Monday, May 16, 2022

Rise in global hunger linked to US national security. Still!

  

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 ChairUnited Nations Association, Council of Organizations

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