In a recent TAI article, “Making Diplomacy Great Again,” former Ambassador James Jeffrey argued for a simplification of the State Department’s mission. He suggests that State has focused historically and correctly on realpolitik diplomacy, wherein America’s diplomats try to persuade the political leaders of another country to do things that help America achieve its own tangible self-interest. Now State has two objectives, says Jeffrey. In addition to state-to-state realpolitik engagement, the second, now dominant “transformational” diplomacy compels diplomats to dive deep into the inner workings of other countries, seeking to reshape them into something presumably more tolerable to America. It’s a mistake, says Jeffrey, mostly because it distracts diplomats from their proper mission, but also because experience tells us it’s bound to fail.
In the course of his discourse, Jeffrey misconstrues the mission of USAID, mistakenly blaming development assistance for State’s current troubles. I want here to clarify the objectives of USAID, and suggest a restructuring of security and other forms of assistance that concurs with Jeffrey’s view that at least some of USAID’s functions should be more closely aligned with State’s fundamental mission of realpolitik diplomacy. Indeed, the best solution is to transfer responsibility for implementing security assistance to the State Department so that USAID can concentrate on development assistance.
Jeffrey argues that transformational diplomacy, sometimes called “nation building” or perhaps “meddling in the internal affairs of other countries,” is not what the State Department is supposed to do. He believes that it should not be the mission of USAID, either. Most of the career professional staff at USAID (not to be confused with their more transient political leadership) would probably agree with him.
Jeffrey makes a cogent case for the refocusing State on its historic, realpolitik mission. His views are in line with organizational theorists who argue that the most successful agencies of government are the ones with a single, clearly defined objective.
Jeffrey’s arguments would be stronger, however, if he dealt as systematically with USAID as he does with State.
He perplexingly blames USAID for leading State astray, but in doing so he confuses development assistance with security assistance, an all too common mistake in both the Truman and Reagan buildings. Jeffrey applauds the elimination of development assistance within the President’s 2018 budget request, and yet it’s really security assistance that causes State the heartburn Jeffrey seeks to alleviate.
What is to be done? Because so many people misconstrue the objectives of USAID’s four main categories of assistance programs, it is worth clarifying the defining characteristics of each:
Security Assistance: Of all of USAID’s organizational objectives, this one will be most familiar to and best understood by Ambassadors like Jeffrey. It is funded under a special account created by Congress called the Economic Support Fund (ESF). It has cousins that restrict funding to particular regions, but they all share a common operating procedure that awards final control over spending to the State Department. Congress intended the funding for this objective to be used when development assistance itself could not be justified, as for example was the case in Vietnam. Though USAID spends most of the money, and generally couches its spending plans in language that looks like development assistance, these funds are intended support State’s security objectives, with an outlook typically of one to two years.
Humanitarian Assistance: This will be most familiar to and easily understood by the American public. It is funded under the eponymous Humanitarian Assistance account to provide basic shelter and food in the event of crisis or disaster. It is perhaps the most successful of USAID’s programs, perhaps because it is so segregated from the rest of the agency. Senior staff take pains to keep it that way, which arguably detracts to some extent from the mission itself. It is certainly the case that staff in other parts of USAID make a considerable effort to explain that humanitarian assistance is not the same as development, public health, or security assistance. The outlook for those who respond to things like tsunamis or refugees fleeing wars is obviously very short term.
Public Health Assistance: This is funded under a variety of accounts, perhaps the most notable being the President’s Malaria Initiative and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The fairly recent outbreak of Ebola is also covered by this mission. In responding to epidemics, USAID public health experts collaborate closely with the Centers for Disease Control and other organizations, including the World Health Organization. A principal aim of Congress is the protection of the American public from diseases that might spread within our borders. The outlook is often very short term once an epidemic is identified. Note that public health funding in response to particular epidemics should not be confused with assistance designed to help a country build a national system of medical practitioners, clinics, and hospitals; that sort of capacity-building is more appropriately addressed with development assistance.
Development Assistance: This is arguably the heart and soul of USAID, and is also the sole objective of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, though the MCC focuses its development assistance on countries that are more advanced according to political metrics. The nature of programs of this type is straightforward: When countries request it, we help them eliminate poverty by assisting with the development of economic and political systems, including systems for funding and delivering basic needs like education and health care. The outlook is long term, often five years or more. Efforts to alleviate poverty sustainably can take years to become successful, and depend largely on the political situation within the country receiving assistance, but the benefits of generating goodwill and expanding the community of friendly nations are often immediate, precisely as Congress intended.
Focusing the Mission at USAID
Where State arguably has two competing diplomacies, USAID has four very different types of assistance programs. If two are too many for State, surely four are too many for USAID. And yet all four of USAID’s objectives address real needs that in one way or another also serve the security interests of the United States.
The problem is that they are all so different, yet are housed within a single organization. Unlike the solution at State, which Jeffrey says is to eliminate an objective that is bound to fail, the best bet at USAID is to reorganize so that each of the four important but competing, or at least highly dissimilar, objectives is housed in a separate organizational structure, thereby affording each a better chance to succeed. With clear mandates and independent funding, technical experts in each case will have the discretion to make sound judgments toward their particular objective, without having to compete against others that may be equally laudable but require different solutions. Appropriators will have a clearer view of each problem, and can make judgments accordingly. Positive results are much more likely to follow.
What specifically needs to be done? Consider each of USAID’s four objectives in turn:
Public Health Assistance: USAID’s public health programs that respond to disease outbreaks already operate for all practical purposes as an independent organization within the agency. They have their own methods of operation in line with their segregated funding and strong focus on particular diseases. There is very little cross-fertilization of staff, and there are few synergies with other programs within USAID. There is thus no real rationale for housing these programs within the same organization that also delivers humanitarian, development, and security assistance.
For disease-specific public health crisis programs, it would make better sense to create a Foreign Public Health Service, perhaps within the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. It would be constituted out of USAID’s Global Health Bureau, and akin in some ways to the Foreign Agriculture Service of the Department of Agriculture. Within the CDC, a specialized corps of Foreign Service officers would be trained to organize and lead responses to outbreaks overseas, drawing upon the additional skills of their domestic colleagues as needed.
There is one important exception. In contrast to programs that have special funding from Congress to address particular disease outbreaks, USAID is often asked to help countries design and build entire health care systems. In such cases, the drivers of debate in Congress are not fears for America’s own immediate safety. This is not a public health exercise per se, though of course in the long term it may have a sustained, positive impact on public health. Rather, it is a development exercise. The skills required to deliver health care system development assistance closely parallel those required to deliver any other kind of development assistance, having much to do with the challenges of public administration and effective governance. Specialized medical expertise may be required in specific instances, but that will be secondary to the broader craft of development assistance.
Humanitarian Assistance: Humanitarian assistance programs also have their own logic, personnel, and methods within USAID. USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and its Office of Transition Initiatives, along with the State Department’s own refugee programs, already operate as independent programs with their own specialists and methods of operation. These various offices collaborate far more with each other than they do with the rest of their respective organizations.
As with public health, it would be sensible to create a Foreign Disaster Response Service, perhaps as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, incorporating both USAID’s disaster response and State’s refugee response functions. Within FEMA, a specialized corps of Foreign Service officers would be trained to organize and lead responses overseas, drawing upon the additional expertise of their domestic colleagues as needed.
Security Assistance: Assistance in service of America’s immediate security interests is the purview of the State Department and realpolitik diplomacy. In “Making Diplomacy Great Again,” Jeffrey calls this “development assistance,” a common mistake even within USAID. The funding account is the Economic Support Fund, along with similar accounts that are earmarked for specific regions. The Development Assistance account is used altogether differently.
Because security assistance is implemented under different circumstances than development assistance, the skills required of the Foreign Service officers who administer the assistance will also be different. Often, USAID officers foolishly try to remain true to the principles of development assistance, and thus appear to their State Department colleagues as clueless when it comes to security assistance. State officers gnash their teeth due to the failure of USAID officers to understand the mission, and bemoan even the existence of USAID’s longer-term planning process, which they deem to be irrelevant.
It makes sense then to merge the organizational delivery of security assistance with the organizational design and implementation of security policy. Let security assistance be implemented by the State Department directly, rather than through a suboptimal intermediary. A portion of USAID Foreign Service officers should have the opportunity to transfer to State to form the backbone of a new security assistance corps or “cone” within the Department. As careers progress, State officers from political and economic cones can rotate briefly through overseas tours in the assistance cone, and vice versa.
Development Assistance: That leaves us with one remaining objective for USAID, and one is enough. Congress had the right idea from the start.
What most fail to realize is that development assistance is its own craft. USAID’s officers may be hired for particular areas of technical expertise, such as health systems, agricultural extension, or business supply chains, but during their careers they perfect the craft of development assistance, which has to do with the particular challenges of applying technical knowledge in political, economic, social, and cultural environments very different from our own. The learning process for Foreign Service Officers implementing development assistance occurs through thoughtful mentoring by senior officers, sophisticated and expertly delivered seminars, and the experience of both success and setbacks.
For example, discerning actual rather than expressed need is a matter of conducting research and sharing it with beneficiaries and their representatives. Culture and history play important roles. There is always a risk of paternalism when what is really required is active and constructive listening. What may be beneficial to one group within a society may be harmful to another. The way forward is typically less reliant on technical solutions, which are often already well known, than on sharing experiences and offering alternatives so that individuals can choose for themselves, for better or for worse, the way forward they deem best.
The most sustainable solution is rarely the easiest. Pressure to generate immediate results, rarely wise, must be resisted by actively seeking teachable moments where complexities are rendered more apparent, and understanding can advance. In particular, the art of the Congressional staff delegation, squarely focused on learning more about development assistance rather than on issues of shorter term strategic self-interest, is essential to continuance of funding.
All of the above will undoubtedly sound like gibberish to the typical State Department diplomat. The clash of organizational cultures and practices is precisely why it is so wasteful when USAID development assistance officers are diverted to other duties for which, frankly, they are ill-equipped. In particular, there is virtually no formal training program at USAID that prepares officers to implement security assistance within a State Department program. The wasteful practice of having highly trained development assistance officers implement security assistance simply must be stopped.
A USAID that is focused purely and independently on development assistance, as Congress in 1961 intended it to do, will be a much smaller agency than it is today, though merging USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation will restore some of that size. One bureau within the newly merged development agency can then employ assistance methods appropriate for countries with problematic political systems, while the other can engage more politically advanced countries through higher level grants and partnerships to perfect existing national systems.
In the President’s 2018 budget request, which will fund USAID programs beginning in September 2019, the proposed level for the development assistance account is zero. Jeffrey, and presumably many of his former colleagues at the State Department, think that’s a good thing. They’re wrong. USAID’s historic mission will be terminated if Congress approves the President’s budget, and yet that historic mission remains as valid today, when poverty and despair continue to breed terrorism and extremist ideologies, as it was in 1961 when the principal fears were Cuba, Vietnam, and nuclear proliferation. The vote should take place sometime before December. A lot is riding on it.
James Jeffrey responds:
Jeffrey Cochrane, in his critique of my piece, writes that my view of USAID’s role in proselytizing foreign assistance as an elixir for nation-building is off base. But in fact he buttresses my point repeatedly. In Cochrane’s own words: “Most of the career professional staff at USAID (not to be confused with their more transient political leadership) would probably agree with (Jeffrey)” (emphasis added). But of course it’s the “transient political leadership” who “sells” USAID capabilities and programs to the outside world, and sits at the table at National Security Council staff meetings.
And why shouldn’t those leaders think this way? Claims of transformational assistance programs are hard-wired into the selling of them. As Cochrane states, “development assistance “help(s) . . . eliminate poverty . . . assisting with the development of economic and political systems.” While he correctly warns that real progress can take many years, he then adds: “but the benefits of generating goodwill and expanding the community of friendly nations are often immediate.”
Faced with such claims, our results-obsessed and time-challenged foreign policy leadership immediately pounce on “eliminate poverty” (“helps” is conveniently forgotten), “development of political systems” (that is, the ones that do what we want), “expanding the community of friendly nations,” and above all (emphasis gleefully added) “often immediate.” And away goes the next presidential diplomatic initiative or Marine Expeditionary Unit landing to exploit this all-but-magical capability we supposedly have.