Confronting Poverty

In this important new book, former Brookings senior fellow Susan E. Rice spearheads an investigation of the connections between poverty and fragile states and the implications for American security. Coedited by Rice and former Brookings colleagues Corinne Graff and Carlos Pascual, "Confronting Poverty" is a timely reminder that alleviating global poverty and shoring up weak states are not only humanitarian and economic imperatives, but key components of a more balanced and sustainable U.S. national security strategy.

From Rice's introduction In today's world, risks to U.S. national security extend well beyond a handful of hostile states. Foremost among them are transnational security threats that, by definition, are not limited to any individual state. They include terrorism, weapons proliferation, the global economic crisis, conflict, infectious disease, international crime and narcotics flows, climate change, and environmental degradation. These transnational phenomena can threaten U.S.national security because they have the potential to kill significant numbers of Americans whether swiftly or over an extended period of time.

Rice elucidates the relationship between poverty, state weakness, and transnational security threats, and Graff and Pascual offer policy recommendations. The book's overarching conclusions highlight the need to invest in poverty alleviation and capacity building in weak states to break the vicious cycle of poverty, fragility, and transnational threats.

"Confronting Poverty" grows out of a project on global poverty and U.S. national security that Rice directed at Brookings from 2002 through January 2009, before she became U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. It builds on the findings of the Brookings Index of State Weakness in the Developing World, an analytic tool that Rice published in a 2008 Brookings report coauthored with Stewart Patrick, now at the Council on Foreign Relations.