Over the last couple of years, observing the news, and the events unfolding on this planet I feel I have an answer to the Bush Doctrine (that being blow them up before they blow you up). I have unabashedly taken to calling it the “Shane Doctrine” but perhaps a more appropriate term would be “aggressive charity.”
It would go something like this.
1. We announce to the world that we are radically changing our response to Terrorism.
2. We let that sink in for a week or two.
3. We begin by air dropping food and water onto the poorest places in the middle east.
4. We continue this aggressive food/water drop until the local population is well fed.
5. Every time someone in that region threatens us we drop more food and water.
6. We drop all economic sanctions with everyone in the region and start selling all of our stuff to them at low cost.
7. Every time someone bombs us we drop more food and water, and ramp up our aid package to the region, if they do not bomb us, we increase the aid package by twice as much.
8. We make a law that the nations power supply must be replaced with renewable technology at the rate of 5% a year, we provide massive tax cuts to renewable energy retailers making solar panels and wind turbines almost free.
9. We mandate that any American business that wants to sell products/services in our country must give 1% of its profits to sustainable economic development of the third world.
10. We open our border to the worlds hungry and poor, take them in and give them a free education.
We pay for all this by reducing by 15% our military budget. Fighting a “war on terrorism” is like fighting a war on sadness. You can’t fight a war against a tactic, or a feeling. You have to fight the base cause of these problems. That base cause is poverty, hunger, and economic despair. If we combine a very large economic/food/aid package with a radical reduction in the amount of oil we use we will find that our interest in the middle east will shrink.
Responding to violence with food and money may seem like a foolish thing to do, but how is a radical cleric going to convince one of his followers to strap a bomb to there chest and blow up the people that are dropping food and water from the sky, and funding the roads and schools in town. Its easy to paint America as the “great Satan” because of our military actions, manipulation of governments, and our poor oil policies in the past.
It will be much harder to paint us in a negative picture if we start acting like an aggressive charity. We are going to bomb you with food/water/aid and you are going to buy our good/services for low cost, and we are going to pay for your education, and we are not going to buy your oil anymore. And you are going to like it!
As the middle east develops local infrastructure (aided by our own construction firms, and massive aid packages) we will lower our aid package, as they grow there own food we will stop dropping ours, as they stand up we will stand down!
I mostly like it. But, towards the end, wouldn’t it be akin to setting up a huge welfare state? What’s the motivation for people in that region to develop their own agriculture if the US will just give them food? That’s my only real objection to everything you’ve laid out… that we’d be weakening them by fostering a dependency on foreign aid.
I realize you’re mainly just putting forth ideas here and not exactly laying out a finalized policy. This is just one thing that occurred to me.
This was more of a satire of the bush doctrine. I do think charity would be a better response than bombs, however this was sort of a joke.
I don’t really think that all of this would be feasible in the real world. Like you said we would be setting up a welfare state. However I wonder which would cost more, paying for all these people, or paying for all the wars, oil, homeland security, etc. that we pay for now?
Even though you meant this to me facetious, I think you’re onto something. Instead of the US showing its big guns and bully-like behavior, why not put forth a symbol of peace? Instead of investing all that money in military and security, why not invest some of it to alleviate the root cause of the aggression others are showing the US?
You give ’em a fish, you’ve fed ’em for one day. But if you teach them how to fish, you’ve fed them for life.
Rather than just providing them food and supplies, why not teach these folks the skills that will make them self-sufficient. If the technical know-how and ability within the US was shared with the remaining world, what a difference that could make!
From what little I know about the Peace Corp and the American Corps, that’s what they are meant to accomplish. We need to encourage more of that.
I agree fully pardesibabu, I simply propose a system of international charity and education over an international system of death and destruction. While at the same time making fun of our current government here in the states.