Last week, Dennis C. Blair, the new U.S. Director of National Intelligence addressed the Senate Intelligence Committee on the security threats facing the United States. Major papers and sources from around the blogosphere quickly noted that top on Blair’s list of U.S. intelligence concerns was not the al Qaeda terrorist threat, but the global economic crisis.
On his new “Aid Watch” blog, noted economist William Easterly was all over Blair, who he derided for his “amateur opinions” on the global financial crisis and who he essentially told to mind his own business (Easterly also managed to squeeze in a potshot at his fellow economist Paul Collier, not the first time he has done so).
First, Easterly’s critique is largely a straw man argument because Blair was not pretending to know a thing about fixing the economic crisis himself. But more importantly, it seems odd that Easterly would argue against connecting the dots between the complex and multifaceted security threats facing the United States—and the world—today. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an economist, for that matter) to realize that newly-minted U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was absolutely right when she wrote on the UN Dispatch blog in 2007 that:
…global poverty is far more than solely a humanitarian concern. In real ways, over the long term, it can threaten U.S. national security. Poverty fundamentally erodes state capacity — by fueling conflict, sapping human capital, hollowing out our impeding the development of effective state institutions, and creating especially conducive environments for corrupt governance. So why does this matter for American national security? When states fail to meet the basic needs of their citizens — for food, clean water, health care or education — other groups move in to fill the void. (Emphasis mine)
Last week, if Blair didn’t say explicitly that the economic crisis is worsening global poverty and therefore heightening insecurity in many impoverished—and sometimes failing—states, then he implied it. And in his confirmation statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, Blair underlined the challenges that failing states pose to global stability:
Failing states pose another set of challenges. Countries without effective governments, with internal economic disparities, and with domestic religious, ethnic, or tribal tensions can slip into anarchy, with tragic consequences for their own citizens, and with potential dangers to other countries. Somalia is one example, among many.
Blair’s perspective on the links between the economic crisis—and by extension global poverty and economic inequality—and security is well reasoned. It is supported by the scholarship of numerous foreign policy experts such as Council on Foreign Relations fellow Stewart Patrick and by experienced U.S. government officials such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. As the Economist put it recently:
Misrule, violence, corruption, forced migration, poverty, illiteracy and disease can all reinforce each other. Conflict may impoverish populations, increase the availability of weapons and debilitate rulers…Instability breeds instability… At the very least, there is evidence that economic growth in countries next to failing states can be badly damaged.
Although Blair focused his remarks on how the economic crisis enhances threats in nations such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, Congo’s major financial problems are a textbook example of how a country’s economic problems can directly impact internal and regional instability, with grievous effects for civilian populations.
Just think, if the Congolese government goes bankrupt—a real possibility right now—and is unable to pay their notoriously brutal, corrupt, and poorly disciplined national army, what will these soldiers do to their country’s long-suffering population?
Furthermore, as Susan Rice routinely argues, when states fail or go bankrupt, there are a battery of dangerous consequences beyond collapsed government institutions and unpaid soldiers, one of which is that when people become impoverished and desparate, they may be forced to turn away from their hapless governments and towards nonstate actors and groups with unsavory and destabilizing agendas.
David Sullivan and Rebecca Brocato contributed to this post.