The Foreign Service Journal, February 2013

22 FEBRUARY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The table below, based on data from www.USAspending. gov as of December, illustrates the sheer magnitude of the change in the way the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment and the Department of State have pursued their respec- tive missions over the past decade. While the total figures for contracts and grants include expenses that do not constitute outsourced jobs, and also reflect increased resources from war- time supplemental appropriations, the trajectory of the trend is striking. In 2000, the State Department spent just $1.3 billion on contracts and $102.5 million on grants. By 2010, the value of contracts had grown to $8.1 billion, and grants had grown to $1.4 billion, increases of 523 and 1,266 percent, respectively. Over the same period of time, USAID’s spending on contracts rose from $535.8 million to $5.6 billion, a tenfold increase. And its spending on grants increased by an astonish- ing 46,014 percent over that same decade. While the ranks of the Foreign Service grew during that same period, the expansion in the number of government employees involved in overseeing this explosion of resources was not commensurate. A similar trend unfolded at the Pentagon, albeit on a pro- portionally smaller scale. But the shift was much more massive in terms of total dollars expended. The New Normal Still, it is on the civilian side of the equation that we see the most dramatic change: Outsourcing broad aspects of State and USAID’s engagement with the world has become the new normal. Contracts in Contracts in Change in Grants in Grants in Change in 2000 2010 Contracts 2000 2010 Grants State $1.3 billion $8.1 billion 523% $102.5 million $1.4 billion 1,266% USAID $535.8 million $5.6 billion 945% $19.3 million $8.9 billion 46,014% Defense $133.4 billion $367.6 billion 176% $2.2 billion $5.2 billion 136% Allison Stanger is the Russell Leng Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College and the author of One Nation under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2009/2011). She served as a subject-matter expert for the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Develop- ment Review process, and has testified before Congress on contract- ing-related issues.