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World community
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Salt of the Earth magazine.
What becomes a superpower most?
President Jimmy Carter
What is the definition of a superpower? I would say that a superpower is a nation that is known throughout the world as a champion of peace, that invests its resources not just in the introduction of military power in troubled regions but in efforts to act as a dependable mediator in regions of potential conflict.
A true superpower would be known for raising high the banner of human rights, unequivocally and persistently. It would be the world champion of freedom and democracy, always eager to see changes in governments that encourage the ability of people to choose their own leaders and, therefore, to have leaders who are responsible to them. A superpower would be constantly concerned about the deterioration of the world's environment. It would share its wealth with other nations—both because of its great humanity and its appreciation of the benefits it receives from such generosity.The United States can be that superpower, but only if it does not succumb to hopelessness and cynicism.
The world viewed through our news media is a place of great disorder: hostage-taking in Peru, rebels advancing through Zaire, turmoil in Albania; the U.S. and the United Nations failing to rehabilitate Somalia; Sudan continuing a 14-year-old war that has caused 2 million deaths; and major U.S. investments in Haiti and Bosnia-Herzegovina that may or may not amount to anything.
We can be concerned by the bad news coming out of the developing world, but we can't let it reduce us to impotence and isolation.
We should take real encouragement from the good news that we can also discover in the developing world. Nations all over the world today are moving toward democracy, toward freedom. When I became president in 1977, most Latin American countries were ruled by dictators or totalitarian forms of government. Now almost every nation in Latin America is a democracy. That's a great achievement that we should not forget.
There is good news, too, coming out of Africa. The Carter Center has programs active in 33 African countries. We work intimately with these governments, with their private citizens, leaders in the educational field, and with farmers and families in isolated villages. We have had our share of successes.
Representatives from a variety of global relief agencies came together through the Carter Center about ten years ago to form a task force on child immunization. Then, only 20 percent of the world's children were being immunized against preventable diseases. In five years, and with no appreciable increase in personnel or funding, that number jumped to 80 percent. We have maintained that level ever since.
In Ethiopia, the Carter Center enrolled about 5,000 farmers in an agricultural program. That effort has been emulated nationwide by the Ethiopian government.
In 1994, Ethiopia produced 5.5 million tons of grain. This year it produced 11.7 million tons. In January, Ethiopia exported its first surplus corn crop to Kenya, and this year it will become self-sufficient in wheat production.
If we in the industrialized world share just a modicum of our basic technology and show that we have confidence in them, the nations of the developing world would move rapidly toward peace, democracy, freedom, human rights, economic progress, and the alleviation of human suffering in their regions. But if we don't pay attention to the developing world, we might very well share in the consequences.
The extension of conflicts from one nation to the other as we saw in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as we may see in Albania and in Zaire, could affect us in the United States—not only because we could be called on to deal with the military conflicts themselves, but also because of the environmental deterioration that such conflicts generate and the spread of disease as forests are destroyed and previously isolated viruses make their way to us.
What do we have to do to be a superpower? One way to begin is to revisit the attitude toward foreign aid in the U.S., where the subject has almost become political profanity. A recent poll reports that Americans believe that about 20 percent of our total national budget goes for foreign aid. The fact is that less than one half of one percent of our federal budget is spent on foreign aid. Of our gross national product, we give not much more than one-tenth of 1 percent to alleviate the suffering in other nations. The average citizen of Norway gives twenty times as much.
That lack of U.S. leadership is unfortunate because U.S. foreign aid can make and has made a positive contribution to the developing world. Forty-seven of the nations that received foreign aid in the 1960s and 1970s have improved so much that they no longer even qualify for U.S. assistance. Thirty have even become donor nations themselves, now helping others have a better life.
The amount of foreign aid is not the only problem. Its allocation has not improved much since the Cold War when, unfortunately, we supported a lot of dictators just because they agreed with American policy or were opposed to the Soviet Union. I visited one new nation that receives about $5 million a year in U.S. aid. Officials there pointed out that each day Egypt gets more than $5 million and Israel, $10 million. We have not focused our attention on emerging democracies and those most in need.
A clear message on the important role of foreign aid needs to be sent to the American people. There is no way to quantify the hope and the admiration that exist in the hearts and minds of people as they look toward the United States. You only have to note how many of them want to move here to see how much we are admired for what we have achieved.
Sharing a little of our wealth and our know-how is not only a practical option for a great nation like ours, it is also a moral responsibility for the true superpower the U.S. can be.Copyright © 1997 by Claretian Publications