Dear President Obama

Walton Cook
January 22, 2010

Dear President Obama:

Will you reconsider Afghanistan? When intellectual, political or diplomatic leaders face seemingly insurmountable problems, they often feel themselves trapped in a multi-dimensional maze, hoping to find a hidden passage, an invisible escape hatch. Sometimes, it is not invisible.

On Jan 6, 2007, The Economist wrote this in Afghanistan's opium crop: Much gain, less pain: “Here is an even bolder idea: an American security writer, Walton Cook, has argued that simply paying Afghan poppy farmers not to grow poppies would be cheap compared to the social cost of heroin use.“

Associated Press (7/21/09) wrote in US debating payoffs to poppy growers. “Policy review is now underway to compensate Afghan farmers and sharecroppers to voluntarily give up poppy cultivation. This is to counter Taliban insurgents from paying farmers in advance for poppy cultivation, from which Taliban then funds the ongoing insurgency.”

But what that article completely fails to explain is the most important part, how implementing such a diplomacy returns a spectacular profit to US taxpayers, not only in saving dollars and introducing alternative agricultures, but also by reducing troop needs and deaths. Here is how we explained that:

“Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth.” …Archimedes, Third Century B.C.E.

At the halls of Congress, Archimedes is knocking at the doors. He is shouting, “Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth!” He thinks we have forgotten the power of levers; that imbalances, along with a well-placed fulcrum, are powerful forces.

Problems are often multidimensional, operating on more than one plane. Defining the problems and the planes in a new way can create a unique solution. Is there an unseen balance point?

Since imbalances have their inherent powers, and even though Archimedes is not elected, suppose we give him an audience? One imbalance is the economic imbalance between nations, rich and poor. Sometimes they are so clearly in view that they are hard to see. Let’s look at a startling example that compares one rich nation, the US, with one of the poorest, Afghanistan.

Nowhere are differentials in balance points, what things cost and what people are paid, made more obvious than by the following comparison of price-differentials.

The US produces every imaginable product and service. Afghanistan is the world leader in one, the production of opiates, which represents $3 billion in the Afghan GDP, almost 30%!

Afghanistan produces 93% of the world’s opiates, for which poor Afghan farmers receive $800 million dollars. In stark contrast, rich OECD nations incur a ‘societal cost’ from opiate problems of $217 billion dollars annually. The cost differential is $216.2 billion! This is leverage! Archimedes question is: How can we diplomatically leverage the existing price differentials into cash?

Using the OECD price differential, give full and equal compensation to poppy farmers and workers—but now for ‘not’ cultivating poppy crops. (And guaranteed for the next ten years, allowing civil, crop and/or occupational alternatives and adjustments to take root.) Pay the Afghan government an additional $2.2 billion to make up for their GDP loss. Add $2.6 billion to provide additional needed development to sustain domestic recovery and democratization. Results: No loss of farmer income--No government loss of income--$5.6 billion yearly to build democratic institutions--No civil unrest or increased poverty--Stabilization for the geographic region.

Now happy former poppy farmers have state-of-the-art, iris-scan ID cards. They have a range of alternate crop selections. Better yet, they have guaranteed income for 10 future years and are no longer likely candidates to violate their agreements not to cultivate opium poppies. They are secure.

Side Effects: Loss of major funding (up to 70%) for insurgency and terror, reducing revenues of al-Qaeda, Taliban, drug lords, mafia and other criminal interests.

Pass Along Benefits: OECD nations save $217 billion ‘societal cost of opiates’ each year, now made available for other uses, both domestic and otherwise. (Stabilization of Pakistan)

What makes economic leverage unique? It gains power from dollars made available by reduced narcotics related costs at home. It is a simple concept; bad expense money saved, not money from additional taxation. It enables richer nations to lend generous support to poor nations, without cost but with economic and social profit. Perhaps Archimedes has finally found a place to stand in Washington? Eureka! Let us all hope that this opportunity will not continue to be missed.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are economic ‘silver bullets,’ capable of creating a watershed in economic diplomacy, and they come in a social ‘silver lining.’ When we originally presented this imaginative application of agricultural incentive to cultivate crops alternate to the opium poppy, we hoped that the price-differential advantage would be recognized immediately, that the vast difference between what farmers in a poor country receive at ‘farm-door’’ for their crop is but a small fraction of the social costs of narcotics use in richer OECD nations.

Voters will rebel! In the end, people will refuse to be victims of irresponsibility, preferring not to lose basic values of wealth, security and justice. In these much tougher economic times, we are hoping that the taxpayer, diplomatic, international and military advantages now available receive your vigorous attention and support. We hope you will share this newly found economic leverage.

Mr. Walton Cook can be reached at

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