American Foreign Policy

Sachs argues that successful foreign policy making relies on political, economic and cultural policies. Although his comparison between all the mosquito nets needed in Africa and their less than two days' Pentagon budget cost may not be all appropriate, Sachs does point out an important aspect of war in recent years: mostly wars were open ended and with enemies hard to identify at times. (Sachs, p.276) In those wars, military advances in the battlefield were not always determinate of the outcome of the wars--other things need also to be taken into consideration, including public opinion and political advantage. Real security for the U.S. would come from violence caused by failed or failing states. Here Sachs as if picked up where Kaplan (O'Meara, Part I) left, who talked about failing states in Africa and how the phenomenon might spread in the world. Sachs discusses how these failed states may cause (and have caused) violence that would involve U.S. intervention. Holding up these states and preventing them from failing, along with nuclear proliferation and the environment, become three major concerns that Sachs believes should drive U.S. foreign policy. Instead of military competition and aggression, the U.S., for Sachs, should extend financial aid to failing countries, very much as President Truman and his secretary of State George Marshall did after World War II to salvage economically tottering European countries from falling to Communism, and develop a coherent foreign policy instead of ad hoc responses to problem spots in the world. With the problem areas that the U.S. helps, such as the Middle East, the focus should be on the alleviation of poverty.