The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

10 billion in a few decades before lev- eling off — with nearly all of that growth taking place in the poorest countries on earth. The George W. Bush administra- tion did increase foreign assistance budgets, but most of the supplemental funds went to Iraq and Afghanistan. It also created two new aid agencies: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has spent $30 billion since 2004; and the Millennium Chal- lenge Corporation, which has pledged $7 billion in aid thus far to countries that fight corruption, move toward democracy and allow free markets and a free press. In 2006, drug company executive Randall Tobias became head of USAID and merged its budget and planning staff with the State Depart- ment in the new F Bureau. State’s leadership saw this as moving diplo- macy and development under one roof, which would help them lobby for more aid funds. But in the process, USAID professionals were relegated to a minority voice in deciding what projects would get funding, and feared that foreign aid would become a polit- ical tool to attain short-term gains, such as winning support on U.N. votes. Since becoming USAID Adminis- trator at the end of 2009, Rajiv Shah has moved to rebuild the agency’s budget and planning staff. However, even though USAID is the major U.S. aid agency, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has vowed to restore it to a primary role, U.S. foreign aid remains split among USAID, State, Defense, Treasury and other agencies. In addition, the agency lives in fear that any member of Congress can halt dis- bursement of funds over sometimes petty local issues or ideological issues such as family planning. USAID also remains gagged by the Smith-Mundt Act, which prevents the use of tax dollars to lobby the Ameri- can people. Originally aimed at pre- venting the use of Voice of America to broadcast domestic propaganda, the act keeps USAID from telling the American public about the achieve- ments their tax dollars have brought to millions around the world. In contrast, the Dutch aid agency has shot won- derful videos of women in Africa who benefited from its aid and airs these on Dutch TV. This leads to public support for foreign aid. USAID has no such domestic public affairs program. Another vital question is whether donor nations should send highly paid experts from America and Europe to carry out the projects, or find and train local people to do it. Natsios notes that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) responded to that dilemma nearly a century ago as follows: “It is better to let them [the Arabs] do it imperfectly than to do it perfectly yourself. For it is their country, their way and your time is short.” “Why don‘t we take Lawrence‘s ad- vice in our aid programs, since it com- ports well with development theory?” asks Natsios. “The simple answer is that the politics of the regulatory ap- paratus of the U.S. government will not allow it.” Prospects for Reform Change is needed, but in Washing- ton today foreign aid reform is pretty far down the list compared to health care, the deficit and the economic slump. Even President Barack Obama, whose mother worked for USAID in Indonesia for many years, seems unlikely to find the political will to tackle the status quo and rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. So we continue to dole out huge measures of good work in education, health, governance and economic im- provement. And countries such as China, India and Brazil have taken over their own development, reaching out to poorer nations as well as their own poor. However, new technology, vaccines, training programs and advice can only go so far. We continue to hear about the di- version or perversion of assistance: schools without teachers, clinics with- out doctors and roads that crumble in a year or two. U.S. foreign aid, it seems, will always be a work in progress. It remains a craft rather than a science, producing enormous good as well as quite a few lemons. It is easy for a journalist to get an ar- ticle on the front page of a newspaper if it highlights some failure in aid—even if that failure is an anomaly and represents a small fraction of the assistance that went right. Reporters like CeliaDugger of the New York Times , who deliver bal- anced articles on foreign aid, are, unfor- tunately, the exception. Aid officials need to get their story out there so the public will understand how much good can be done with less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget. Until then, foreign assistance will be a stepchild to crises such as the latest famine in Somalia or the tsunami in In- donesia — public support will follow TV pictures of tragedies. As far as building support for care- fully planned, long-term economic de- velopment is concerned, USAID, State and the foreign aid community need to better explain what that assistance does for the millions of decent people born in impoverished countries, who need a hand up from the depths of hunger and pain. USAID and State need to do a better job of explaining what our aid does for millions of people in impoverished countries. 50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1