Eradication of Extreme Poverty is a US Security Interest

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama discussed foreign policy issues that pose a clear and present danger to the United States, such as the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), Russia’s aggression, and the Ebola pandemic. But he also addressed a much less obvious issue, but one that is perhaps even more challenging and requires just as much strong American leadership: the need to eradicate extreme poverty. He has mentioned it in the past, but this year the president pointed out that the global community needs to “build a more effective global effort to prevent the spread of future pandemics, invest in smart development, and eradicate extreme poverty.”There are 1 billion people around the world that live in extreme poverty, which means surviving on less than $1.25 a day. As some experts have argued, global poverty not only kills with hunger and malnutrition, but it also fuels the environment for violence and conflict. This is an ongoing global threat that drives extremism and terrorism, particularly when poverty is allowing groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram to use those conditions to galvanize further support. 

This year presents an opportunity for beginning to fully eradicate extreme poverty with the transition from the global development agenda known as the Millennium Development Goals to a new set of objectives, known as the Sustainable Development Goals. While the world can say that it has halved extreme poverty by 2015, more work still needs to be done. 

Two years ago, the president laid out a plan for the United States to “join with our allies to eradicate … extreme poverty in the next two decades” to help bring a “more stable order in certain regions of the world.” Mentioning this goal for the third straight State of the Union was encouraging, but there are still challenges ahead. In a world of growing conflicts, eradicating extreme poverty will go far to protect our national security interests from threats that come from the poorest nations.