Transatlantic Taskforce on Development Blog Series:
On both sides of the Atlantic policymakers are struggling with a common problem – how can we forge better cooperation across the so-called three Ds – development, diplomacy and defense? This challenge was well-identified by the Transatlantic Taskforce on Development, which set out a number of recommendations to address this issue. Since the launching of the Taskforce, there have been major policy reviews and debates in the U.S. and Europe on the three Ds. The following blogs by Taskforce members Richard Manning (UK) (Development and Security:Will European Institutional Changes Help or Hinder Effective Action? ) and Andrew Natsios (U.S.) represent fresh assessments of the risks and opportunities for Europe and the United States as this debate continues to unfold with implications for transatlantic cooperation.
Development and Security: Can the United States overcome beltway disputes and elevate Development alongside Defense and Diplomacy?
WASHINGTON - The GMF Transatlantic Taskforce on Development urged donor governments to bridge the security and development divide in order to achieve a more coherent policy for addressing developing country problems. Of course, the devil is always in the details of exactly how this will be done. The current debate in Washington is stalled because of competing and conflicting visions of what the aid architecture of the U.S. government ought to be, and what role development should have in it. In the absence of a clear, unified vision for U.S. foreign assistance – particularly long-term economic development – the United States will continue to be limited in its ability to lead and partner with Europe, other donors, and host-countries in addressing major global challenges – from global health to fragile states.
The Bush administration formulation of the three D’s—Defense, Diplomacy and Development—as the principle instruments of national power in the post-9/11 world has been carried into the Obama administration as Secretary Clinton has repeatedly used the formula herself. She intends an expanded and reformed development assistance to be one of her legacies as Secretary of State, but just who controls that policy and what it looks like is what is in dispute. In her first address to State Department career staff Secretary Clinton announced: “we own two of the three D’s”, which created alarm through the U.S. development community as it implied a State takeover of USAID and a general subordination of development for strategic purposes. The ten-month delay in the White House selecting a candidate for the Administrator of USAID only added to the general sense of unease in the development community that the Obama administration policy on development was in flux with a fight brewing over the future. This delay was also a reflection of potential candidates withdrawing themselves from consideration when they did not get clarity over what policy or budget authority the USAID Administrator would have nor to whom the Administrator would report.
Secretary Clinton has kept in place the aid architecture designed by Secretary Rice which centralized control over all State and USAID policy and budgeting in a new directorate of foreign aid in the State Department. Under the Rice structure the USAID Administrator was “duel-hatted” also serving as a second Deputy Secretary of State (now called “for Management and Resources”) with control over most aid funding. State Department career officers were sent into training programs to learn USAID program management systems which caused resentment in State that it was being transformed into an USAID-like institution, while USAID saw this as a step towards State Department takeover of USAID. State has accelerated the merging USAID business systems into those of the State Department and Embassies abroad so that they have much tighter control over all aspects of aid operations.
Secretary Clinton has continued and expanded Rice’s effort to increase the size of the USAID workforce which had declined by 40 percent between 1980 and 2002. The first two Obama budgets have substantially increased aid funding particularly for food security and agriculture, though these aid increases are now falling victim to the growing public revulsion against the size of the federal budget deficit. Congress is reportedly now cutting the Obama aid budget well below what the President proposed.
Three major aid architectural decisions have thus far been made by the Obama administration, which have further weakened USAID institutionally. First, the USAID Administrator no longer also serves as Deputy Secretary of State for Resources: a former Office of Management and the Budget (OMB) Director with no development experience, Jack Lew, was appointed to that position instead (it was recently announced that he will be leaving State and returning to OMB). Secondly, State has been representing development policy at meetings of the National Security Council, instead of USAID. Thirdly, the Obama administration has also announced it intends to pursue a “whole of government approach” which will spend aid funds through “aid centers of excellence” in domestic agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rather than exclusively through USAID.
Both members of Congress—Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) —and development professionals have seen this as an effort by the State Department to weaken USAID’s authority over the implementation of aid programs in the field by providing other options if USAID resists State controls. In the 1960s and 1970s USAID itself implemented many development projects through domestic U.S. government agencies, a practice which was phased out in the 1980s because of a high project failure rate, interest group interference, and resistance to good development practice: domestic departments tend to be controlled by special interest groups and congressional oversight committees with little development knowledge or experience. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been historically hostile to aid programs abroad which might compete with U.S. farmers and oversees a $20 billion U.S. farm subsidy program which damages developing country agriculture.
Meanwhile, two other Washington debates have been taking place over U.S. aid policy. First, Congress has proposed legislation with bipartisan support to strengthen USAID, increase the size of the career staff, restore its independent budget authority and improve its capacity to evaluate its programs, and centralize aid programming in the Agency rather than dispersing it among 20 domestic agencies (the inverse of the whole of government approach). This has put Congress at odds with the State Department which has tried to stop the legislation. Second, dueling policy documents are now being circulated in the executive branch on aid policy reform—one by President Obama’s staff (which resembles the Congressional legislation) and the other by Secretary Clinton’s staff (which reflects the gradual absorption of USAID into State). In a recent meeting at the White House much of the State proposal was overruled, though the debate is by no means over. For example, Congressional and White House opposition put a stop to a State Department plan to transfer emergency humanitarian program offices from USAID to State.
Historically, Washington beltway disputes of this sort usually ensure policy paralysis as clashing interests trump each other. This is now what is happening. Absent direct, personal intervention by President Obama to define his own vision of aid reform and to take the actions needed to enforce the reforms, the stalemate will continue, and plans to strengthen the third D will suffer. In the absence of a robust and institutionally independent foreign aid program underpinned by a strategy for U.S. foreign assistance, the United States will be unable to lead and strengthen global and transatlantic development partnerships, which are so critical to our success in spurring economic growth and poverty alleviation. The State Department takeover of foreign aid programs has been slowed temporarily, but not stopped and the three Ds of the instruments of national power increasingly look like two Ds—Defense and Diplomacy—with development a well funded, marginalized, appendage to the other two. Good development theory and practice will be compromised as a result.
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