The Foreign Service Journal, April 2013

8 April 2013 | the foreign Service journal letters Unite the Development Organizations The article by Ben Barber in the Janu- ary FSJ , “The Millennium Challenge Cor- poration: Off to a Good Start,” was infor- mative and well balanced. However, in my opinion, the MCC should not exist. The significant resources used to create and run it should have been used to bolster USAID instead. The MCC is another one of the too-numerous spigots for U.S. economic development assistance. The largest and most prominent of these is, of course, USAID. There are also the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Trade and Development Agency (which I briefly headed), both of which were cre- ated in USAID. Others include the State Depart- ment, which directly manages many aid programs, and several other departments (Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, etc.), as well as the Peace Corps. In addition, the Department of Defense conducts some assistance programs that once were under the purview of USAID. Each of these programs has its own political appointees, superstructure, policies, budget, personnel, offices, lobby groups, supporters on the Hill and the like. The result is gross overlap, confusion, inefficiency and waste of the taxpayer’s money. I guesstimate that between a quarter and a third of our total assistance may be thus squandered. Our peers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- ment’s Development Assistance Commit- tee (where I once represented the United States) periodically criticize this confu- sion, as do many of our client countries. This system seems designed as much to provide jobs to appointees, bureaucrats and consultants as to promote economic development. Moreover, the Millennium Chal- lenge Corporation is built on questionable premises. First, it seeks to work only in well-performing developing countries. But over time, there is no clear distinction between good and poor performers. Instead there are grada- tions, with countries moving up and down the scale. Barber notes that Madagascar, Mali, Armenia and Nicaragua have gone from good to poor in just a few years. Others that appeared to be poor performers now look good. Such variations are bound to continue. Second, the MCC stresses capital proj- ects. But again, there is no absolute dis- tinction between most of those and other types of aid, such as technical assistance. Indeed, aid programs generally encom- pass more than one of these categories. Third, the MCC tries to be more “businesslike” than USAID. But foreign assistance is not a business. Rather, it is a tool of foreign policy, with different objectives. In any case, USAID uses stan- dard economic assessments to achieve the best results from its projects. Finally, the MCC seeks to jolt recipi- ents into more rapid development with large injections of money. But its resources are meager. A few hundred million dollars spread over several years is modest compared to the total domestic and external resources available to most developing countries. Moreover, money is just one factor holding back growth. Culture, history, ethnic and religious rivalries, misman- agement, corruption and other factors usually are far more important. To improve our inefficient and waste- ful foreign assistance apparatus, I sug- gested possible solutions in two issues of The Foreign Service Journal, November 2009 and December 2010 (archived at www.afsa.org/foreign_service_journal. aspx). One idea is to combine all or most of these spigots into USAID (perhaps with a new name), making it again a strong, independent agency. The other option would be to merge USAID—which currently has functions within State or straddling the two agencies—and the other spigots completely into State as a development bureau and specialty/ career track. Raymond Malley Senior FSO, retired Hanover, N.H. Fortress Embassies I am not surprised that a regional security officer, especially one who entered the Foreign Service after 9/11, supports New Embassy Compounds (also known as “fortress embassies”). But longer-serving FSOs and retirees may well have a different view of the impact of such structures on both our own diplo- mats and host-country nationals. I served in Copenhagen from 1973 to 1975. This was during the VietnamWar, which most Danes opposed, often quite vociferously. The back of our embassy faced the back of the Soviet embassy, separated by a cemetery. You can imag- ine the dark comments that evoked. Our building was situated on a main avenue and featured a ground floor walk-in library that was well used every day. It was guarded by a lone Danish policeman outside and a single Marine inside. On one after-hours occasion, the policeman was distracted by an attractive