Jeffery Sachs writes in today's Guardian about the battle against world poverty (see also here). He calls it 'a grand moral task, and a geopolitical imperative', and says that the 'financial costs of the needed development aid are utterly manageable, just 70p per £100 (0.7%) of the national incomes of the donor nations'. He discusses the practical policies and measures needed. Meanwhile:
There are a billion people on earth fighting daily for their survival.So long as this is the case, it is an indictment of everyone not engaged in a daily struggle for survival. Sachs, at the same time, contrasts the tiny amount - 0.15% of national income - devoted by the US to aid, with the nearly 5% it spends on the military. But while that contrast is appreciable, it is not strictly pertinent without further ado. Whether the military budget of the US is too large or too small is a question in its own right; the answer to it is independent of this other matter unless you believe that the US just couldn't find another 0.55p in the pound (or whatever in the dollar) to spend on aid, without cutting back on the military. That strikes me as implausible.
Put differently, the need to fight world poverty is an urgent, a crying, a shaming, moral imperative. But it's not the same issue as what are the needs of military security and defence.