The millennium challenge account: Neo-liberalism, poverty and security1

Abstract

ABSTRACT March 2002 George W. Bush announced that the new Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) would increase US development assistance by $5 billion per annum. The MCA's goal of ‘reducing poverty through growth’ was highlighted in the November 2002 National Security Strategy, which elevated development to join defence and diplomacy as one of the three pillars of the ‘war on terror’. This paper critiques the crude and dogmatic alignments that the NSS and the MCA draw between neoliberal economic policies, poverty reduction and security. Drawing on an analysis of the first five MCA ‘Compacts’ with Cape Verde, Honduras, Madagascar, Nicaragua and Georgia, I argue that the newly invigorated security-development paradigm is being used to legitimate more spending on ‘development’ programmes which are primarily intended to serve the interests of US consumers, manufacturers and investors. Despite the rhetoric, poverty reduction is at best a secondary objective. The paradox of American empire is that its pursuit of economic hegemony through the extension and ever-deepening penetration of neoliberal capitalism (in which the MCA is one small vehicle) precisely undermines the conditions for sustainable profitability, as well as social justice. This analysis suggests that like its military and diplomatic counterparts, the developmental ‘pillar’ of national security will contribute to the erosion of human and political security for the United States and the rest of the world.