Too Poor for Peace?: Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century

Chapter 1: The Tangled Web: The Poverty-Insecurity Nexus

1 THE FIGHT AGAINST global poverty is commonly—and appropriately— framed as a moral imperative. Stark images of suffering weigh on Western consciences, as images of hungry children in Niger, AIDS orphans in Tanzania, tsunami victims in Indonesia, and refugees in Darfur are beamed into our living rooms in real time. In today’s increasingly interconnected world, the “haves” cannot ignore the suffering of the “have-nots.” Whether or not we choose to care, we cannot pretend that we do not see. Yet the effort to end poverty is about much more than extending a helping hand to those in need. In a world where boundaries and borders have blurred, and where seemingly distant threats can metastasize into immediate problems, the fight against global poverty has become a fight of necessity— not simply because personal morality demands it, but because global security does as well. Extreme poverty exhausts governing institutions, depletes resources, weakens leaders, and crushes hope—fueling a volatile mix of desperation and instability. Poor, fragile states can explode into violence or implode into collapse , imperiling their citizens, regional neighbors, and the wider world as livelihoods are crushed, investors flee, and ungoverned territories become a spawning ground for global threats like terrorism, trafficking, environmental devastation, and disease. Yet if poverty leads to insecurity, it is also true that the destabilizing effects of conflict and demographic and environmental challenges make it harder for leaders, institutions, and outsiders to promote human development. Civil The Tangled Web: The Poverty-Insecurity Nexus LAEL BRAINARD, DEREK CHOLLET, AND VINCA LAFLEUR 1 01-1375-3 ch1 3/30/07 1:27 PM Page 1 wars may result in as many as 30 percent more people living in poverty1 — and research suggests that as many as one-third of civil wars ultimately reignite.2 In sum, poverty is both a cause of insecurity and a consequence of it. If the link between poverty and insecurity is apparent, the pathway toward solutions is far from clear. What, after all, is meant by “insecurity” and “conflict ”—two terms that cover a wide range of phenomena, from the fear and want poor individuals suffer to the armed violence that can engulf entire regions? Is conflict driven by concrete economic factors or sociopolitical exclusion and humiliation? Should our primary concern be internal instability or the risk that destabilizing threats will be exported? Should we worry most about individual livelihoods or the health of the state itself? Is it necessary to address insecurity before poverty can be tackled? Should U.S. policymakers characterize development assistance as an American national security priority or frame it in moral terms? It is hard to know which strand to grasp first to untangle the povertyinsecurity web. But every day, 30,000 children die because they are too poor to survive,3 and last year saw seventeen major armed conflicts in sixteen locations .4 Over the next four decades, the population of developing countries will swell to nearly 8 billion—representing 86 percent of humanity.5 Addressing poverty—and clearly understanding its relationship to insecurity —needs to be at the forefront of the policy agenda. The world simply cannot afford to wait. The Doom Spiral In recent years, world leaders and policy experts have developed a strong consensus that the fight against poverty is important to ensuring global stability. This was the core message of the 2005 Group of Eight Summit in Gleneagles , Scotland, and it is the underlying rationale of the UN Millennium Development Goals. American policymakers have traditionally viewed security threats as involving bullets and bombs—but now even they acknowledge the link between poverty and conflict. Former secretary of state Colin Powell notes that “the United States cannot win the war on terrorism unless we confront the social and political roots of poverty.”6 The 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States makes the case for fighting poverty because “development reinforces diplomacy and defense, reducing long-term threats to our national security by helping to build stable, prosperous, and peaceful societies.”7 And 2 LAEL BRAINARD, DEREK CHOLLET, AND VINCA LAFLEUR 01-1375-3 ch1 3/30/07 1:27 PM Page 2 The Tangled Web: The Poverty-Insecurity Nexus 3 the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review focuses on fighting the “long war,” declaring that the U.S. military has a humanitarian role in “alleviating suffering, . . . [helping] prevent disorder from spiraling into wider conflict or crisis.”8 Such assertions...