The Bizarre Economic Theory Behind US Foreign Policy

I just finished reading the article in The Atlantic written by Jeffrey Goldberg where he talks with Hillary Clinton about Foreign Policy.

The article for the most part has nothing interesting to add to anyone's understanding of US foreign policy if said person takes time to keep up on what is going on around the world and has a basic understanding of recent history.  I don't even know why the article got so much hype.  The headline that drew me to the article was from another media source which claimed Ms. Clinton was critical of President Obama's foreign policy.  In fact she simply suggested there were factions, including apparently herself, that felt the Obama should have been more proactive and directly engaging in helping anti Syrian protesters turned militants to overthrow Assad.  Big deal.  If you read the whole article you will see that there is no guarantee that this would have resulted in any better outcome and
the US policies towards Libya are cited as evident of such.  It is also normal in any administration to have issues that draw strong feelings on both sides and an administration / leader has to make a decision some will not like and they are free to resign in protest.

For me, the most striking statement made by Ms. Clinton hits a very strong nerve in my understanding of the ignorance of one aspect of US foreign policy (and that of many other governments around the world who pump boatloads of humanitarian aid into developing nations) that has hijacked "group think" amongst most of the international organizations that are financed and overseen by "The Western Powers" ie; the US and Europe, and that statement is:

You can’t grow your GDP without opening the doors to full participation of women and girls in the formal economy.

I will not attempt to argue the merits of this statement other then to say, having lived in Washington, DC for some time and being privy to the occasional presentation / discussion / conversation on the topic of foreign aid and development of underdeveloped countries, I have seen the progression and metastization of this idea over some time.  I have often questioned its merits.  I have seen where the "research" on the issue comes from and read many articles that profess it's validity.  However, it is also clear the the statement is completely false if taken in the context of what it is supposedly implies: that "full participation", meaning the education and workforce participation of women vs woman's traditional participation in the "economy", i.e.; not through education and workforce participation, which was predominant through the middle of the 20th century in the same "western" nations that now profess this role, "must" be redefined to fit the "group think" of the global powers that control and shape "development" aid around the world.   Think about this: Was there not incredible economic growth in Western Nations between 1790 and 1860 or between 1860 to 1930?  What was the "full participation of women and girls in the formal economy" then?

What I am going to do is call a spade a spade and stick my neck out and say something that may offend many people and I really don't give a damn because I strongly believe the current thinking on the subject in the West does more to feed distrust and push-back against the West then any other single foreign policy issue on the international agenda.  The ideology that backs the statement Ms. Clinton made is an ideology designed specifically to attack a core value of what defines Muslim Identity around the world.  The overriding emphasis on this "full participation of women" ideology is the most powerful public policy agenda against Islam and the most powerful rallying call to the populations of nations who are called upon to submit their young people to war against people who call Islam their religion.

I am not going to say that the emergence and success of something like "micro-lending" around the world, which goes primarily to women, and assumes that these women's economic success are at the core of pulling people and hence nations out of poverty, does not have merit.  But where is the world's poverty index in the 20 odd years of this phenomenon?  It is amazing how many "economic" studies still use $1 or $1.25 as some kind of base number to measure poverty!  They also use 1990 as a base year... You do the math.  How many dollars does it take to equate to the real purchasing power of $1.25 in 2014 relative to 1990?  Try $2.25, almost double. Take even a smaller increase in this number to $2 and you get:

In all, 2.4 billion people lived on less than US $2 a day in 2010, the average poverty line in developing countries and another common measurement of deep deprivation. That is only a slight decline from 2.59 billion in 1981.

In the US alone the poverty rate has doubled in near urban suburbs and gone up 50% in cities since 2000 according to this Bloomberg article just released.  The US has a "full" participation of women in it's economy today, not entirely by choice, but also out of the need to survive as the vast majority of Americans do not have access to the jobs of the elite 30% or so of the nation's population who have the education and access to high paying jobs. Besides, it only takes a decade of completely reckless Western financial markets that have essentially turned the global economic system into one large gambling casino functioning much more like its 1914 then 2014, to completely reverse ALL of the International efforts to eradicate poverty over the same time.  You know how easy it is to wipe out 20 years of economic "progress".  The people who play in this casino have NO interest in their repercussions on the world's population. That is not what makes them tick.  How large the participation of women in a given economic system is moot when taking this into consideration.

So the next time you hear some "do good", well educated (well indoctrinated) person stand up and try to make a case that "You can’t grow your GDP without opening the doors to full participation of women and girls in the formal economy.", ask them where that idea ever came from in the first place.  They will not be able to answer you in historical terms, only in the propaganda they have been fed over the last couple of decades, those same decades where "we" (the West) have been in an ever growing global war against Islam and the same two decades where in our world the "labor force participation (i.e.; economic) of women and girls" has long since peaked and at the same time the poverty indexes of many developed nations with this high participation rate have also increased, jobs have evaporated and the standard of living has worsened.

So show me where Ms. Clinton's statement is more beneficial then harmful in foreign policy today and show me the economic proof that historically what she claims is true.