Yesterday I learned that the USA is the top donor to 1) Sudan and 2) Palestinian Territories.
(I already knew we were the top funder of the U.N.) This did not surprise me, but I’m always struck by how generous our Government is in areas where we are despised.

I’m not opposed to generosity – in fact I think we should send more money to poor and war-torn areas even if it means raising my already usurous income taxes, but it pisses me off that we don’t get a lot more credit for it because credit for all this generosity is deserved and, far more importantly, it is a strategic imperative in the fight against those who fight against us. I doubt the Palestinian or North Korean kids eating food provided by the USA are even aware of the source. They should be.

Given that the results of the “wars on terror” all over the globe are yielding dubious results – perhaps even solidifying the resolve of a new generation of “America Haters” – I propose we do what any good business would do at a time like this. We should reallocate our dubious spending toward something more likely to yield positive results.

My proposal is to establish a highly funded global marketing campaign by reallocating military spending to something that works better. The campaign’s goal will be to restore to the USA the type of international respect we had back in the 60’s. Then, Peace Corps folks would go into the hut of an African or Indonesian villager and find a poster of JFK rather than an arms cache. Why? Obviously not a simple equation, but the 1960’s villager saw the USA’s prosperity and and global influence as a blueprint for their own future prosperity and freedom. Now, a generation later, that villager is more likely to see the USA as exploiting him far more than offering hope.

The sad irony is that exploitation of poor countries is largely a mythology concocted by left wing intellectuals to justify their narrow world view that corporations don’t work well to raise the standards for most of the participants in societies that embrace the corporate capitalist model of development. Corporations do raise standards, and excellent examples abound of the contrast between non-corporate and corporate models of development.

The South Korean villager did in fact become very prosperous and lives in a society with a very high standard of living and reasonable freedoms, while his brother in North Korea struggles just to eat. The poverty in Africa is characterized by a *lack* of corporate capitalist participation, not by an excess amount of it as we’d expect with a “USA as exploiter” world view.
Cuba? Isn’t that the same guy in charge who has been there for forty five years? Has Cuba thrived by pulling themselves out of the corporate capitalist game for half a century? Hardly.

This is not to suggest that there is not exploitation by US corporations. There are plenty of examples, and one person’s exploitation may be seen by someone less fortunate as a road to prosperity. However I’d suggest that most forms of “capitalistic exploitation” are the exception not the rule, partly for the entirely selfish reason that the capitalist model seeks higher profits and this requires more consumers living at higher standards. Global prosperity is not a zero sum economic game, and in this fact lies the key to the success of the corporate capitalist model of development and the bankruptcy of most socialist paradigms.

Thanks to forces of “negative marketing” from self-serving and corrupt Governments, combined with many legitimate grievances against the USA’s imperial stance in global politics, the USA’s reputation appears at an all time low. Strategically this is leading to more terror and more terrorists. If we continue to respond militarily we 1) continue to kill innocent people, our own soldiers, and destroy infrastucture and 2) expend resources that could be put to better use.

Better use? Marketing the USA as a friend not an enemy.

Budget: $109,825,000,000   (25% of proposed 2007 military spend of 439.3 billion)

The US Military approach has failed to win the hearts and minds of the globe, and this puts us at increasing strategic risk.    We live in the world’s most sophisticated marketing empire and it’s time we acted like it.   Let’s just do it.