With Peace Comes Prosperity

KINGSTON, NY, 15 JULY 2015—Go back to 1964 when America was drafting all eligible young men to fight the Vietnam War. Do you remember why America launched the war in which some 60,000 US troops and 3 million-plus Vietnamese would be killed?

We were told by Washington that it was to stop the spread of communism. If we didn’t stop them from taking over Vietnam, countries throughout the region would fall under communist rule like dominoes. “We seek an independent non-Communist South Vietnam … Unless we can achieve this objective … almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance,” declared Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in March of 1964.

The rest is history. America lost the war and Southeast Asia did not fall to communism.

How times have changed.

On July 7, President Obama met with Vietnamese Communist Party leader Nguyễn Phú Trọng at the White House in the hopes of strengthening economic and military ties between the two nations. After their meeting, Mr. Obama touted “the enormous potential” of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal he is promoting and of which Vietnam is a member.

Agree or disagree with the controversial trade pact or the warming of relations between the two nations, by every quantitative and qualitative measure, peace is proving more profitable than war.

Just a week after the Vietnamese party leader’s White House visit, America, along with six major nations, struck a deal to end the harsh economic sanctions against Iran that have severely restricted its economic growth. Iran – a part of George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil and America’s arch villain since the overthrow of the Shah, the ensuing Iranian Revolution and the infamous American Embassy hostage crisis in 1979 – is now suddenly “open for business.” That is, however, if the United States Congress and pressure from Israel does not scuttle the deal.

In fact, with peace comes prosperity.

For example, a Rand Corporation study released in June projects that a two-state peace treaty between Israel and Palestine would boost the Israeli economy by more than $120 billion and the Palestinians would gain $50 billion. A continuation of violence, however, would cost Israel some $250 billion in lost economic opportunities and a 46 percent per-capita gross domestic product fall for Palestinians.

Without question, the facts prove that peace is more profitable than war.