December 1, 2008

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Long before Susan Rice was Obama's pick for UN Ambassador, she contributed this piece to UN Dispatch. Originally published May 31, 2007.

by Susan Rice, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution

When Americans see televised images of bone-thin African or Asian kids with distended bellies, what do we think? We think of helping. For all the right reasons, our humanitarian instincts tend to take over. But when we look at UNICEF footage or a Save the Children solicitation, does it also occur to us that we are seeing a symptom of a threat that could destroy our way of life? Rarely. In fact, global poverty is far more than solely a humanitarian concern. In real ways, over the long term, it can threaten U.S. national security.

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