national product in aid) by the year 2015. They promised before, and that needs to be watched and monitored, and pushed at every step. I don't trust any announcement by itself. But at least they have made the timetable ... I'm going to work with them to really help to ensure that the timetable is honored.

Japan has also made several important recent initiatives on aid to Africa which I'm very pleased about, and Japan is going to do more in Asia as well, and it's quite important...

The United States has given a bit here and there, but for such a rich country, it falls far, far short of what the United States is doing. My complaint has been that the U.S. is spending 0.16 percent of GNP (gross national product) on foreign assistance, that's about US$18 billion to $19 billion right now. It's spending a little bit less than 5 percent of GNP, or $500 billion, on the military, and the war in Iraq itself is about $80 billion a year ... That amount should have been spent on development assistance according to the promises the United States has made.

Well, I have not had a lot of success yet on the U.S. side, you know I'm pushing, others are pushing, but the U.S. is in my view focusing far too much on military approaches to these problems, and not at all enough on development approaches. And I think it's a big mistake. Even from the narrow consideration of U.S. foreign policy, I think, the U.S. will be a lot safer if it works more in the leadership in development...

This is a matter of U.S. national strategy, and I don't think we have the right strategy right now.

You said, the U.S. would be a lot safer if it spent more on development assistance rather than on the military. Could you elaborate on this?

Well, the U.S. says in its own national doctrine that there are three pillars to U.S. national security: defense, diplomacy and development. And the development pillar, I think, has many different justifications. Basically, very poor countries are unstable, very poor countries have very unhappy people in them, a lot of unemployed young men that might take up arms; very poor countries become heavens for terrorists. So, the best way to security in my view is through real development and through hope. And when people have no hope, they are more ready to take up arms. When people have hope, they are more ready to take up farm equipment, for example, because they have a future ...

There has been a lot of instability around the world right now. People don't have enough to eat. They are quite desperate, but could be helped. But the army could never solve those problems. So, why are we investing 30 times more in what we call the defense, but I call the military, rather than the development pillar of security. And I think it's a mistake.

Why do you insist on increasing development assistance? Why don't you also demand help from multinational corporations?

Because basically corporations are not charitable institutions. Basically corporations are money-making institutions. And for that reason, they are not so interested in the poorest places of the world. And they are not really a solution for the poorest of the poor.

If you take a place like Mali, or Malawi, or Ethiopia, and you go to the countryside, there is no electricity, no paved roads; communities do not have enough to eat, have almost no cash, income is just subsistence. International businesses don't care about those places at all. Maybe if there is oil, they will come, but if not, they will not care about those places at all ...

So, the problems can only be solved, in my view, if we create a basic foundation for such places so that they have enough road access, that they have electricity, the population is healthy enough, and skilled enough, and so businesses will be interested in them ...

I think it's a mistake to believe that such isolated, poorest rural areas of the world are part of the market economy. They are not. They are isolated, they are subsistence, and they are not to be saved by the corporations, they are ignored by the corporations.

So, I believe the right answer is that we have to help those places to get connected to the world market economy more effectively to the point where private business does have an interest.

Critics say that putting too much focus on the MDGs will distort development spending. Your views?

I think that if the MDGs are viewed too narrowly, that could be true. If they are viewed as just a kind of cookie cutter, or a simple formula, spend here, here, and here, it will take away from development thinking. But if you think of it in the right way, that's about development, that addresses the needs of the poor and the environment.

My advice to governments is that don't view these goals too narrowly, view them as part of the overall development challenges. When people come to me and say, "We don't want poverty reduction, we want wealth creation," for example, I say, "Of course, I want wealth creation too, but wealth creation that takes into account carefully that those benefits are going to help the poor, as well as the average as well as the rich." That's the basic idea of MDGs.