Healthier, Wealthier, Better Educated,
and More Interconnected

When you look at all the measures of well-being in the world, if you had a choice of when to be born and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be—what nationality, whether you were male or female, what religion—but you had said, “When in human history would be the best time to be born?” the time would be now.

—President Barack Obama, September 7, 2016

In 2013, a Swedish research firm wanted to know what the residents of the world’s most powerful and influential nation knew about the world outside its borders.1 What it found out is not pretty. That its survey showed the American people lacked detailed knowledge about global affairs was unsurprising. More interesting, however, is the way Americans are wrong. Eighty-three percent believed that less than half of the world’s children had been vaccinated for measles. In fact, 85 percent of kids have received this life-saving vaccine.² Americans underestimated the number of adults with basic literacy skills (a majority guessed 60 percent; it is actually 80 percent). Most telling, however, was the response to a question about the proportion of people in the world living in extreme poverty. Two-thirds said the global poverty rate had “almost doubled,” 29 percent said it has “remained more or less the same,” and a mere 5 percent picked what was then the correct answer—that it has been cut in half.

This survey is an incomplete snapshot, but it is backed up by other data. When Americans were polled in the fall of 2017 about their perceptions of the world, just 16 percent agreed that “the world is getting better,” while nearly four times as many (63 percent) thought it was getting worse.3 A 2016 poll found that 92 percent of Americans believed that extreme poverty has either increased or stayed the same over the past two decades.⁴

In short, Americans think the world is a pretty lousy place. That means they are missing the most important international story of any of our lifetimes—namely, that it has never been a better time to be a human being than right now.

Today, the seven and a half billion people who reside on our planet live longer lives; are better educated; have greater access to health care, sanitation, and food; and are far less likely to live in extreme poverty. These improvements, most of which have occurred over the previous two to three decades, have reduced the potential for military conflict, created social and economic opportunities for women and girls that previously never existed, and improved the happiness and quality of life for billions of people. Indeed, these are the fastest and most extraordinary advances in human progress in the history of the species.

Recognizing and celebrating this unprecedented improvement in the human experience does not mean that global development work has reached its conclusion. Neither does it diminish the obstacles facing those who continue to lack access to health services or live in countries where poverty eradication has stalled, which increasingly includes the United States. There are still hundreds of millions of people around the world who remain in dire need. However, to overlook positive social trend lines ignores the unquestioned successes of global development endeavors and further cements the pessimistic view that little can be done to improve the lives of others. If recent history teaches us anything, it is that the opposite is true—the power to enhance people’s lives for the better is overwhelmingly within our grasp.

These vast improvements in the health and well-being of people outside the United States—and the increased global interconnectivity among governments, markets, and people—matters a great deal for ordinary Americans. The United States has global interests that range from protecting treaty allies and preventing nuclear proliferation to expanding export markets. Those interests are far better secured when children across the world are in school learning, women are able to work and have greater control of their bodies and their lives, and people’s time on earth is longer, happier, and more fulfilling. All of these factors are strongly correlated with greater political stability and lesser chances for conflict. Fewer states at war means reduced regional tensions that may otherwise compel a government to obtain weapons of mass destruction and more stable and prosperous economies to purchase American goods and services. When the world is a better place for more people, it is also a better place for the United States.

How the World Became Far Better for Far More People

Why has the world become such a wealthier, healthier, freer, and less violent place? It is no coincidence that it began to occur at the same time that the Cold War was winding down. As communism was cast into the ashbin of history, once-closed-off countries adopted policies that made them more economically dynamic and interdependent. At the same time, new information technologies became increasingly ubiquitous—even in some of the world’s poorest countries. Take the experience of China. Beginning in the early 1990s, Chinese leaders opened their country to foreign investment and global trade. Economic growth became a national priority, and while the reigning Communist Party stubbornly clung to one-party rule, it began to loosen the political, economic, and social restrictions that had impeded the country’s development. Similar efforts at moving to a more-market-based economy began in India, the world’s second-most-populous country. Between 1990 and 2016, GDP per capita increased by $7,800 in China and $1,350 in India.5

The success of the world’s two most populous nations in raising living standards has been a critical driver of global social and economic change. But the advances in the human condition over the past several decades have hardly been restricted to these two nations. In practically every country on earth, there have been significant and notable improvements in reducing poverty, extending life expectancies, and improving health outcomes.

To chart that growth, a good place to start is the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are an initiative that will be familiar to few Americans outside the world of global development. Indeed, even for most foreign policy professionals, the MDGs are not well understood or appreciated. But this landmark commitment—agreed to unanimously by all 193 countries in September 2000—has been translated into eight sweeping goals that have transformed the developing world and changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people for the better. Moreover, the MDGs offer a compelling lesson of how the international community can continue to work together for the common global good—which will be essential as world leaders face the growing and potentially calamitous threat of climate change.

When the MDGs were initially proposed, development trend lines were already moving in a more positive direction, but their global adoption brought more sustained political focus and consolidated numerous governmental and nongovernmental resources. By definition, the creation of strategic goals only occurs when leaders and states agree that they want to accelerate progress. The MDGs represented concrete and actionable goals that every country in the world supported. Moreover, they created metrics that allow us to assess the trajectory of human development—and the results speak for themselves.

The first and most essential MDG was aimed at eradicating extreme poverty and hunger—and for good reason. Reducing poverty, besides making life better, opens up innumerable economic opportunities: more food, more leisure, longer lives, and perhaps, above all else, lowers economic anxiety and stress. It means children in developing countries are more likely to live past their fifth birthday. It means they go to school, rather than toil in fields or factories. And it means they will have access to health care that will ensure they will not be felled by preventable diseases and illnesses. Mothers who have confidence that their children will not just survive into adolescence and adulthood but have an opportunity for success will get pregnant less often. With fewer kids to care for, women are more likely to enter the workforce, which increases overall household wealth. Higher income means that even the smallest luxuries of life—which people in the developed world take for granted, such as taking a vacation, buying a toy, or getting an ice cream cone as a treat for our children—suddenly become available. Quite simply, a life not lived in poverty means far greater happiness.6

Since 1990, the reduction in global poverty rates has been astounding. Over the past twenty-eight years, the number of people in the developing world living on less than $1.25 a day (a traditional definition for extreme poverty) has been reduced by one billion.7 Back then, approximately half the developing world was mired in such crippling poverty; today, it is fewer than one in ten, and it continues to drop year after year, with further reductions challenging but likely.⁸

China accounts for much of this decline, having seen its extreme poverty rate drop by 60 percent in just eighteen years. This means that by 2017 more than eight hundred million Chinese citizens had been lifted out of economic deprivation.⁹ But China’s evolution has been replicated in countries across the globe. Iran’s poverty rate has gone from 17.6 percent in 1986 to under 1 percent in 2014.¹⁰ El Salvador’s fell from 36 percent in 1989 to 1.9 percent in 2015, and Ethiopia went from 92 percent in 1981 to under 30 percent today.¹¹ The underlying cause for these rapid improvements has been the end of conflict: bloody civil wars in El Salvador and Ethiopia and, for Iran, the end to a brutal eight-year struggle with Iraq. It is yet another reminder that fewer wars and greater peace and stability bring enormous residual benefits.

In other places, however, the story is simpler: countries liberalized their economies and removed trade barriers that prevented them from selling their products overseas. They attracted new investment and new businesses with the advantage of lower labor costs. They sent workers overseas to send back remittances to family members, and at home, they strengthened the social safety net to help give those who were mired in poverty a helping hand. And perhaps above all, as more countries became democratic, it put pressure on political leaders to keep the good economic times going—or face the potential prospect of losing their own jobs. We can see positive results from Brazil, where the poverty rate dropped from 20 percent in 1990 to just 4.3 percent in 2015.¹² In Namibia, it went from 69 percent in 1993 to 27 percent in 2015,¹³ and in Bangladesh, it dropped from 44 percent in 1990 to 24.3 percent in 2016.14 While these countries still face serious social and economic challenges, their success in reducing poverty is staggering.

As for hunger, the trend lines are similarly positive. In 1990, about one in five people in the developing world suffered from undernourishment. Since then, that number has been cut in half.¹⁵

At one time, famine was one of the world’s worst killers. In the 1960s alone, it took the lives of more than eighteen million people. Biafra, Bangladesh, North Korea, and Ethiopia had all been witness to famines that killed more than a million in each country. China is estimated to have lost thirty million people during the 1950s and ’60s in a famine caused, in part, by horribly misguided government policies. By contrast, from 2010 through 2016, the number of people killed in famine was around a quarter of a million—a tragedy, of course, but also an indication of how far the world has come in preventing such deaths.¹⁶

The MDGs also established benchmarks for universal primary education and promoted greater gender equality by ensuring that young girls had the same opportunity to go to school as young boys. The benefits of such a strategy are self-evident: a better-educated populace means that more people can read and write. When more people are literate, that translates into a workforce that is more highly skilled and innovative, less unequal, and more productive. But the benefits of education are particularly important when it comes to young women. Girls who are enrolled in school at a young age are more likely to get married later in life. They have fewer children and thus lower levels of poverty. They are at reduced danger of the most common and acute diseases that have long ravaged the developing world. And girls who are given the chance to attend school along with their male peers are more likely to grow up to be women who are socially and personally empowered to take control of their own destiny. Ask any development expert about the best way to lift up a developing economy, and virtually all of them will give you the same answer: make sure girls are going to school.17

Increasingly that is exactly what is happening. Primary-education enrollment rates in the developing world have jumped from 83 percent in 2000 to 91 percent today.¹⁸ That might seem like a relatively small rise, but, in fact, it means that more than forty million more children spend their day in a classroom today than did fifteen years ago. In 1990, in sub-Saharan Africa, only 45 percent of the population received a basic education; today, 80 percent do.¹⁹ The jump in South Asia and Southeast Asia has gone from 75 percent to 95 percent; and in the Middle East and North Africa, from 68 percent to 95 percent.²⁰

Today, the global literacy rate stands at 91 percent among young people and 86 percent for adults; in 1990, just 61 percent of the world could read or write.²¹ For young girls, the story is even more positive. In South Asia, in 1990, the girls’ literacy rate was 49 percent, and an average of 74 girls compared to 100 boys were in primary school; today, the rate is 85 percent, and the enrollment ratio stands at 103 girls for every 100 boys.²² Across all developing countries, girls are less likely than boys to repeat grades or drop out of school. This has helped to promote steady advances in female labor-force participation (for both formal and informal work).²³ Today, a previously unimaginable percentage of young boys and girls around the world are being educated. This both improves lives and, once again, makes the world a safer place, since countries with higher education levels are less likely to find themselves mired in armed conflict.²⁴

Two MDGs were aimed at decreasing child mortality and im-proving maternal health. This has led to notable increases in vaccination rates that have reduced the number of children felled by preventable diseases by more than seven million. This decline has helped cut the under-five child mortality rate in half since 1990. That means that every year, 272,000 children who two or three decades ago would have died are alive today.25 Here, enhanced access to education has had an enormous impact, since increases in education levels for women strongly correlate with reduced levels of childhood mortality.²⁶ In the same period, maternal mortality rates have dropped globally by 45 percent, with the sharpest decline occurring from 2000 to 2005.²⁷ This means that in 2017, more than 136,000 mothers who would have died a couple of decades ago are alive and able to help raise their children. Finally, the increased availability of family planning options cut the number of unintended pregnancies around the world by 44 percent between 1990 and 2014.²⁸

An MDG focused on combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases has been similarly transformative. Since 2000, new HIV infections have dropped 45 percent around the world, and more than thirteen million AIDS-related deaths have been averted.²⁹ Additionally, tuberculosis prevention and treatment saved an estimated fifty-three million lives, increased measles immunizations prevented more than twenty million deaths between 2000 and 2016, and polio has largely been eradicated. There were just eleven active cases of the disease as of July 2018.³⁰ An oral polio vaccine—delivered with just two drops—and the necessary funding to make it widely available had, as of 2014, saved the lives of more than 650,000 people over the previous twenty-five years.³¹ In March 2018, South Sudan announced that it had eradicated guinea worm, a parasitic illness that causes agonizing and incapacitating pain. In 1986, the disease afflicted three and a half million people in the developing world. In 2017, the number had fallen to thirty, and by May 2018, there were just three reported cases.³² According to the Carter Center, which has been at the forefront of the guinea-worm eradication effort, close to eighty million cases of the illness have been averted over the past thirty years.³³

Improved access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation has been another target of the MDGs. The expanded international commitment to these issues has helped more than a fifth of the current global population (1.3 billion people) gain access to sanitation since 2000.34 In addition to saving the lives of 340,000 children who used to die from diarrhea because they were exposed to dirty water, improved sanitation also keeps children in school instead of sick at home. Even better, children with access to clean drinking water are in better shape physically, cognitively, and even socially.³⁵

Nutritional advances have come so quickly and been so significant that public health officials now express concern over what is known as the “double burden of malnutrition,” in which developing countries are simultaneously experiencing health perils generally associated with being overweight as well as those from undernourishment. Amazingly, obesity now poses greater harm globally than lack of adequate nutrition does, a phenomenon that would have been unimaginable even a quarter century ago.³⁶

What is perhaps most remarkable about all this sweeping progress is that it was achieved at the same time that the planet’s population grew by one and a half billion people, and global life expectancy increased by more than five full years since the MDGs were announced in 2000.³⁷

Yet for all of the success of the MDGs (and also the full panoply of public health and human development changes), they are rarely mentioned in current foreign policy debates. Long-term positive trends go largely unreported, with the focus instead, almost exclusively, on “hard” security issues, such as coercive “redlines,” nuclear weapons, terrorism, and drone strikes. Highlighting polio eradication, for example, does not drive internet clicks, justify a larger Pentagon budget, or motivate voters to support a more interventionist foreign policy. In the United States, good news about the world has little political salience, and it is simply not deemed newsworthy. The development scholar Laura Freschi pithily captured why this phenomenon matters. She observed in 2010 that more Americans believed that their president was a Muslim than had heard of the improvements in quality of life on our planet.38

Global Interconnectivity

While the global development community deserves enormous credit for many of the advances chronicled above, they drafted off of historic geopolitical changes. When the Cold War ended, the most resonant image was the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. The pictures of Germans chipping away at the barrier that had separated them for thirty-eight years—and the pictures of supposed enemies joyfully embracing—were poignant reminders of the universal desire for freedom. From that moment forward, hundreds of millions of people around the world—from Jakarta to Johannesburg and Managua to Minsk—began choosing their own leaders, holding them accountable, and voicing their opinions without the government interference they endured while living under dictatorship.

Yet, in the nearly thirty years since that epoch-making event, it is the economic bonds built between peoples and countries that have played the leading role in changing the human experience for the better. Communism, by its very nature, was an overwhelmingly closed economic system that purposely avoided commercial and business ties with capitalist nations. Even countries outside the Soviet and Chinese orbits often pursued economic policies that protected failing native industries; suppressed talented entrepreneurs, investment, economic innovation, and development; and, more generally, shut the door to the outside world.

But with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the gradual shift in China toward an export-driven economic strategy, all of that began to change. China transitioned along with its regional neighbors—Japan and South Korea and then Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Even in noncommunist countries like India and Brazil, the end of the Cold War ushered out protectionist policies in favor of those seeking foreign investment, encouraging entrepreneurship, and creating new and vibrant trade links. Tariffs went down, and subsidies were slowly eased out, as countries worked to fashion themselves into more attractive investment destinations for global businesses.

The results are overwhelming. Foreign direct investment in the developing world has gone from $26 billion a year in 1990 to $653 billion in 2017, while private capital flows went from $91 billion to $1.2 trillion during the same time.39

Emerging economies are today deeply reliant on international trade not only as a means of development and job creation but also for attracting new capital investments and technical expertise. The result is stronger and more diversified economies, higher productivity, significant improvements in the welfare of women, and of course, reduced poverty.⁴⁰

Recent trends, such as a decline in G-20 imports and new trade restrictions, suggest that this economic openness has slowed—the consequences of which have been hundreds of billions of dollars in lost global GDP.⁴¹ In addition, while the process of globalization has contributed to higher living standards, it can contribute to greater income inequality and has given impetus to nativist and anti-immigrant movements in Europe and the United States. These are issues of serious concern, and if they go unaddressed in Western democracies, it could undermine the economic progress made over the past quarter century. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly true that far more people have benefited from globalization than have been harmed.42

From the perspective of global security, the benefits are even more clear-cut because when a country trades with other states, it significantly diminishes the likelihood of conflict. Doubling a country’s international commerce can reduce its risk of interstate violence by up to 30 percent, while countries with no regional trade ties are more than twice as likely as their highly integrated neighbors to experience a civil war.⁴³ Similarly, when a country experiences an increase in foreign direct investment, it significantly improves the welfare of women and reduces the likelihood that the country will participate in an armed conflict.⁴⁴ Being an active participant in today’s globalized economy does not eliminate the possibility of a country going to war, as is evinced by America’s ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. However, it is a fact that countries with increased economic interconnectivity are less likely to find themselves mired in conflict.

The Smartphone Story

The foregoing numbers, while impressive, do not fully do justice to the impact of economic integration over the past few decades. Visualizing the spectrum of changes that global interdependence has wrought is as simple as reaching into your pocket and pulling out your phone. That device that you use to talk to and text with your friends and family, get news, watch soccer or basketball clips, find out what the president of the United States just tweeted, or play Words with Friends offers one of the best possible explanations for how the world has become more connected, wealthier, and safer—and why it is likely to stay that way.

Since there are many smartphones, let’s pick the one that is perhaps most ubiquitous: Apple’s iPhone. Since its introduction in 2007, the iPhone has improved productivity, sped up communications, and allowed for more people to live and work remotely from their employers, customers, or clients. The iPhone is sold in more than 130 countries—a symbolic example of how the removal of trade barriers has spurred the rapid adoption of transformative technologies in both rich and poor countries. Some 725 million smartphones were sold in 2012, increasing to more than 1.5 billion by 2016, of which more than 600 million went to emerging-market customers from China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia.45 Additionally, while mobile internet usage in Western countries is increasing fourfold annually, it is rising twenty-seven-fold in developing countries. There are 5.2 billion smartphone subscriptions globally, with 8.5 billion projected by 2023—and most of them will be in the developing world.⁴⁶ In many countries, there are actually more cell phones than people. In places like Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, the landscape is defined by omnipresent cell towers that now provide mobile services to more than 80 percent of the population.⁴⁷

The iPhone contains components that have been developed and manufactured in multiple countries, which exemplifies how patent protections, increased foreign investment, and globalized supply chains have spread economic development across the globe. Take, for example, the iPhone X, which was released in fall 2017. Its accelerometer comes from the German firm Bosch, the display screen from the South Korea–based giant Samsung, the electronic compass from the Japanese firm Alps Electronic Company, and various radio-frequency components from Skyworks Solutions, a company located in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts.⁴⁸ The iPhone X was assembled at a Taiwanese-owned Foxconn plant in southern China, which is emblematic of the inflow of low-wage manufacturing jobs that have taken the world’s most populous nation from impoverishment to becoming among the most dynamic and steadily growing economies in the world.

The iPhone and the internet access it provides have further empowered hundreds of millions of people in developing nations. From Tunisia to Egypt’s Tahrir Square and in multiple elections in fledgling democracies, ordinary citizens have used their cell phones to safeguard votes against electoral fraud and organize activists and pro-democracy demonstrators. Mobile technology and social media apps have made it possible for citizens to compile damning information about their governments, report abuses to news outlets outside their communities, and more easily publicize those abuses on a variety of social media platforms. This has even, ironically, become a problem for Apple itself. In 2012, after workers at the company’s Foxconn factories in China documented and publicized poor working conditions there, Apple agreed to independent audits of the facilities by the Fair Labor Association. Here in America, cell-phone cameras have served as an invaluable tool for documenting and holding local police officers accountable for police shootings and gave critical impetus to the Black Lives Matter movement.49

Governments have also occasionally used mobile technology to expand democratic participation. In 2014, Libya’s election commission worked with the firm Reboot to digitize the country’s voter registration system, making it possible for voters (including diaspora Libyan citizens) to register for upcoming parliamentary elections on their phones. Considering that mobile penetration in Libya stood at nearly 150 percent, it was a move that made more sense than asking Libyans to register in person. More than 1.1 million citizens living in Libya and thirteen other countries were successfully signed up, and the system is still being used today to manage voter rolls. Libya remains fractured along ethnic and geographic lines, but the digital voting infrastructure remains in place if political leaders choose to reuse it in future elections.

Communication technologies are, of course, a double-edged sword, and governments have leveraged internet and mobile-phone penetration to spy on, influence, track, and harass their citizens. Journalists, activists, opposition-party leaders, and others have found their phones unknowingly implanted with spyware—often with the assistance of Western cybersecurity firms—that allows security services to monitor political opponents. Governments have also, at times, blocked or limited access to social media networks on the whims of political leaders. Yet technologically savvy and creative citizens are constantly developing workarounds to such spying—with encrypted communications, like Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as virtual private networks and other digital solutions that are not widely publicized. Government authorities have tried to control the flow of information and communications for centuries, and one should be under no illusion that this will not continue for the foreseeable future. Yet never before have so many people been more empowered to learn, connect, and collaborate in real time for relatively little cost.

Moreover, one does not need a cutting-edge smartphone to take advantage of the mobile revolution. Basic mobile phones are increasingly essential in those places where citizens do not have access to brick-and-mortar banks or any credit history. Mobile banking is benefiting hundreds of millions of new individuals each year by allowing them to document and save money, safely transfer funds, and pay down loans.50 In Kenya, 96 percent of households use mobile phones and mobile money, mostly through a text-message-based payment system called M-PESA.⁵¹ Researchers found that mobile banking makes it easier for breadwinners to provide for their families or for friends and family to send emergency funds immediately to each other when facing a health crisis. Between 2008 and 2014, more than 194,000 households were lifted out of poverty and 185,000 women were induced to enter the business world as a direct result of the societal shift provided by M-PESA.52

Similarly, smartphones are empowering a wide range of entrepreneurs in all sectors, from small business owners to farmers. For example, a free mobile app called MandiTrades allows farmers in India to receive real-time market information to help manage their crops, upload information about their produce right from the field, and finally connect with markets for sales.⁵³ In India, where one of the biggest challenges to cell-phone proliferation is getting the devices in the hands of women, wider access to smartphones will make it easier for women to find and apply for jobs outside the home and, as a result, increase their participation in the workforce.

Finally, that iPhone on which you play Candy Crush Saga and Fortnite is also saving lives. In Mozambique, for example, a free app alerts patients with HIV or tuberculosis when to take their medicine and reminds them of upcoming appointments.⁵⁴ Other programs send text messages and voice mails to new and expectant mothers, with basic advice on nutrition, health, and immunization schedules. In Bangladesh, the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action has reached more than five hundred thousand pregnant women and new moms.⁵⁵ In Pakistan, targeted calls from provincial educational officials and local school council members increased the school enrollment rates for young girls by 12 percent.⁵⁶ More broadly, in classrooms around the developing world, tablets and cell phones are increasingly replacing books and notepads, as students can now download reading assignments directly, helping to improve literacy and promote reading.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, more stories that speak to the direct positive impact that mobile technology has had on global public health, the promotion of democracy, the improvement of educational outcomes, and the expansion of economic growth. But there is one behind-the-scenes component that makes all of this possible. What, for example, protects the patents used to develop the iPhone? The answer: international treaties (starting with the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1884) that uphold patent rights and bolster international organizations (namely, the Patent Cooperation Treaty), which ensures that Apple’s intellectual property rights are protected. What makes it possible for you to get on a plane, fly to China, and use a phone as if you were in your home country? Answer: several international agreements (starting with the International Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables, also of 1884) and industry groups (particularly the International Cable Protection Committee), which govern and share best practices for laying and maintaining undersea cables. This might seem minor, but keep in mind that these three hundred transoceanic cables stretching six hundred thousand miles are responsible for 95 percent of the world’s internet, phone, and data traffic.

This overlapping web of reciprocal agreements and international understandings is unknown to all but a few Americans. But the ability to connect people, ideas, and markets from every corner of the earth is the direct result of an international system that is specifically constructed to further global cooperation. That iPhone in your hand tells the story of an interdependent and interconnected world that would have been unimaginable just a generation ago.

Why should Americans care that the world has become a far better place for far more people than ever before? Because a world that is more prosperous, healthier, better educated, and closely connected is a less chaotic and violent place—and more likely to stay that way.57 Countries that are more democratic are also more politically stable and more open to trade and foreign investment that is likely to benefit American workers and consumers.⁵⁸

Yet, despite all of these remarkable gains, there is significant work to be done. Eight hundred million people still live in extreme poverty, 160 million children under age five do not get enough to eat, and 61 million are not attending school. Only half of the 36.7 million who are living with HIV in developing regions receive antiviral treatments, and 884 million people still lack adequate drinking water.⁵⁹ These numbers are sobering, and they demand greater resources and a more concerted effort on the part of the international community.⁶⁰ But the fact that sizable problems remain cannot take away from the sustained progress that has been made.

Domestic politics, in part, explain why Americans remain unaware of these tremendous changes. Stating that the world is actually a pretty safe and much-better place to live is somehow a taboo, a sign of naïveté, or deeply insensitive in light of the real harms experienced by Americans. Yet politicians should recognize and celebrate the positive accomplishments that have improved the lives of so many people, and U.S. citizens should come to expect this from their elected leaders. All too rarely have U.S. “national interests” included advancing the health, well-being, and economic opportunities of humanity. But the top foreign policy priority for whoever sits in the Oval Office or controls Congress should be precisely that—not just because it is the right thing do but also because it makes America safer.