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Jeffrey D. Sachs at Columbia has an insightful commentary in today’s
New York Times, concerning the US Government’s inability to understand
or deal with problems in the world’s poor countries, home to over hald
the population of the globe. The tragic irony is that while these
countries may not be major players in world financial circles, their
problems, if unattended tend to spread and burst open like infected boils,
inevitably involving US troops and resources in cleaning up the resulting
bloody messes…
The undoing of American foreign policy is captured in the budget numbers.
Long gone are the Marshall Plan times, when we dedicated several
percent of our
gross domestic product to European reconstruction. The United States will
spend about $450 billion this year on the military but only $15 billion
on official development assistance. The 30-to-1 ratio is mirrored
by a similar
imbalance in our thinking. Our military expertise is undoubted. Our ability
to understand what exists before and after wars in low-income countries
is nearly nonexistent.
from the New York Times
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