The Calculus of Prevention
Defense and International Development - the New Calculus
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In a world obsessed with military might, former Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo realized global leaders were fundamentally miscalculating the cost of security. This newsletter explores his paradigm-shifting realization that building infrastructure and institutions serves as the ultimate form of hard power, proving that the most effective preemptive strike is a functioning society.
The air inside the Munich Security Conference crackled with the familiar vocabulary of conflict. Diplomats, defense ministers, and heads of state traded theories on geopolitics, spheres of influence, and the expanding budgets required to maintain the NATO alliance. To Alexander De Croo, the former prime minister of Belgium and newly appointed Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, the conversation felt dangerously incomplete. The assembled leaders were treating security entirely as a matter of tanks and treaties. They were missing the foundation. De Croo understood that in a fractured world, resilience requires trusted partnerships, robust systems, and functioning institutions. These elements alone equip societies to withstand shocks.
Leaders often mischaracterize international development as “soft power,” a polite diplomatic term for exerting influence through cultural attraction and gentle persuasion. De Croo saw the landscape differently. He recognized international development as absolute hard power. It stood as the global community’s most effective preemptive strike against future threats.
A pervasive, dangerous mindset had taken root among global policymakers. Too many leaders failed to recognize development as foundational to security itself. They regarded development assistance as charity, framing it as a luxury compared to the grim necessity of real defense work. This ideological blind spot undermined global stability by ignoring the actual drivers of conflict. De Croo knew that the longer the world ignored the root causes of violence, the more it would ultimately pay in lives, taxes, and foregone prosperity.
“If we elevate fighter jets as ‘strategic’ assets but dismiss a functioning education system as ‘mere aid,’ and if we always find money for missiles but not for water or electricity, we are not protecting our societies,” De Croo observed. “We are weakening them.”
While increased military investment remains a legitimate policy response in a volatile world, deploying it without parallel investment in development creates a hollow strategy. De Croo sought to appeal to the practitioners of realpolitik, the strategists who base their politics on practical, immediate power dynamics rather than moral ideals. For these hard-nosed realists, the financial data provided a startling revelation. A comprehensive analysis by the advocacy group ONE revealed that every single dollar invested in development and conflict prevention could save up to $103 in future crisis-related costs. Those savings spanned military operations, humanitarian responses, and the devastating effects of economic disruption. This staggering return on investment made international development the most rational choice a government could make for its security portfolio.
Whether dealing with military intervention, economic fallout, or emergency relief, nations always pay for what they fail to prevent. De Croo looked at the modern battlefield and saw the glaring limits of traditional force. Airstrikes and sanctions could never solve violent extremism, irregular migration, or state collapse. Such massive geopolitical problems are best contained, and ultimately prevented, when the people on the front lines have a future they can actually look forward to. That future requires reliable electricity, basic services, an education for their children, and jobs that pay enough to escape poverty.
If development remained an afterthought in the global security doctrine, De Croo knew the West would keep losing. Leaders had to stop pretending that drones could solve every problem.
The Lake Chad Basin provided a stark, tragic example of this failure. For years, armed interventions attempted to stop extremist violence in the region. Military means achieved almost nothing. The jobless remained jobless, the basic services remained broken, and the state remained entirely absent. As De Croo sharply noted, “The brush was cleared but the soil remained uncultivated.” Only when development efforts accelerated did the tide finally turn, allowing thousands of displaced people to return to their homes and rebuild their livelihoods.
A similar dynamic unfolded in the war-gutted regions of Iraq. Millions of people eventually returned to their neighborhoods, driven by more than just the cessation of gunfire. They returned because the electricity came back on, and because the schools and hospitals finally reopened. De Croo realized that societies begin to heal when development efforts give people a tangible reason to stay, rather than merely managing their displacement.
De Croo drew vital lessons from the fall of the Berlin Wall. In that era, Western investment in democratic institutions, infrastructure, and economic resilience helped rebuild post-communist societies and laid the foundations for a new era of prosperity. The secret to that success was not speed, but sequencing. Institutions must precede liberalization. Social safety nets must accompany open markets. Political inclusion must arrive alongside economic reform. Where leaders respected that delicate balance, stability followed. Where they ignored it, vulnerability quickly filled the gap.
These historical lessons remain urgently relevant. Security policies prioritizing military force over governance encourage and prolong conflicts. They create a dangerous vacuum that extremist groups, smugglers, and hostile powers are remarkably quick to exploit.
De Croo’s doctrine demanded a shift in perspective. Development produces security, because lasting peace demands long-term horizons. In a world defined by constant urgency and breaking news, the temptation is always to focus strictly on immediate threats. However, if the short-term pressure to respond to crises precludes sustained investment in opportunities and governance, instability becomes a permanent, structural feature of the global order.
True hard power relies on the capacity to prevent, rather than merely the capacity to react. Integrating development into the geopolitical debate is far from idealism. It represents strategic, budget-conscious realism. As De Croo ultimately warned the global community, “We can pay up front for development, or we can keep paying the bill later, with interest, in a more unstable and insecure world.”
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