National Security and Poverty: Part 1

I have been researching poverty in the U.S. with an eye toward looking at how the U.S. approach to fighting the "War on Poverty" is impacting its ability to modernize its military to deal with "war" that involves the employment of violence to achieve state aims, especially self-defense.

In order to look poverty, it is useful to have a discussion about what poverty looks like in places other than the U.S. In the following Midrats interview, Alexander Martin, working with Nuru International, "a nonprofit organization whose mission is to end extreme poverty in remote rural areas," in Kenya gives a great description of what physical poverty means in that place and in this time. The pertinent discussion begins about 20 minutes in, but I recommend listening to the whole show. Poverty limits choices in life " . . . because you just can't make any choice past that choice of just trying to feed yourself . . ."

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Somewhere in the interview I mentioned an African economist who has suggested that "foreign aid" as it is constituted is not helping Africa climb out of poverty. That man is a Kenyan, James Shikwati. An interview with him in the German magazine Der Spiegel from 2005 can be found here:

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...

SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ...

Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

This video should roll into parts 2 and 3 automatically.

UPDATE: See also:
Poverty Inc website here.

UPDATE2: Fixed the last video embed.

Exporting Good Ideas: The RiverHawk Multimission Platform Launched

MSS Image

For Lebanon, as reported by MarineLink, RiverHawk's Multimission Platform Launched

RiverHawk Fast Sea Frames (RHFSF) has launched its signature Advanced Multimission Platform (AMP) at its shipyard in Tampa, Florida. Fully designed and built in the United States, the 145-foot coastal security craft was contracted 12 months ago by the U S Department of the Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to Maritime Security Strategies (MSS) of Tampa, Florida. RiverHawk designed, produced and is outfitting the ship, scheduled for final delivery to NAVSEA in May. Subsequent transfer is expected this summer to the Lebanese Armed Forces under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The launching ceremony was attended by NAVSEA program officials, representatives from the U S Central Command (USCENTCOM) and a delegation from Lebanon led by the Chief of the Lebanese Navy, Rear Admiral Nazih Baroudi.

The AMP 145 is a design contracted for by Maritime Security Strategies of Tampa, which describes the design as follows:

Each Advanced Multimission Platform begins with our basic design, the AMP-145.
The platforms are built performance tough, using state of the art fabrication processes, materials, and technologies.
12 month delivery.
Composite hull with Aluminum deck and superstructure for speeds of 30+ knots.
Twin Hamilton Waterjets/MTU diesel plants.

Strait of Malacca Maritime Security: DoD-funded Integrated Maritime Surveillance System

An announcement from the U.S. Department of State DoD-funded Integrated Maritime Surveillance System:

Fact Sheet
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
November 18, 2011

From FY2006 to FY2008 the U.S. Government provided approximately $57 million via the National Defense Authorization Act Section 1206 to support Indonesia’s establishment of an Integrated Maritime Surveillance System (IMSS) strategically located to cover Malacca Strait, Sulawesi Sea, and Moluccas Strait.

The fully operational IMSS enhances Indonesia’s ability to detect, track, and monitor vessels passing through territorial and international waters. This capability is crucial to combating piracy, illegal fishing, smuggling, and terrorism within and around Indonesia’s maritime borders. The IMSS helps achieve Indonesian and U.S. maritime security goals and exemplifies bilateral cooperation under the Comprehensive Partnership, along with setting conditions for increased multilateral collaboration with Malaysia and the Philippines.

The IMSS is a tightly integrated network of ship and shore based sensors, communications devices, and computing resources that collect, transmit, analyze and display a broad array of maritime data including automatic identification system (AIS), surface radar, surveillance cameras, global positioning system (GPS), equipment health monitors and radio transmissions of maritime traffic in wide operating areas. Redundant sensors and multiple communication paths make the IMSS a robust and capable system.

The IMSS was officially handed over to the Government of Indonesia following an Operational Demonstration conducted in Surabaya on October 25, 2011. The IMSS is manned and operated by the Indonesian Navy, and consists of 18 Coastal Surveillance Stations (CSS), 11 Ship-based Radars, two Regional Command Centers, and two Fleet Command Centers (Jakarta and Surabaya)

The U.S. government remains committed to improving maritime domain awareness in the region and has allocated an additional $4.6 to ensure sustainment until 2014.

More on the IMSS from it's developer here:

Integrated Maritime Surveillance System (Techno-Sciences, Inc. photos)

Trident's Integrated Maritime Surveillance System (IMSS) is designed for governments and other appropriate authorities challenged with demanding Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and Common Operating Picture (COP) requirements.

The IMSS is a tightly integrated network of ship and shore based sensors, communications devices and computing resources that collect, transmit, analyze and display a broad array of disparate data including automatic information system (AIS), radar, surveillance cameras, global positioning system (GPS), equipment health monitors and radio transmissions of maritime traffic in a wide operating area. Redundant sensors and multiple communications paths make the system robust and still functional even in the case of a major component failure.

The clever open architecture and purposeful use commercial off-the-shelf components provides the customer tremendous flexibility in making performance-cost trade offs today and in making capability upgrades and additions tomorrow.