Sorry if I mistook the slant of your posting. However, I would deny that Americans are any more militaristic than most, if not all, other cultures. Yes, they have more military power -- much more -- but that is a result of being the most prosperous country in the world by a long chalk all through the last century. This, of course, is due to (1) cheap oil, both their own for the early part of the century and Saudi oil theraafter; (2) being able to recruit the cleverest scientific minds from Europe and then Asia. This is no longer so. On count (1) this is now largely finished for good; on count (2) the cleverest young scientists are now going into genetic research and this science, unlike most others, doesn't need huge technical resources and the result is that this research is now more evenly spread around the world. If anything -- and thanks to Bush's reactionary attitude -- Asia is now probably in the lead. (It isn't lack of federal funding which is the real problem. It is that American research scientists have a real fear that their research -- and their careers -- will be brought to a full stop by future legislation, and indeed that some researchers may be personally suable. This to some extent has been palliated by Congress' recent anti-Bush decision to support stem cell research, but the growing anti-science atmosphere in America still prevails.) As for "straight" science and engineering, one third of Chinese graduates are scientists and engineers, completely swamping America's output.
It's no use talking about aid to Africa when it's completely overwhelmed by the tariff barriers of the rich nations against its huge food-growing potential -- Africa's best method of getting itself on its feet. They don't need aid, just fair trade and practical help at village level. It is now widely agreed that something like 80-90% of all governmental aid to Africa in the last 20 years has ended up in the hands of politicians and officialdom. Have we any evidence that the recent aid announced from Gleneagles is going to be more efficiently delivered? Not a mention so far. From this point of view, although I deplore America's parsimony, its level of aid is more realistic than the bue sky policy of Blair. (However, his world-wide and European ambitions are going to overshadowed by problems at home from now onwards!)
Keith
At 15:48 08/07/2005 -0400, you wrote:
Keith, the only point I was trying to make is that there is a huge gap between the global expenditure on militarism on the one hand and aid to poor countries on the other. I'd suggest that, when it comes to military expenditures, much more is spent that is officially reported. But it is the militarily driven mentality that is really the issue. The US has become obsessed with war. Helping poor countries overcome their problems and issues like climate change simply don't figure. A review article in the Current New York Review of Books contains the following paragraph:
I've ordered one of the books that the review article discusses, Andrew Bacevich's "The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War".
- Why does the US Department of Defense currently maintain 725 official US military bases outside the country and 969 at home (not to mention numerous secret bases)? Why does the US spend more on "defense" than all the rest of the world put together? After all, it has no present or likely enemies of the kind who could be intimidated or defeated by "star wars" missile defense or bunker-busting "nukes." And yet this country is obsessed with war: rumors of war, images of war, "preemptive" war, "preventive" war, "surgical" war, "prophylactic" war, "permanent" war. As President Bush explained at a news conference on April 13, 2004, "This country must go on the offense and stay on the offense."
Ed
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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