Nobunaga wrote:... If these nations teeming with the hungry were all ruled by benevolent governments, distributing aid and food would be easy.
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Exactly, food aide that gets shipped to foreign countries from the USA often does not get distributed to the people that need it. It gets confiscated by the military and/or put on the market and sold, then the people who really need either don't get it or they have to pay enormous amounts of money to buy it (which is almost the same as not getting it).
There will always be starving people, I say work with your local communities in helping starving people in your own regions first. And by just
giving communities or countries food is not the solid answer we are looking for. Too often the USA gives out so much food that the countries that have been receiving the aide for generations begin to forget how to provide for themselves. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to establish a sufficient agricultural based program via some type of Peace Corpse effort that trains communities to provide those types of resources themselves, in addition to providing humanitarian aide in the form of communal infrastructure.
But the key is the oppressive governments that are in place and not allowing the aide to get to its people. At some point the surrounding communities will have to get involved on their own merit and solve these problems on their own. It shouldn't necessarily be entirely up to the US to provide all these things.
I would say that if the government is friendly towards American policy, that we should offer help in the form of a Peace Corpse effort to help civil engineer a working system that would provide the needed resources, but refrain from providing all the food and resources. Offering knowledge and education as one of the most important resources, just not handing out bags of rice or GMO corn.
But in dealing with a hostile government towards American policy, I would recommend that the issue should be left up to the local communities that are either part or surround such said hostile government. In such a fashion, the people from such a hostile government could possibly learn from localized emulation.
The most important aspect is forming a peaceful trade relationship with all these nations, and keep our noses out as much as possible. What's so bad about trading? Surely all governments (friendly or oppressive) have some sort of resources of which to offer us? We are, after all, considered a capitalist nation. Then our policies should reflect that.