Recently in Development Category

According to Mike Allen at Politico:

A top official e-mails: “Stan McChrystal’s exit from Afghanistan not only affects military personnel, but is an opportunity for the civilian side of the equation -- which has not gotten nearly the credit it deserves for its many successes on the ground, despite of the shenanigans at the top of the Kabul food chain -- to shift around some. USAID Administrator Raj Shah is ramping up his in-house expertise on Afghanistan and Pakistan with the additions of Alex Thier, Kay McGowan and Craig Mullaney. Thier, who is widely recognized as a leading thinker on Afghanistan policy, comes from [the United States Institute of Peace] to head up a new policy shop at AID. McGowan is being seconded from State and was a key player on Zal Khalilzad's team in Kabul. Mullaney, a former Army Ranger and Rhodes scholar, joins Shah's team from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.”

This good news will resurrect the USAID policy shop that was abolished / replace when State stood up the Director of Foreign Assistance.

By Simon Anholt

Foreign aid, in many ways, gives with one hand while it takes away with the other.

I have often commented in the past about the unintended damage done to the international standing and, consequently, the long term prospects of poorer countries by well-intentioned charity promotion, and in particular the negative 'branding' of Africa by aid celebrities like Geldof and Bono. Over the decades, with the best intentions in the world, their relentless depiction of Africa as one single, hopeless basket-case has harmed the long-term development prospects of the whole continent even as it has boosted donations. After all, while many people would happily donate money to a basket-case, few will think it prudent to invest in a basket-case, buy products or services produced in a basket-case, go on holiday to a basket-case, or hire somebody born and raised in a basket-case.

From the letters to the editor in the 7 June 2010 edition of the Financial Times:

Sir, As you report, "Today, more Africans have phones than toilets" ("Attitudes change to business in region", June 4). Entrepreneurs throughout the continent have also noticed this strange truth. In some countries, a toilet is the new mobile phone - something that shows that you've made it. Businesses are responding to growing demand by enduring improved supply, better customer service and lower prices.

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council is encouraging this trend. The Water and Sanitation Program, hosted by the World Bank, estimates that every dollar spent on sanitation and drinking water generates between $3 and $34 dollars [sic] in economic benefit and that ensuring access to basic sanitation for all citizens could raise a country's gross domestic product by several percentage points. Like phones, toilets have the potential to "revolutionize lives and transform society."

Spencer Ackerman has an article at The Washington Independent on the forthcoming Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) based on his interview of Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department's influential Director of Policy Planning. The QDDR is the State Department's initial foray into strategic planning. According to State's website, the QDDR

will provide the short-, medium-, and long-term blueprint for our diplomatic and development efforts. Our goal is to use this process to guide us to agile, responsive, and effective institutions of diplomacy and development, including how to transition from approaches no longer commensurate with current challenges. It will offer guidance on how we develop policies; how we allocate our resources; how we deploy our staff; and how we exercise our authorities.

Anne-Marie says this exercise is "not an abstract planning exercise" and that the "implications go far beyond the budget." According to Anne-Marie, the QDDR will result in institutional changes, but what remains unknown except that USAID will not be completely absorbed by State.

Anne-Marie put forward three operating themes for the QDDR. First, "U.S. foreign policy is beset with "collective problems" -- from terrorism to climate change to pandemic disease -- that require joint international action." Second, is "how State and USAID work with the military to address "the question of civilian operational capacity to crisis." And third, is the "space between what AID or DIFD [the U.K.'s foreign-assistance agency] or UNDP [the United Nation Development Program] does and what peacekeepers and international armies do."

Spencer's interview unveiled who is working on the QDDR. Anne-Marie is overseeing five working groups of senior officials from both State and USAID.

• Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of State for East Asia, and Karen Turner, director of USAID's office of development partners, head the group responsible for "Building a Global Architecture of Cooperation."
• Maria Otero, the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, and Gloria Steele, USAID's global-health chief, work on whole-of-government solutions.
• Johnnie Carson, State's top African-affairs official, and George Laudato, USAID's Mideast chief, handle "Investing in the Building Blocks of Stronger Societies."
• Conflict prevention and response is under Eric Schwartz, State's assistant secretary for population, migration and refugees.
• Susan Reichle, USAID's senior democracy and humanitarian assistance official.
• Ruth Whiteside of State's Foreign Service Institute and JeanMarie Smith, Lew's special assistant, are in charge of "Building Operational and Resource Platforms for Success."

It seems to me, as Spencer wrote from our interview, that the QDDR is focusing on interagency processes rather than intra-agency barriers and friction. In this case, it may be safe to say that the interagency process is the "low hanging fruit" that is easier for the picking.

We will see what, if any, real change the QDDR will bring. As I said in the article, the "QDDR will ultimately be just a document. What it spurs will be the real test."

Related:

• Hitting Bottom at Foggy Bottom at ForeignPolicy.com

• State Department's structure hinders public diplomacy by Amb. Thomas R. Pickering et al.

• State Department Strategy Review Flawed from Start by Helle Dale and James Roberts

Below are four books on persuasion you may not have considered. I recommend them all.

Political Warfare Against the Kremlin: US and British Propaganda Policy at the Beginning of the Cold War by Lowell Schwartz. Strongly recommended if you’re interested in a relevant past ideological struggle. We cannot afford to ignore our past, especially when they had such a better grip on the requirements than we seem to have today.

In Search of a Usable Past: The Marshall Plan and Postwar Reconstruction Today by Barry Machado. Reading about the “psychological by-products” of post-conflict reconstruction is something many would be wise to do today.

Propaganda by Edward Bernays. Originally published in 1928, it is frank discussion of the reality of persuasion using the corporate world as examples. Modern propaganda, Bernays wrote, “is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”

The Just Prince: A Manual of Leadership edited by Joseph Kechichian. We continue to operate as if we are in a Machiavellian world, but we’re not. Written from an Arab-Muslim perspective nearly 350 years before the Florentine clerk wrote The Prince, the Just Prince arrives at similar ends as Machiavelli but the different views of power and authority creates different means to those ends.

NPR’s Jackie Northam reported on development and governance skillsets in high demand and short supply in Afghanistan.

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a "routine commencement speech" at Harvard University that would change the course of history. On that day, the retired General of the Army (5-star) proposed a program for Europe based on building local economic strength, governance, and self-confidence. 

It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

The program, called simply the "Marshall Plan" by the media, was based on the recommendations of Marshall's Director of the Policy Planning Staff, George Kennan. In a declassified (formerly Top Secret) supplement to a July 23, 1947, Report of the Policy Planning Staff titled "Certain Aspects of the European Recovery Problem from the United States Standpoint," Kennan succinctly explained that success of the proposed plan would be determined by the Europeans themselves as they felt self-empowered and secure.

Is the State Department so full of problems today that it requires rebuilding from scratch if there is to be effective civilian leadership of America’s foreign affairs? From the recent report on the dysfunction within the Africa Bureau (which ignored the failure of intra-agency integration), the militarization of foreign aid and situation with USAID, to the continuing problem of the militarization of public diplomacy and strategic communication underlying the question of who represents America to the world, are we seeing more of the iceberg?

If change is necessary, are the Secretary of State’s authorities and leadership enough to push the necessary changes without creating a paralyzing backlash from within? Must change come from Congress in a modern (and more sweeping) version of the Goldwater-Nichols Act (which would beg the question of who would be the modern Goldwater)?

What are your thoughts?

Related:

• Comparing the Areas of Responsibility of State and Defense (Updated)
• What is the purpose of Public Diplomacy if not to influence?
• Public Diplomacy is not an influence activity and the DOD can only use PSYOP to engage foreign audiences
• New Defense Department Plan on Strategic Communication and Science and Technology
• Broadcasting Board of Governors: empty seats at the public diplomacy table
• Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy is at Odds with Social Media, and What to Do about It: an interview with Matt Armstrong
• Defining Public Diplomacy (again)
• In America? Smith-Mundt means no SMS updates on the President's Ghana speech for you!
• Debating the Theory vs Practice of Public Diplomacy
• Report on the Smith-Mundt Symposium
• Must. Be. AWESOME! by Chris DuFour
• Government reports on public diplomacy you may have missed

A primary pillar of US engagement with the world in the modern era is foreign assistance. Institutionalized under the Marshall Plan and later the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that created the US Agency for International Development, development aid was and continues to be a means of denying ideological sanctuary to our adversaries that prey on poverty and despair as well as focusing on developing the capacity for self-governance through economic and other development.

In March 2008, General Anthony Zinni (ret.) and Admiral Leighton Smith (ret.) told Congress

the 'enemies' in the world today are actually conditions -- poverty, infectious disease, political turmoil and corruption, environmental and energy challenges.

USAID's mission today is as important as ever and yet it remains leaderless with declining morale and shrinking funds as increasingly America's foreign development aid wears combat boots, just like its public diplomacy.