Fewer than 30 days into the new year, the foreign policy agenda for Europe and North America has already become crowded.  North Korea, Iran, Syria, potential breakthroughs in Burma, and the still roiling revolutionary fervor in the Middle East are but a few of the issues facing transatlantic policymakers.  Iraq, facing renewed violence in the wake of Coalition troop withdrawals, and Afghanistan, where France just lost more soldiers and ambivalence reigns on negotiating with the Taliban, have not gone away.

Add to this volatile mix national elections in the United States, France, and elsewhere and it is easy to forget one of the landmark events of 2011:  the July 9^th independence of South Sudan.  Moreover, although remembrance of the new nation’s founding is appropriate, what is more critical is that Europe and North America sustain the generally positive and optimistic dynamics of South Sudan’s birth.

These dynamics came into focus for me when I attended the recent International Engagement Conference on South Sudan, organized by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington.  The two-day session, addressed by the first President of South Sudan, the Honorable Salva Kiir Mayardit, saw presentations by World Bank President Zoellick, United Nations Development Programme Administrator Clark, senior European Union officials, and numerous ministerial level representatives from Sudan, Europe and North America, including U.S. Secretary of State Clinton.  The conference list of co-sponsors boded well for continued world engagement with South Sudan:  The UN; the World Bank, including the International Finance Corporation; the African Union; the European Union; the governments of Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the NGO coalition InterAction; and the Corporate Council for Africa.

And well should these international heavyweights be interested.  Not only does South Sudan possess very large – how large is yet to be fully determined – petroleum reserves, but the White Nile and other resources could be world-class sources of renewable energy.  Some of us are old enough to remember when the southern reaches of Sudan were heralded as Africa’s “breadbasket,” and the combination of vast, fertile, and well-watered lands has re-awakened interest in South Sudan’s food-producing potential.  Although its internal population is under ten million, South Sudan is at the center of a regional market containing 250 million.  And, politically, a stable South Sudan could be a bulwark against trans-national violence in a Great Lakes region that has hovered on the edge of chaos for decades.

Looked at through a slightly different lens, the risks of the transatlantic community not focusing on this fragile, newborn state are high.  South Sudan lies in a rough, violent neighborhood, bordering on regions of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda notorious for fragile governance and violent atrocities.  South Sudan remains one of the most underdeveloped regions of the world (there exist fewer than 200 kilometers of paved roads in a nation-state the size of France), and underinvestment in the country’s optimistic, rapidly growing population runs the risk of spawning a crisis of rising, but unfulfilled, expectations.  Despite the generally cordial breakup of Sudan last July, the specter of continued instability haunts the Sudan-South Sudan border, with the risks of violence and human displacement ever present.  USAID reports that the U.S. government alone spent nearly $10 billion in primarily humanitarian aid in the six years prior to independence alone, a level of resources from donor nations that must now be shifted to the long-term development account, if the promise of independence is to be fulfilled.  Foreign investment, on which the new government in the capital of Juba is relying heavily, comes at this point primarily from Asia, with Chinese investment in petroleum exploration prominent.  Personally, I harbor no antipathy to Chinese investment in Africa, but – a little competition being a healthy thing – business people from the transatlantic nations should be on the ground, as well.

The International Engagement Conference on South Sudan provided a useful venue to focus on the new state’s potential.  The challenge for Europe and North America, going forward, will be to maintain, amid a daunting foreign policy agenda, the sustained focus required to fulfill the promise of a successful South Sudan, and avoid the substantial risks of under-investing in the world’s newest country.

James Kunder is a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.

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This past week, the Obama Administration announced its intention to nominate Rick Barton as the nation’s first ever Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations.  The announcement marks Washington’s latest run at creating a serious civilian “surge capacity” for managing instability and conflict in fragile states.

Rick Barton, if the Senate chooses to confirm him, would bring impeccable credentials to the job.  Former U.S. Representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council, first Director of the highly regarded Office of Transition Initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), former UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ambassador Barton appears to have spent his life preparing for this job.  The question is whether the U.S. government, after repeated failures to build a comprehensive civilian crisis management entity, will allow him to do the job.

Regrettably, for much of the past several decades, the U.S. government’s ability to generate a credible civilian surge in crisis situations has been a bit of a farce.  In an almost unbelievable period of sustained underperformance since 2004, Washington – both the last Administration and this one; both the State Department and USAID; aided and abetted by both houses of Congress – have systematically undercut attempts to create a serious surge capacity on the civilian side of the U.S. government.  The competent civilian reconstruction partner that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and coalition fighting forces have been requesting for a decade remains – perhaps to be overly generous – a “work in progress.”

A quick review of how we got to this point:  The U.S. government learned quickly in the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq interventions that it lacked the ability to locate and dispatch adequate numbers of competent, highly trained, language proficient reconstruction specialists from State and USAID to help rebuild after coalition forces had initially defeated the opposition.  This is not surprising given that State and USAID together have less than 1 percent – yes, that’s one percent — of DoD’s uniformed and civilian personnel levels.  You will recall the numerous exposes about civilians with only shreds of international experience appearing in Baghdad to “advise” the post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi government in the immediate aftermath of Baghdad’s fall.

In 2004, the Bush Administration – in what some might consider a rare moment of introspection – recognized the gap in U.S. civilian capacity, and pushed through the National Security Council a new concept:  the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (CRS) at the State Department.  This new entity, located in the Secretary’s front office to ensure high impact and visibility, was to serve as the centerpiece of a reinvigorated “civilian surge” capacity, recruiting a “Civilian Response Corps” of stand-by reconstruction experts, ready to deploy on short notice, from across all federal departments.  CRS was also to serve as a focal point for enhanced partnership with multi-lateral and bilateral partners, as a number of TransAtlantic governments were building similar conflict management units.  Befitting the importance of the concept, Secretary Clinton once referred to this new U.S. capability as “an army of peace-builders.”

In reality, it is not much of an “army.”  After seven years, the number of full-time Civilian Response Corps members remains under 200 – not exactly the force envisaged in 2004; not the force likely to encourage military colleagues; and certainly not the kind of force that will have serious impact in one or more major conflict and stabilization crises.

Not only is the civilian surge “army” tiny, it basically doesn’t have any bullets.  Despite repeated requests by both the Bush and Obama Administrations for a modest contingency fund to allow the Civilian Response Corps to act quickly in a crisis, the Congress has not appropriated one penny of operational funding to CRS.  With a few notable successes – observer teams in South Sudan, for example – actual deployments by the Civilian Response Corps have been minimal, mostly consisting of two-week “assessment missions” to U.S. embassies in relatively peaceful countries.  Despite Secretary Clinton’s words of praise for her “army,” she chose not to deploy it to Haiti, despite a major crisis just miles from America’s shore.

U.S. Ambassadors, by and large, have viewed this new organization as a bureaucratic threat, rather than as an asset.  USAID, with its own history of crisis response, feels slighted, as well, by CRS, and has offered only grudging support.  Last year, the Treasury Department – a founding partner in the Civilian Response Corps, and a critical player in economically rebuilding failed states – simply dropped out of the “army,” its first major defection.  Meanwhile, the U.S. military, viewing this farce from across the Potomac River, has, understandably, begun organizing its own version of a civilian response corps, made up of DoD civilian employees.

Now, fast forward to the present.  The Administration’s recent Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), stated boldly that “embracing” conflict prevention and response in fragile states is a “core civilian mission.”  The QDDR proposed the creation of a new Bureau of Crisis and Stabilization Operations – the outfit Ambassador Barton has been tapped to head – to serve as the “locus for policy and operational solutions for crisis, conflict, and instability.”  The question remains whether the new surge in rhetoric, enthusiasm, and bureaucratic structures will – given the tepid performance of the past decade – translate into a capable civilian surge capacity on the ground when the world decides it needs to manage the next conflictive crisis.

It is not too late to rescue a great idea:  The United States, as well as its transatlantic partners, needs  a civilian surge capacity more than ever, both when confronted with instability in fragile states or when transitional opportunities arise, as in the birth of “Arab Spring” democracy movements in the Middle East.  It is past time to end the timidity and half-measures of the past several decades, and build a serious cadre of highly trained, on-call, conflict and stabilization technical specialists.  Before we have another repeat of the post-invasion Iraq fiasco, the Administration and Congress need to reach an agreement fully to staff, fund, and empower the new Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations and the still-nascent Civilian Response Corps.

James Kunder is a Senior Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Image by Lafayette University.

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Ten weeks after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rallied a still-reeling American public with a patriotic radio address on Washington’s Birthday.  Furious that U.S. military forces had been mocked by the Axis powers as “weaklings” and “playboys,” Roosevelt famously shot back:  “Let them tell that to the Marines!”

Besides being an interesting tidbit from history, a version of that message should be considered as part of the foreign aid policy debate in Washington today. Why?  On this side of the Atlantic, as in Europe, domestic budget pressures will lead to proposals to cut foreign development assistance – education improvements, more democratic governance systems, agricultural productivity, women’s rights – in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  But, a recent poll of U.S. military officers suggests the important link for all TransAtlantic nations between that foreign aid and national security, and illustrates how well military officers themselves understand the correlation.

In late September, the U.S Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) announced the results of a most unique and timely bit of research.  USGLC hired several well-known polling companies to conduct a survey of U.S. military personnel, on the topic of foreign aid, in which 606 current and retired officers participated.

The finding from this unusual survey?  A large majority of military officers say that non-military tools such as diplomacy and foreign aid are important to achieving America’s national security objectives.  One specific question from the survey (available at www.usglc.org) was:  “In thinking about how the United States achieves its national security objectives, how important do you believe non-military tools such as diplomacy, food assistance, and support for health, education, and economic development programs are?”  Forty percent of the military respondents answered “fairly important,” and 43% answered “very important.”

In other words, the military officers who see first-hand the relationship between investing in human beings and national security – not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but across the developing world, from Mindanao to Mali – strongly support efforts like the U.S. Government’s Development Assistance Program at USAID.

Now, all TransAtlantic nations face significant policy decisions in a budget constrained environment, and seeking efficiencies in the delivery of foreign aid, including better donor coordination at the country level, should be a priority.  In Washington, the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has proposed a slowing of the growth rate in U.S. foreign aid by 10% between now and 2015, resulting in a projected savings of $4.6 billion, a reasonable proposal.

Setting appropriate foreign aid budget levels was one of many topics discussed by European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs at a recent German Marshall Fund colloquy titled How to Make Development Sustainable in a Time of Fiscal Austerity.  Many foreign aid advocates argue that budget pressures may actually impel better coordination among TransAtlantic foreign aid donors at the country-level, a long cherished goal that, while appealing in theory, has proved elusive in practice.

Reasonable proposals for trimming foreign aid should be part of the budget policy debate in Europe and North America.  But, before considering radical cuts in overseas development assistance, parliamentarians should review the recent poll of U.S. military officers.  Ignoring the long-term national security implications of foreign aid would be both bad foreign policy and, considering the huge costs of peacekeeping ventures, unsound fiscal policy.  For those parliamentarians who might consider dramatic cuts in foreign aid as a politically less painful pathway to balanced budgets, we suggest: “Let them tell that to the Marines,” and the soldiers, airmen, and sailors who participated in the USGLC survey.  Those individuals understand all too well that an disengagement from enhancing human progress in poor countries is something for which military personnel personally, and the nation as a whole, may pay a heavy price.

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President Obama announced at the UN on September 22nd, generally to plaudits from the international development community, an enhanced role for American development assistance.  These plaudits are well deserved.  President Obama stated, both in his UN remarks and in a simultaneously issued Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development, that international development would be elevated in his administration’s policy apparatus, and that the U.S Agency for International Development would be strengthened.  These are welcome concepts, given the importance of addressing profound poverty and transnational scourges, like disease and environmental degradation.

The core of the changes the President announced yesterday were about rationalizing U.S. foreign aid:  targeting aid to fewer countries to ensure impact; focusing aid on those countries that have, themselves, invested most in human progress; driving more resources into broad-based economic growth, to sustain development investments;  paying more attention to the priorities established by aid recipient countries; limiting the technical sectors in which the U.S. delivers assistance; and optimizing the division of labor among U.S. foreign aid, and multilateral, other bilateral, and non-governmental aid institutions.

This all makes sense.  It is the kind of reform approach that, if one walked the hallways of USAID headquarters — or the hallways of DFID, DANIDA, AFD, CIDA, SIDA, and other transatlantic development agencies — would elicit the reaction:  “Well done.  It’s about time.  That is what we development specialists have been saying right along.”

But, regrettably, as the old canard states:  “Saying doesn’t make it so!”  If the Obama Administration wants to turn the U.S. development assistance apparatus towards these new, reformist directions, it also has to rearrange American foreign policy mechanisms to effect the change.  It is in this sphere that the President did not do as well in his September 22nd statements.  By trying to have it both ways, the Administration is unlikely to achieve the vision it painted yesterday.  Let me explain.

The reason the U.S. government does not operate its current foreign aid programs in the rational paradigm President Obama described at the United Nations has to do with bureaucratic political power, plain and simple.  As control of U.S. development policy has gravitated over the past several decades — slowly, inevitably, under both parties’ leadership — from USAID to the Department of State, U.S. foreign aid has increasing been colored by the interests of priority nations, a shorter-term perspective, more American flag-waving, more program priorities that will please domestic audiences in the U.S., and a predilection for broadening the categories of foreign aid.

This tendency does not suggest that U.S. State Department officials are malign or misguided.  They, in their oversight of U.S. foreign assistance, simply behave as diplomats and foreign ministries have always behaved:  Their priorities are queued up in terms of attaining foreign policy ends, and foreign aid is just one — albeit an important one — of the tools in their toolkit.  In this logic, a long-term, rational, broad-based economic development plan in a well-governed, but obscure, nation will always get cut before the foreign aid program in a strategically placed ally in the counterinsurgency realm.

Now, if President Obama intended to change this reality with his UN remarks and Presidential Policy Directive, then the inspirational rhetoric about USAID being a “premier” development agency would have been matched by some real political power, so that rationalized U.S. foreign aid programs could hold their own in the inevitable bureaucratic and budgetary tussles.

A close reading of the documents and remarks released on September 22nd suggests just the opposite.  The USAID Administrator still reports to the Secretary of State, in the American foreign policy hierarchy, and is not designated a regular attendee at National Security Council meetings.  At America’s diplomatic missions around the world, it is the U.S. Ambassador, not the USAID Country Director, who will organize the American foreign aid program.  And, there is no mention of significantly expanding the size of the U.S. development agency, which has shrunk dramatically in recent decades.

There are no real surprises, for those who regularly observe Washington political processes, that a powerful American Secretary of State — and one who really cares about international development, to boot — maintained her hold on U.S development assistance policy.  But, we should understand, as analysts, what is happening.    Either the implementation of the policies President Obama announced September 22nd will elevate the standing of the USAID development advocates within the U.S. government or the rationalizing steps he announced will remain stillborn.  Even the President of the United States cannot have it both ways.

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Managing fragile states – preventing state fragility and engaging in “reconstruction and stabilization” activities when states slip into internal conflict – is much on the minds of policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic.  Afghanistan may dominate the media in the immediate future, but Haiti, Yemen, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, the Congo, and a dozen other spots raise the specter of perpetual engagement by the North Atlantic democracies in failed or failing nation-states.  An increasing number of European and North American governments are creating specialized civilian entities to address state fragility, and most governments are thinking carefully on how the civilian and military instruments of diplomacy can be synergized when fragile states become failed states.

For those interested in this compelling topic, let me recommend for your perusal an important new report issued in late July.  No, I am not pushing another military analysis emanating from NATO headquarters, or a UN report on strengthening donor coordination.  Those who want a glimpse of the future, in terms of state fragility, would benefit from a peek at the Population Reference Bureau’s 2010 World Population Data Sheet.

The World Population Data Sheet (WPDS) offers any number of sobering data points.  Starting with the basics, there are now 6.892 billion human beings on the planet.  Since, during my lifetime, the world’s population more than doubled, I admit to a bit of “future shock;” I had mistakenly thought there were only about 6 billion of us.  But my mistake is perhaps a bit understandable since, in 1999, there were “only” six billion human beings.  According to the WPDS, we add another billion every dozen years or so.  In other words, our 8^th billion brother or sister will be added in not-so-far-away 2024.

As to whether this growth has anything to do with instability, I assume no particular change in the level of violence or malign behavior by individual humans.  But, there will be another 1.1 billion of us to manage in the next 13 or so years, and adding that number – approximately the population of India – will certainly stress natural resources and state capacity, with the potential for increasing global instability.

But these gross global numbers are only the beginning of the WPDS’s sobering news.  The real potential for a nexus between state fragility and human fertility lies in the geographical distribution of the population increase in the next decade.  Worldwide, the “total fertility rate” (the “average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime,” by the WPDS definition) is about 2.5, somewhat above the rate required to keep the world’s population stable.  Where do we see growth rates well above 2.5?  The answer is:  almost everywhere where joblessness is high; where governments struggle to provide basic services; and where natural resources are stressed.  In short, population growth rates are highest where potential instability is the highest. 

Countries where the total fertility rate exceeds 4.0 include Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  And the very highest rates, above 5.5 total fertility rate?  The Congo, Somalia and Yemen – all among the world’s most challenged polities – share this distinction.

On the other side of the coin, those countries that have traditionally provided the lion’s share of development assistance to failing states – those countries that have led many peacekeeping and peacemaking initiatives – continue to shrink dramatically in terms of their share of the world’s population.  For the member states of the European Union, the current total fertility rate is 1.6, not sufficient even to sustain the current population.  In an interesting Population Reference Bureau (PRB) case study, the demographers there note the cases of Germany and Ethiopia, each of which in mid-2010 contains a population between 82 and 85 million.  By 2050, Germany’s population is projected to shrink to 72 million, while Ethiopia’s grows to 174 million.  I sincerely hope that, by 2050, Ethiopia is in a position to offer stability assistance, if required, to Germany, rather than requiring such assistance from Berlin.

Predicting future trends is notoriously tricky.  Clearly, it is not certain that rising world population will, in and of itself, cause increased instability or state failure.  For donor nations, relative population size is only one factor affecting their power and influence.  There may be a Gandhi or two, or another great peacemaker, in the billion babies to be born in the next decade plus.  Emerging nations may take up the slack in peacemaking, or even far exceed the impact of the donor nations that have dominated the post-World War II decades.  New technological breakthroughs may lead to unforeseen outcomes.  And, for those who perceive a causal connection between Northern/Western dominance and instability in the global South, the relative demographic disempowerment of the North Atlantic states may even be touted as a stabilizing dynamic.

Nonetheless, certain outcomes seem as clear as the data in the PRB’s research.  The Somalia of 2050, with its 23.5 million inhabitants, will demand more of its government and its physical resources than will today’s 9.4 million inhabitants, and will be an inherently more complex place for outside forces to shape, whether those forces come in the form of international peacekeepers or development resources.  The 2010 World Population Data Sheet should be on the reading list for those concerned with state fragility.  The interrelationship between state fragility and human fertility should receive more attention by policymakers, and be carefully considered in designing conflict prevention and peacebuilding institutions.

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A “must-read” document for analysts on both sides of the Atlantic has just emerged from the White House:   the long-awaited Obama Administration National Security Strategy.   This overarching statement of U.S. security priorities and perspectives is the first such effort since the Bush Administration issued its 2006 version.

In the U.S. system, the National Security Strategy is a capstone document from which federal agencies draw guidance to issue an important range of policy guidance, including the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy and other signature documents.

Some aspects of the Obama Administration’s 52-page Strategy are not surprising.   There is a strong emphasis on multilateral approaches to problem solving, and repeated references to restoring core American values, like an emphasis on human rights, in national policy.   Transatlantic allies will be buoyed by the multiple references to partnership.   On page 41, for example, the Strategy notes:   Our relationship with our European allies remains the cornerstone for U.S. engagement with the world, and a catalyst for international action. We will engage with our allies bilaterally, and pursue close consultation on a broad range of security and economic issues.

For advocates of a key role for international development assistance, like me, the National Security Strategy strongly endorses the centrality of development in U.S. foreign policy, along with defense, diplomacy, and economic engagement more broadly.

Perhaps the most striking feature of President Obama’s document, however, is the breadth of approaches encompassed in the Strategy.   Although the Administration states directly that battling terrorism remains important, it is clear that the new document begins with a much broader view of national security than did predecessor policy documents.   So, environmental issues, a strong U.S. domestic economy, and educational reform within the United States, among many other topics, are touched on.   Some observers will, I suspect, applaud this broadening beyond military approaches, while others may well critique the National Security Strategy for aiming in too many directions.

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In Washington this week, someone “leaked” to the media a draft of the Obama Administration’s Presidential Study Directive 7, titled A New Way Forward on Global Development.   This document, nearly a year in the making and still in draft form, argues that international development €“ that combination of aid, policies, and resource transfers intended to improve conditions in the globe’s poorer nations €“ is a “strategic imperative for the United States,” and that “the successful pursuit of development is essential to our security, prosperity, and values.”

Well said.   There are few international dynamics less controversial than the connection between poverty and hopelessness, on the one hand, and global instability on the other.

Now, if only those noble, forthright words could be translated into an equally clear government mechanism for carrying out international development policy.   Instead, the language in Presidential Study Directive 7 reflects deep bureaucratic divisions within the U.S. federal establishment, and serves as another reminder of the tortured foreign aid debate in Washington.   That tortured debate, if the “PSD” is any indication, continues.

For those of us supportive of a strong U.S. commitment to international development, the contrast with the development debate in the United Kingdom is astonishing.   As this blog is written, on the eve of the UK elections, all three major parties have publicly endorsed a strong role for the Department for International Development (DFID), pledged support for DFID remaining a cabinet department, and increasing development funding.  

In the United States, however, here, in the language of PSD 7, one senses €“ despite President Obama’s strong statements in support of international development €“ continued uncertainly about whether the United States government really wants a center of excellence, strong and vocal, in international development.   Rather, a careful reading of the draft document suggests continued bureaucratic tussles are the order of the day, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) remains a pawn in these interagency “turf” wars.

For example, the PSD 7 version now available states that the USAID Administrator will be included in NSC meetings, “when appropriate.”   If development is, indeed, a “strategic imperative” and “essential to U.S. security, prosperity, and values,” one might reasonably assume that it would always be “appropriate” for Administrator Rajiv Shah to attend.   And, although, according to the draft, development will be “elevated” to a position “equal to diplomacy and defense,” PSD 7 places the head of USAID one notch down from true equality.  He or she will continue to report, not to the President, but to the Secretary of State €“ an uncertain form of equality, and a strange type of “elevation.”   A very positive innovation in the PSD 7 draft is the establishment within the U.S. government of a “Development Policy Committee,” to coordinate efforts among all federal agencies €“ trade, energy, immigration, and so forth €“ with regard to policies affecting international development.   This Committee is a useful innovation, but it is not certain that USAID, America’s lead development agency, will actually chair this committee.   Finally, even out in the developing world itself, where USAID’s indisputable field-level expertise should ensure its preeminence, PSD 7 continues with the tortured uncertainty that has characterized the American foreign aid debate.   The draft document bestows on USAID the mandate to lead the U.S. development effort in the developing world, “where appropriate.” When, one might reasonably ask, would it not be appropriate?

Some supporters of international development are celebrating the PSD 7 draft.   But, in my view, such celebrations of partial victory are a sad manifestation of just how far international development has sunk, relative to diplomacy and, especially, defense in the U.S. foreign policy hierarchy.   What the people of the developing world need is not partial victories; they have had plenty of those.   What they need is a clarion indication that the U.S government fully understands what they are reminded of on a daily basis:   without development, there is no peace.   Would that the Obama White House could, in the final version of the Presidential Study Directive, put aside the tortured formulations of the PSD 7 draft and really, fully incorporate the long-term development instrument into the national foreign policy toolkit on an equal basis.

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WASHINGTON — There are two sets of policy issues emanating from the rubble and horror of Port-au-Prince: “Whither Haiti?” and “Whither relief aid?”

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah visiting the country, most of the attention is on the first question.   Is there, policymakers are asking, some dynamic by which the gravity of the earthquake will finally mobilize substantial global interest in building a functioning nation-state on the western end of Hispaniola?   Will the international donors finally sustain their development efforts sufficiently to help build the governance and economic foundations for a prosperous Haiti?

But the transatlantic community should consider policy issue number two as well.   As the former director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, I am painfully aware that most of the Haiti media articles about chaos in food distribution and medical supplies, pile-ups at the airport, squabbles among donor organizations, and disorder during the first days of the response could have applied to almost any rapid-onset disaster in the past several decades.   Just substitute Indonesia, Pakistan, or any one of a dozen other countries for Haiti in the press reports, and the stories would have been nearly identical.   The world’s humanitarian enthusiasm to respond after meta-natural disasters occur is not matched by sustained organizational preparation and coordination in between these crises.

In theory, when the United Nations created its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) in the early 1990s, the donor nations were on the pathway to success, under the aegis of the United Nations.   But, OCHA has never received the resources to do the job its founders envisaged.   And the creation of OCHA has not been matched by the development of a serious, standing disaster relief process linking the major relief providers.   To the shame of the world community, disaster victims often suffer the pangs of the damned while global relief agencies €“ public and private €“ sort out a “pick-up game.”

Having worked in such crises myself, I realize that attaining perfection in coordination is not likely, especially when a disaster emanates suddenly and unexpectedly from earthquake or tidal wave.   Those relief experts who risk their own lives to assist are tireless, committed, and courageous, and often do their absolute best to create ad hoc systems to bring a semblance of order out of chaos.   Subsets of these “first responders,” like the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG), have made progress in defining standards and developing search and rescue methodology.   But, overall, we can do much, much better.

It occurs to me that the transatlantic community  – which provides the majority of global relief in virtually every natural disaster  – should take the lead in building a more structured response capability.   One way is for international relief policymakers to look more closely at the NATO model as a pathway forward.   NATO, while not perfect, ensures that the basic planning for and organization of military operations is carried out ahead of time, through a sustained program of joint planning, training, exercising, and operations.

If we suspend disbelief for a moment and envision  – in Brussels, or London, or Ottawa  – a standing organization of representatives from all the major European and North American donor nations’ development and relief agencies, significant progress could be made before the next disaster.   And, a significant number of lives could be saved in the next Haiti.

What would such an organization actually do?   Disaster relief professionals from the major donors would be detailed for one-year assignments to this organization to develop common operating procedures and common disaster relief doctrine.   International standing operating procedures would address key elements of a civilian disaster response such as how to prioritize relief supplies, how to link up with the affected government, and how to structure coordination centers.   Beyond common terminology and common operational frameworks, relief specialists from the transatlantic donor community would train together; the middle of a crisis is not the optimal occasion to meet colleagues for the first time.   Curricula on best practices in crisis response, developed by these technical experts, could serve as the basis for shared training with the UN system, international organizations, other donors, and non-governmental entities.

Such a structure — perhaps the North Atlantic Disaster Organization (NADO)  – should be discussed once the situation in Haiti stabilizes.   We should not undercut the United Nations, and that is not my intent.   But, until the world as a whole is prepared seriously to meld and harmonize its disaster response resources, the North Atlantic nations, which do the heavy lifting in relief delivery, could move the ball forward by investing in a standing disaster relief coordination mechanism focused both on disaster prevention and disaster response.  

James Kunder is a Senior Resident Fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

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President Obama’s announcement this week of Dr. Rajiv Shah as his candidate to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has refocused attention on a critical policy question:   What does America want from its development aid program?

This question is of more than academic interest.   Its answer has much to do, first, with how the U.S. government should structure its foreign policy establishment. That is, what relative roles, in the 21st century should USAID, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the range of domestic departments with partial international mandates (Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, and others) play in driving events overseas?  

Second, the answer has important implications for America’s geo-strategic relations and bilateral partners, especially close allies in Europe and Japan.   For years, these partners €“ which tend to rely more heavily than the United States on development aid as an implement of national policy €“ have been seeking more clarity on the objectives of U.S. foreign assistance.  To many of these partners, as indeed for many within the Beltway,  U.S. development aid appears to be a complex, contradictory welter of special interest earmarks, with no unifying strategic theme.

Third, and most important, “whither USAID and development aid?” is critically important for the “Bottom Billion,” those impoverished men, women, and children in the developing world for whom decisions in far-off Washington and other world capitals have painfully direct impact on their chances for a decent life, and their degree of hopelessness.   Indeed, the current PSD, QDDR and other examinations in Washington, while couched in terms of Washington policies and bureaucratic structures, are really about one central question:   Will the U.S. government rebuild a center of excellence (a long-term development agency) that focuses on the systems changes required to eradicate poverty in the Third World, or will “foreign aid be linked to foreign policy?” €“ shorthand for casting overboard the long-term, poverty-reduction paradigm.

Naturally, with these policy issues in the balance, Washington policymakers are asking:   Who is Dr. Rajiv Shah, President Obama’s nominee to head USAID?   Given Dr. Shah’s relative youth, and limited knowledge about him within the international development community, that question is natural, and interesting.

But, in terms of the larger issue of how USAID and American development aid will evolve, I would argue that Dr. Shah’s specific background and qualifications are of secondary interest.   The really big questions are about where the USAID Administrator will sit, and with whom he will speak.

As has been widely reported, USAID’s relative policy influence has declined in recent years and, along with it, the long-term, systems change perspective.   Much of that decline emanates from the period in the 1990s when former Senator Jesse Helms, in what some would consider a quintessential moment of strategic blindness, drove legislation eliminating the U.S. Information Agency and forcing USAID’s Administrator to report to the Secretary of State.   Since that time, senior-most U.S. policymakers, from the President on down, have not had direct access to a long-term-perspective, international development voice when considering foreign policy issues.   At Cabinet meetings, at senior OMB budget meetings, at senior National Security Council meetings, the focus on the Bottom Billion has been missing.   The President hears about long-term investment in the Developing World through the filter of the Secretary of State, ensuring that analyses will be colored by immediate political/military imperatives.   The absence of senior USAID officials from the current White House discussion on Afghanistan policy is but the latest manifestation of this arrangement.

So, in short, the real issue of leadership at USAID has only something to do with Dr. Rajiv Shah’s background and management skills.   I, for one, wish him the very best, if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.  

The real question is whether President Obama is paying attention, and if he wants to hear, in his senior-most councils, a clearly enunciated voice for the Bottom Billion and for a long-term change perspective.   Given the obvious relationship between world poverty, hopelessness, lack of democratic opportunities, and illiteracy, on the one hand, and instability and extremism on the other, one would expect that the President would insist on inviting Dr. Shah to relevant Cabinet meetings, NSC “Principals” sessions, and senior OMB reviews.   A clearly enunciated long-term development perspective might make some such meetings more contentious, and would certainly challenge the currently prevailing geostrategic logic.   But, it might just make U.S. foreign policy a bit more effective, and more focused on the real drivers of conflict in the planet’s tortured realms.

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The American humorist Mark Twain once famously exhorted:   “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Just before the Labor Day weekend, the Obama Administration gratified the advocates of enhanced U.S. foreign aid, and probably astonished some cynics, by announcing a full-blown review of global development policy.   The review, structured formally within a Presidential Study Directive (PSD), will be headed by National Security Advisor General James Jones and Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council.

The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, clearly among the gratified, immediately hailed the initiative as a “landmark” event that establishes “clear White House leadership” on revising America’s approach to global development.   Some cynics €“ while clearly on the defensive €“ are still suspicious about the Obama Administration’s intentions in making the announcement.   Some of these grumble that a PSD is the perfect Washington “study-it-to-death” delaying tactic, to deflect attention from the nine-month hiatus in either naming a USAID Administrator or submitting Foreign Assistance Act reform legislation to Capitol Hill.

Let’s assume that the global development advocates are correct, and that the senior review will raise the profile of global development among senior U.S. policymakers.   What are some of the key elements of U.S. global development strategy that should come under the microscope?   Four critical elements come immediately to mind.

First, USAID and the other federal agencies involved in global development must engage more deeply with bilateral and multilateral partners.   Although the U.S. government remains the single largest donor of foreign aid, it sometimes acts as if it is the ONLY donor.   In fact, based on OECD statistics, in 2008 U.S. development aid amounted to about 20% of overall foreign aid from government aid agencies worldwide.   As the Obama Administration seeks ways to enhance the impact of global development, it must increasingly partner with European and other important players.

Second, trade and foreign direct investment must be brought decisively into the global development mix.   By announcing a PSD that will include not only USAID and State, but all federal agencies, the Obama Administration implicitly recognized that trade and investment have much to do with prosperity and human progress in the poorest nations.   The U.S. government has taken limited steps toward meshing its aid and trade agendas; the new analysis must examine the structural and bureaucratic impediments to full integration of these elements.

Third, it is time to get serious about reconstruction and stabilization.   All international development experts understand that failed and failing states erode confidence in foreign aid and consume inordinate resources.   Yet, despite decades of U.S. engagement in Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and dozens of other crisis spots, USAID remains dangerously understaffed to deal with conflict zones, and the promising State Department initiative for a Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization continues to receive only a lukewarm reception.

Fourth, and most important, a deep review of American global development policy must specify a clear strategic basis for U.S. foreign aid.   As virtually every foreign aid analyst has noted, the half-century-old Foreign Assistance Act has become a labyrinthian muddle of conflicting objectives and development paradigms.   President Obama’s “PSD” provides an opportunity to review systems like that at the UK Department for International Development, which bring admirable clarity of purpose to foreign aid ventures.

In summary, let us hope the optimists are justified, and the cynics misguided, about the Obama Administration’s review of American global development policy.   And let us hope that the review will go deeply into the core issues that shape this complex topic.

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