HIV AIDS in Africa and Military Spending

I watched a television report the other evening about HIV AIDS in Africa and how a program started under President Bush in 2004 is keeping 2 million people alive. Many people still don't know it, but with the right combination of anti-retroviral drugs people can live a healthy and full life with HIV. The cost has come down to less than $300 per year to supply the necessary drugs (it's still thousands of dollars here, but that will change when the patents expire), which is still too high for most of the people of Africa to afford, but it makes helping them more possible than ever.

In the course of the report, some of the doctors and other residents in the countries that are being helped mentioned how this single program has changed many people's views about the United States. That got me thinking. On the one hand, I had a scary thought. There are two million people who are alive and can stay alive for a full life thanks to help from the U.S. taxpayer - or they could all die in a few years if the program is de-funded for political reasons. What a precarious situation!

My other thought was the that even if we cannot convince taxpayers that it is the right thing to do morally, the argument for helping the poor is easily made from a practical standpoint. The $600 million dollars annually that it costs to keep those people alive is the amount our military spends in eight hours. I'm willing to bet that they can't buy more peace with their eight hours of expenses.

In fact, what if the United States government announced that it would provide the drugs necessary to save every person in the world that has HIV AIDS and can't afford treatment? Before we get into costs, think about the impact that would have on perceptions of the U.S. Clearly this would moderate the animosity of many toward the U.S.

Now lets look at the cost of implementing such an idea. It isn't cheap. There are 33 million people in the world with HIV AIDS, and about 25 million have no real prospect of being able to afford proper treatment. At $300 per year for each of them, a program to treat all would cost almost $8 billion dollars. A lot of money, but also only the amount we spend on our military every four and one-half days.

Yes, such a dramatic program, if we had to fund it by cutting our military expenditures, would require a cut of just 1.2%. The budget for 2010 is $663 billion, by the way. Now, I would argue that we should cut the military in half, which still leaves it three times larger than any other on the planet, and spend a portion of that $330 billion savings on eliminating extreme poverty on the planet (it can be done for far less than that - and in one generation - according to the best estimates). But let's just consider the $8 billion for now, or $10 billion so we can also fund prevention to eliminate HIV in time.

$10 billion is what the military spends in 5 1/2 days. Now think for a moment if we announce that nobody will die from HIV AIDS in Africa or anywhere else if we can help it. Terrorism comes from many sources, but it also is directed according to perception. The change of perception of the United States would be significant with such an announcement - especially if we followed through. Isn't it conceivable that this little step would bring us closer to peace than whatever the military could do with that 10 billion dollars? What have they done in the last five and one-half days that is more likely to make us safe?

Some will argue that we don't have a responsibility to help others. I won't argue either side of that here. I'll address what works, and what can work. From a purely practical perspective - and considering the change of perception of the United States already created in millions of families in Africa for an expenditure equivalent to eight hours of military spending - doesn't it seem that there are more efficient ways to bring peace to our world?

Let me lay it out as a simple proposition: If we cut military spending by 30 billion (4.5%), and spent 10 billion of those savings on treating HIV AIDS in Africa and other poor regions of the world - thus saving the lives of 25 million people who have families that love them - wouldn't we have fewer enemies and be safer? In other words, we could spend less to be safer, and this is just one example.