Dear Editor, (Submitted to the WPost May 5th but never printed)
The Post’s lead editorials on May1, (“Risks worth taking”
and “The world’s next Challenge: a global famine looms. The US could help
prevent it.”) dramatically recognized the interconnectedness and
interdependence of all issues related to national security. These two
editorials discuss the risks of involvement in the war in Ukraine and a
simultaneous risk of global famine demonstrating how critical that
interdependence is.
Unfortunately, the continuing failure to recognize these
relationships represents a serious flaw in US national security policy.
Concerns linking famine and hunger as critical components of national security
are not new. In 1980 the Carter
Administration released its bipartisan report of the Presidential Commission on
World Hunger in which it warned in its introduction that “…..we Americans must
begin to reorder our national priorities so that U.S. actions that could
alleviate world hunger are accorded status equal to the actions needed to
safeguard other aspects of our own national security”.
As the United States continues its full support for Ukraine
and at the same time, deals with the specter of global famine, their “equal
status” in pursuit of US national security becomes essential. In today’s world,
those responsible for our national security must recognize that our own safety
depends both on standing with Ukraine and preventing the terrible instability
of a famine-stricken world.
Daniel E. Shaughnessy, executive
director of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger 1980.
Chuck
Woolery, Former Chair, United
Nations Association, Council of Organizations
