GLOBAL

TRANSFORM is an international humanitarian program to assist third world countries to rise out of poverty, especially nations and peoples who are being harmed by terrorist organization.

The human tragedy of immense suffering and incredibly high death rates in underdeveloped countries is not caused by a world shortage of food or other goods to alleviate that suffering. Nor is it caused by a lack of will or ability of people in the U.S. or other developed nations to collect the goods to alleviate a tremendous proportion of the suffering and death.

The limiting factor is the cost of transportation. It is a radical limit, and if transportation were provided to the private volunteer organizations (PVOs) which collect the goods, there would be a vast increase in the amount of aid delivered to the needy instead of being tossed into landfills.

The TRANSFORM Concept is an important part of the remedy to an ancient and ongoing global tragedy, the key to a new era of world peace and prosperity.  Read More

Half the world lives in luxury and half in miserable poverty. This tragedy is unnecessary and in recent years has become a contributing factor to terrorist activity. It has been truly established that extreme poverty causes social and political instability, presenting breeding grounds for terrorism.

Peoples having suffered centuries, even millennia, from abject poverty are susceptible to be recruited as terrorists. The Mid East is not the only area with a large human pool of this kind of potential recruits.

Especially this is true when the recruits can be persuaded to believe that the other half of the world is living immorally, exports that immorality into the recruits’ nation’s culture, and is rolling in luxury with surplus goods much of which it wastes, destroying or disposing of it at great cost rather than give it to the desperately needy peoples. Terrorism has blossomed in this age partly because the communications revolution has provided the means for these slanted persuasions to be copiously applied, producing the required degree of hatred.

Of course many terrorists are well educated and some quite wealthy, but they are the organizers not the foot soldiers, and they need many recruits to form a political and military base for over-throwing existing governments, and need an environment of empathetic humanity which will tolerate, cover for, contribute money to, and generally support the terrorist organization. Without bribes that the organizing group gives to their families, there would not be as many willing participants in suicide missions. And without extreme poverty these bribes would be less compelling.

Likewise, illegal drug trafficking would be less attractive if there were less extreme poverty and more remunerative jobs, both of which TRANSFORM promotes.

Terrorism and wars with weapons of mass destruction increasingly become more likely the longer this situation exists.

Beyond the terrorism issue, the world’s overall economy is unnecessarily limited from progressing toward its full potential because of half the world’s people remaining unproductive and permanently dependent on foreign aid. Humanitarian considerations alone justify an effort to relieve the tragic situation.

Of course, military power has a major role in putting down terrorism. But we need an improved system of providing aid to and re-building nations including those that have to be conquered, damaged, and/or overrun, in the interest of counter-terrorism (like Afghanistan and Iraq). Also needed is a vastly improved system for relieving abject, prolonged poverty, a cause of instability and terrorism—a system that preemptively attacks the causes of terrorism at its real roots. TRANSFORM can meet this need, and can help reduce the probability of the adoption of terrorist movements. TRANSFORM can reduce the frequency and extent of the need to opt for the more costly choice of a purely military solution.

The obvious solution is for the wealthy nations to share their excess production with the poverty-stricken third world. TRANSFORM is a system which allows this to happen at practically no financial sacrifice to the donor nations.

Although corporate America and many governmental and non-governmental organizations combine in generous giving of goods and services, the total amount of their giving is sharply limited by factors that the large-scale application of the TRANSFORM Concept would eliminate. By using the TRANSFORM system, much of the excess of the donor nations, now being disposed of in landfills at great expense to budgets and with damage to our environments, could be shared with those ultra-needy nations.

The system requires a few changes to what exists now, but the changes are EASILY IMPLEMENTABLE AND RELATIVELY CHEAP.

The biggest reason for the failure of the wealthy nations, especially the United States, to share fully their surplus goods with the poor peoples of the world, is not an unwillingness to give them--rather the reason is the unaffordable cost of transportation to ship those goods across the oceans. Often the worth of the goods shipped is exceeded by the cost of transportation of the goods.

The TRANSFORM Concept eliminates this weakness by providing the means to make available more affordable transportation. This is the key to a much more affordable counter-terrorism effort.

The affordable transportation system is based on offering to pay a reduced price for use of spare space aboard carriers whose cargo space is not full. The export-import imbalance by which many ships and planes depart the U.S. partly empty raises the practicality of the prospect of obtaining reduced shipping costs outbound from the U.S.

C. PROVIDING INCENTIVES TO THE TRUCK LINES, SHIPLINES, RAIL LINES AND AIRLINES TO DO MORE OF THIS IS THE INDISPENSABLE KEY TO SUCCESS.

Some incentives to carriers (including overland carriers) to make this space available free or at lower than normal prices already exist, but more incentives need to be applied including the following:

1. Altruism on the part of the ownership of the carrier. (already exists).

2. The carrier’s desire to charge a lower price for spare space, a price which covers his cost, and at the same time gains his company “good will”. The government could publicize the participating ships in various ways, catalyzing this motivation.

3. Indirect suasion such as that which can be applied by a government shipper of goods (like USAID) that ordinarily awards highly lucrative contracts to a carrier. USAID can suggest that their awarding those contracts to individual carriers might be affected by the carrier’s willingness to engage in providing a certain number of lower priced, spare space shipments for humanitarian purposes in U.S. interests, such as countering terrorism, which includes the interests of the transportation sector itself which is particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Terrorism raises insurance rates, diminishes shipping and travel. Ships, planes and other carriers are among the most vulnerable targets of terrorism. The carriers should feel gratitude toward the government that uses tax-payers’ money to help protect them, and partly subsidizes them.

4. The most needed incentive is to provide a sufficiently generous tax break for the donations of services, like loading and moving cargo, freight-forwarding, etc., paralleling the break given for donation of goods. Such a parallel tax break does not now exist in the shipping industry, but it is justifiable and can be passed.

D. INCREASING SYNERGISM

A need to improve the coordination of the efforts of corporate America, government, and non-governmental organizations exists, and can be addressed with a huge payoff in results. TRANSFORM is qualified to help with that task. Several innovations should be looked into soon.

1. We should use more civil affairs and PSYOPS input and participation in planning and executing anti-terrorism and related developmental aid programs. Civil Affairs experience with the free Iraqi forces which were a major help in the Coalition Forces’ push from Kuwait to Baghdad in record time with minimal losses should be studied and exploited in such places as Colombia.

2. Unexploded mines and ordnance present a psychological and economic depressant in many poor nations. More emphasis should be applied toward soliciting public and NGO support for governmentally applied efforts in this field, as well as more media emphasis and other public relations means to highlight U.S. interest and commitment in this important humanitarian and developmentally related effort.

3. NGO’s have an aversion, justified in some cases, unjustified in others, to being seen involved in any program that is tinged by military participation. Both sides need to understand the other’s point of view, and then the situation must be improved. There is a very important book written on this subject that should be mandatory reading. Specifically dealing with mainly disaster mitigation, the book provides insights spilling over into other types of interventions: Title: U.S./NGO Relationship in Humanitarian Intervention, Author: Chris Seiple, Publisher: The Peace Keeping Institute, Center for Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College.

4. The era of terrorism is requiring some reorganization of our government and a new set of task assignments. That the reorganization is unfinished is nobody’s fault, but it cannot remain unfinished. The willingness of faith-based organizations to deliver aid in hazardous areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Colombia, could be bolstered by hazardous duty pay.

5. TRANSFORM is experienced in consulting relevant charities and conforming the appropriate sets of aid to be given in each case, and can help in ensuring that the aid is conducive to the theory of not just giving them a hand-out upon which they become dependent. Don’t just give them a fish, but teach them how to fish, ultimately to support themselves, and become profitable participants in world trade. Education is as important as material goods in this respect.

6. TRANSFORM is experienced in cooperating and taking guidance from relevant national authorities, cooperating with the benign and humane security interests of the United States whose objectives are world stability, and a globally accepted human rights pattern among nations. The U.S. is interested in an increase of human productivity globally and in an acceptable standard of human rights on the part of governments, an issue which would apply to TRANSFORM’s selection of beneficiaries except in the case of disaster mitigation aid.

7. TRANSFORM has vast experience in taking steps to avoid customs delays, pilfering of cargo, delays in shipments to the intended recipients, and other transporting bugaboos.

E. SUMMARY

Implementing this global policy that is entirely consistent with President Bush’s objectives and philosophy, and is likely to enjoy bi-partisan congressional support, would raise the order of magnitude of the capacity of the wealthy half of the world to share its excess goods and services with the poor half, saving money and environment in the process -- money and environment that would otherwise be wasted by disposing of the excess goods in earth-fills or by other expensive and harmful means of disposal. Taking a leadership role in this project would greatly improve the credibility and leadership capability of the U.S.

Implementation of a Global TRANSFORM System would provide a cheaper alternative to present means of eliminating terrorism at its roots, saving lives and treasure in the process.

Leading by example, the U.S. could organize other nations to use the TRANSFORM Concept, implementing international agreements granting tax breaks to any carrier carrying any country’s donated goods to any poor peoples, resulting in greater global peace and prosperity.

The TRANSFORM Program under the National Forum Foundation (recently re-named the “Admiral Jeremiah Denton Foundation”) has proved in action that this basic concept works to a significant degree, even without having the incentives of a tax break or any other new advantages recommended in this paper. Military participants like the Commander of Southern Command can testify that the Denton Program and TRANSFORM are great catalysts for building American credibility and respect in formerly unfriendly countries.

The only thing needed to make the immense changes in global spirit, economy, and accelerated improvement in global quality of life, is a decision on the part of American leadership to take the initiative to establish this concept in a national/international program.

Jeremiah A. Denton,

REAR ADMIRAL USN (RET)