Civilian Response Corps: Smart Power in Action

imageThe Civilian Response Corps has a website: http://www.civilianresponsecorps.gov/. From the about page:

The Civilian Response Corps is a group of civilian federal employees who are specially trained and equipped to deploy rapidly to provide reconstruction and stabilization assistance to countries in crisis or emerging from conflict. The Corps leverages the diverse talents, expertise, and technical skills of members from nine federal departments and agencies for conflict prevention and stabilization.

We are diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers and others who help fragile states restore stability and rule of law and achieve economic recovery as quickly as possible.

Visit the site and check it out. See the below links for previous discussions on CRC and the State Department Coordinator for Reconstruction & Stabilization (S/CRS):

Counterinsurgency Today: A Review of Eric T. Olson’s “Some of the Best Weapons for Counterinsurgents Do Not Shoot”

By Efe Sevin

The long-lasting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to increased inquiry into the concepts and practices of counterinsurgency (COIN). Eric T. Olson, in his work, focuses on the importance of reconstruction attempts in COIN operations and discusses the role of military. The author served in the U.S. Army for over three decades and retired as a Major General. Currently, Mr. Olson is an independent defense contractor and works with Army brigades and provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) who are preparing for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the title suggests, his monograph considers such reconstruction attempts to have uttermost importance in successful military operations.

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Does everyone hate USAID?

Does everyone hate the United States Agency for International Development? No, but Elizabeth Cutler, writing at the Stimson Center’s Budget Insight blog, says dysfunction at USAID would probably result from such hate if it existed. A myriad of factors, including lack of support and directly from Congress and the White House and continuing debate over the the utility and effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance, continue to hold back the ability, efficiency, and ultimately the impact of USAID and the rest of development programming.

Policymakers have conflicting views about U.S. foreign assistance.  Questions persist, including:  How much does foreign assistance actually accomplish? Should foreign aid goals always align with U.S. national security priorities? Should the U.S. military be involved in foreign assistance programs?  If so, how much?  What is the actual meaning of “democracy assistance” in the 21stcentury?

Disagreements have led to workarounds like the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) that intensify the diaspora of foreign assistance rather than solve the essential problems plaguing USAID. Rather than strengthening USAID to work more effectively and efficiently, we have instead dispersed foreign assistance programs across 12 departments, 25 agencies and nearly 60 government offices. This fragmented structure reduces effectiveness and causes duplication, both of which are often cited by Congress when it slashes funding for development.

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Event: Conversations with America: Meeting the Millennium Development Goals

Today, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah will hold a conversation with David Lane, President and CEO of ONE, on global development opportunities and challenges on the eve of the Millennium Development Goals summit. The discussion will be moderated by Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley and streamed live on www.state.gov and DipNote, the Department of State’s official blog, at 10:15 a.m. on September 16, 2010. (EDT).

Members of the general public will have the opportunity to participate through the submission of questions, some of which will be selected for response during the live broadcast. For more information about the U.S. government’s strategy for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, please visit http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/mdg/.

Source: State Department Public Affairs

USAID gets a policy shop

USAID: From The American PeopleAccording 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.

Aid: The Double-Edged Blade

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.

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Toilet is the new mobile phone

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.”

Lynne Weil goes to USAID

One of public diplomacy’s best friends on the Hill, Lynne Weil, is going to USAID. Al Kamen writes about this move:

The beleaguered Agency of International Development is awaiting the arrival of some assistant administrators to give the new boss, Rajiv Shah, some help in restoring the dysfunctional shop to at least some semblance of robust health (he is a doctor, after all). …

Now comes word that he’s tapped veteran Hill foreign policy insider and media maven Lynne Weil to shore up the AID press shop as its director and to be the agency spokeswoman. Weil, who spent 15 years as a reporter, much of that time overseas, has worked on the Hill for nearly nine years , including stints for then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden and then for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and more recently for Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.).

The House Foreign Affairs Committee and Chairman Berman’s loss is AID’s gain. This move should help USAID in ways more than just press relations. Lynne won’t check her public diplomacy legislative experience at the door.

As a result of the wonderful world of dysfunction created by Senator Jesse Helms when he abolished the United States Information Agency, Lynne will report to PJ Crowley. Yes, that PJ, State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. More on that when I write on the State Department Inspector General inspection report on the Bureau of Public Affairs. I’ll include comments from my sit down with PJ last week – after participating in a little send off of Ian Kelly to from State to Vienna – when we discussed this report.

The Intended ‘Psychological By-Products’ of Development

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.

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USAID challenges reflect greater problems at the State Department

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.

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Noteworthy Links: Information and Communication edition

New edition of AP Stylebook adds entries and helpful features: AP writers can now use the phrase "to Twitter" in place of the wordier "to post a Twitter update." Both are far better (and technologically adept) than The New York Times use of “on their Twitter page.”

If you provide services to poor people, should you make a profit? Interesting question that goes to the increasing connectivity in Africa. (h/t @ICT4D)

Feeds for Information Graphics. Compiled by the Art Director for the Associated Press Interactive Design & Graphics Department in New York.

IT Dashboard. Track information technology spending by the US Government. For example, see that the State Department is doing pretty well managing its IT projects and that there are apparently problems with USAID’s Infrastructure and Modernization Program.

Après un an de tests, les policiers ont choisi ce modèle, léger et long de 5 cm.Combat camera for cops. French cops are getting ear-borne mini-cams to combat “to establish the context of our interventions.”