President George W. Bushâs administration is drawing up plans to carry out the biggest overhaul of the US foreign aid apparatus in more than 40 years in an attempt to assert more political control over international assistance, according to officials and aid experts. The proposed reorganisation could lead to a takeover by the State Department of the independent US Agency for International Development. USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, managing aid programmes, disaster relief and post-war reconstruction totalling billions of dollars each year.
Critics in the aid community fear the reorganisation will lead to a politicisation of foreign assistance, where aid will become subordinated to the Bush administrationâs drive to promote democracy. | Horrors! What a thought! And do you have any IDEA what that will do to the NGOs???? The nerve of the man! |
Supporters of the proposed reforms argue that USAID must be brought more in line with policy goals focused on post-conflict reconstruction and democratisation rather than pure development aid where they allege funds are squandered ...
... and the agency is driven more by efforts aimed at self-perpetuation.
Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and Stephen Krasner, head of policy planning, are leading the reforms. Officials said proposals could be put to Congress next month. A new position of deputy secretary of state for aid and development is being considered.
Previous administrations have considered similar ideas but rejected them as impractical or unlikely to pass Congress, and officials concede this could happen this time round. A precedent of sorts exists in the controversial 1999 merger into the state department of the independent US Information Agency, a move that has since been blamed by all the correct people in part for failures in US public diplomacy.
A spokesman for USAID said no final decision had been taken. He noted that rumours of the agencyâs demise surface regularly. Andrew Natsios, head of USAID for nearly five years, announced his resignation on December 2. No replacement has been announced. The USAID spokesman said his departure was not connected to a possible reorganisation. Mr Natsios was credited with effective responses to natural disasters, such as the Asian tsunami. But experts say USAID and the Pentagon share blame for the failure of state building in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Failure in Afghanistan? That's been a success story so far. There's a state there that wasn't there before. |
Carol Lancaster, a Georgetown University professor and co-author of âOrganising US Foreign Aidâ says merging USAID into the state department would be a mistake. âIâm concerned that a real merger has the very great danger of eventually undercutting the development mission because of tensions, pressures and the nature of foreign policy,â she commented. âThe pressure to use money for short-term crisis management, or the war on terror, could be overwhelming.â
| It isn't like the development side has been a smashing success. |
A State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the goal of the reforms was to make US aid better linked to the administrationâs democracy and development agenda. âThere is a feeling that we need to be more strategic,â he said. The administration wanted more flexibility in how money was spent, he said, noting that a considerable portion of the US aid budget was heavily âearmarkedâ by Congress tying aid to particular countries and projects. The Bush administration began the reform process by setting up the Millennium Challenge Corporation which rewards countries with records of good governance. Welcomed as a good concept, it has also been criticised for moving too slowly. |