All countries should reduce military, invest in their people

Staff Writer
Journal Standard
Chuck and Pat Wemstrom

Since March, America has learned that our domestic politics and our foreign policy are outdated. They might have been fine for a different time and place but now they are actually obsolete.

During last year’s primaries, which seem so long ago and far away, Democrats didn’t talk much about international relations. They must have sensed that the system is broken. President Trump is eager to tear down the systems America has in place and replace it with an idiotic go-it-alone policy, which is just making a bad situation worse.

The most pressing problem continues to be refugees and the world’s unwillingness to help them, which is now compounded by the coronavirus. In refugee camps along the US-Mexican border the refugees already suffer from multiple health issues and when the pandemic strikes it will be a nightmare.

Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, Chile and Peru are already suffering from the coronavirus. Their host countries don’t want them. Venezuela is not eager for their return. An international group of nations has pledged $3 billion to help them.

The refugee situation continues in the Mediterranean Sea with hundreds continuing to drown or languish in camps in Turkey and Libya; in India, where the Hindu majority is trying to drive out Muslims; in Australia, which refuses to help refugees from southeast Asia and holds them in suspension on nearby islands; and in sub-Saharan Africa, where refugees from civil wars are desperately trying to find safety.

The prospects are that the international crisis will simply continue to deteriorate without strong international leadership. Right now, except for stopgap measures, the world does nothing to help. When Trump claims he wants to help by accepting qualified Hong Kong refugees, he only makes the political situation in Hong Kong worse.

The U.S. and the world claim there’s no money. Here’s a solution and a new foreign policy in one neat little package: All the countries in the world need to do is cut their military budgets by 50% over the next five years.

This will give every country the financial resources to fight poverty, sickness, homelessness and illiteracy at home and free up the financial resources to also fight the coronavirus. Even the richest countries in the world can’t continue to fund their overly-extravagant military, help their own people and people outside their borders.

That’s the first step, every country working together through the UN and WHO. While the world is beginning to cut their military spending they will be looking to the U.S., the EU, Russia, India and China to make sure that these countries are following through.

After each country has put a share of its former military funds to work helping their own people in their own countries, the rich countries should reach out and help the third world countries and instead of exploiting them economically, actually help them build sustainable economies which help their people and not enrich the bottom line of global capitalists.

And the third piece is to enthusiastically tackle, once and for all, climate change. We have the money. No one can say we have no money. If the U.S. spends $2 billion a day on the military, America now has $1 billion a day to spend helping their fellow Americans, the world’s poor and to fight climate change. The beauty is that we can take all three ideas and come up with a grand strategy that does all three simultaneously.

As countries work together, they’ll see even less need for a large military force. And we’ll all see that helping others, in the long run, benefits us all.

Chuck and Pat Wemstrom live in rural Mount Carroll. Reach them at