The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

V.P. VOICE: USAID BY FRANCISCO ZAMORA If It’s Broken, It’s Time for a Trade-in T he repeated mention of “wheels” in the May FSJ article by Gordon Adams, a professor at American University, “Don’t Reinvent The Foreign Assistance Wheel,” remindedme of the oldToyotaCamry stationwagon that served me well for more than 12 years. Although it got me where I needed to go most of the time, it started breaking downmore and more frequently. I replaced two broken electric window motors, brittle door handles and had problems with the wheels. When the automatic transmission stopped working, I final- ly decided it was time for a trade-in for a more dependable new car. I knew that pouring more money into the old car was not smart in the long run. This is the situation we find ourselves inwith foreignassistance today. We can no longer just fix it by installingan“F”Bureau inthe chassis. The foreign assistance model itself must be replaced. When President John F. Kennedy created theU.S. Agency for International Development back in 1961, his intent was to establishanewagency thatwould eliminate the “bureaucratically fragmented, awkwardand slow… multiplicityof programs” that constituted foreign assistance then. During the next 40 years of the Cold War, USAID worked fairly well at bringing good will and development assistance to the underdeveloped world. Now the foreign assistancemachine, likemy old car, is show- ing its age. The situation has changed dramatically and, as Prof. Adams correctly observes, the current administration has again created amultiplicity of additionalmechanisms—including the MillenniumChallenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the President’s Malaria Initiative and the MiddleEasternPartnership Initiative—outside theUSAIDvehi- cle, generating confusion. Unfortunately, Adams and others believe you can keep driv- ing the sameold foreignassistancemodel foreverbycreatinganoth- ermechanism, this one known as “F.” Instead, we need to trade it in for a newmodel, aCabinet-level agencywith clout and sup- port fromthe administration, Congress, the public, our partners and the international community. The F framework supposedly targets individual countries, emphasizing that they are at different stages of development and need. Inreality, it pigeonholes themwithinaone-size-fits-allmold. Countries are complex entities, and it is important that coun- try-specificdevelopment takeplacewith the full participation of our counter- parts. USAID missions, our greatest strength, have historically been adept at doing this because of their in-coun- trypresence. TheFprocessmisses thepoint entirely,makingcook- ie-cutter decisions establishedby thehypercentralizedoperational plan system. Adams notes that the F process organizes foreign assistance into different strategic goals: promoting peace and security, strengthening just and democratic government, helping popu- lations improve their quality of life, fostering economic growth anddevelopment, andproviding humanitarian assistance. Guess what? USAIDhas beendoing all that for decades. Nothing new about it. Adams disagrees with the plan to create aCabinet-levelDe- partment of Development, citing three basic flaws with the idea. First, he says, it would “just take us back to those unhappy days when USAID and State were at each other’s throats on a regular basis…and would only wors- en the problem by elevating disputes about assistance to senior policymakers.” My response is that disputes canbe healthy, and that policymaking, amuchhigher-level activity, shouldbe in the hands of the political leadership, not the implementers of strat- egy. Development strategy (under aCabinet-level department) and diplomatic strategy (under theStateDepartment) should, of course, be coordinated, but they are not the same animal. Unresolved disputes on policy should be raised to a higher level, just as they wouldbe if theDepartment ofDefense and the StateDepartment were indisagreement. Wouldanyone advocate thatDODbe sub- jugated under the State Department? The chief fallacy of the F process is that the StateDepartment is now solely in control of interpreting policy, strategy and tac- tics when it comes to development. State micromanages devel- opment assistance byovercentralizing evendecisions that are bet- ter left at the country level. Under the guise of aligning policy with strategy, the State Department is now approving every tac- tical detail of development programimplementation. This is the reason many USAID personnel are so unhappy with the oper- ational plans intowhich they are straightjacketed. Housed inside 52 F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L / MA Y 2 0 0 8 A F S A N E W S In reality, the F framework pigeonholes countries into a one-size-fits-all mold. Countries are complex entities, and it is important that country-specific development takes place with the full participation of our counterparts.