http://oneworldus.civiblog.org/toopoorforpeace2.jpg When you hear the words, “The fight against global poverty”, you often think of it as a fight for morality. However, few people think of the fight against poverty as serious issue of national security.

That is the precisely the way that the some senior fellows at the Brookings Institution want people to start thinking about poverty.

In a panel discussion at The Brookings Institution last week, several authors and contributors from the institution’s new book, “Too Poor for Peace?: Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century”, discussed the ways in which poverty can create conflict and the ways that poor and weak states can be the perfect incubators for trans-national terrorist groups looking for a new base of operations to launch attacks on other countries from.

1. Conflict driven by poverty: In A country with a per capita GDP of $250,  the threat of conflict increases by 15%. When there is a per capita GDP of $5,000 the threat of conflict reduces dramatically.

2. Terrorism: Poverty erodes the States ability to combat terrorist groups and to provide for their people. When a state can not provide for its people, often times radical groups come in and fill the void, which in turn gives them support from the local population.

3. Disease: Poverty effects a state’s ability to fight disease. When a weak state cannot fight a disease it often times spreads from their country to other impoverished countries until it turns into a global pandemic.

It is important to note, no one in the panel discussion was advocating, poverty itself causes violence and terrorism, however it is the problems that those who live in impoverished countries face; such as living in a country with a weak government with only limited autonomy within its own borders.(i.e. Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc).

One of the most interesting aspects of this discussion was when Susan Rice (Brookings Institution Fellow and former Assistant Secretary of State in African Affairs) discussed the three ways in which transnational threats can be caused by poverty. 

Although, I believed that the panel did an excellent job exposing how poverty can create serious trans-national issues, one of the frequent criticism expressed during the event was that while those who wrote the book did a good job of exposing the relationship between poverty and security, it did not provide any real answers on how the United States or other major powers should proceed in reducing poverty in order to deal with these issues.

One of the panelists, Tarik Yousef who is the dean at the Dubai School of Government, argued quite well that the discourse on poverty reduction should be shifted away from simply defining the problem and more about finding a solution that can greatly reduce poverty across the globe.

I agree with Mr. Yousef, that there is too much talk about poverty reduction and not nearly enough action. Although NGOs and aid from industrialized countries can help a few people, there is still much to be done considering that 1.1 billion people live on less than one dollar a day. Despite it’s lack of solutions for poverty reduction, I thought that the panel and those who wrote the book did an excellent job in showing how poverty does not just effect those who live in impoverished conditions, but effects us all .

This discussion allowed me to see poverty in a way that I had never thought of before. If more people knew, how poverty ultimately affected their lives, I believe it would inspire millions of people in industrialized nations to action, either by working through religious groups or NGOs, or by contacting their elected officials.

Share your thoughts below on how we can improve national security by reducing global poverty.