U.S. Foreign Assistance: Divergence and Convergence
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY II
One of the greatest convergences in American foreign policy in the last twenty years has been the recognition of the strategic utility of humanitarian and developmental assistance (HDA). While encouraging, this change is not without concern. The principal question posed by this development is this: How can HDA maintain its normative character while simultaneously serving national interests?
DIVERGENCE
The United States has a rich history of being a generous donor of foreign aid. Despite this, justifications for providing HDA have varied widely over the years.
The first explanation is that HDA is an expression of the benevolence of the American national character. As such, the United States has a moral obligation to address human suffering in the world, and the delivery of foreign aid is a tangible expression of this commitment.
The second argument is that such work is in the enlightened self interest of the United States, and thus is a legitimate component of its foreign policy. By helping people around the world meet their basic material needs and develop their economies, the United States helps to spread the political stability and free market capitalism that is essential for the maintenance of its global interests. For example, both HDA and military assistance were used quite deliberately as a way of securing the allegiance of proxy governments in the Cold War.
The counter position to both these views is that HDA has virtually no place in the practice of American diplomacy. If individual Americans want to do charitable works for people around the world, that is certainly their prerogative. From a realist perspective, however, foreign policy should focus on the governmental relationships of sovereign states, dictated by their material interests and pursued through the exercise of hard power.
The interplay of these views—that foreign aid is at best an instrument of enlightened self-interest and at worst a waste of resources in a world governed by great power relationships—conspired to relegate HDA to the backwaters of American foreign policy from the end of the Marshall Plan in the 1950s until the early years of the 21st century.
CONVERGENCE
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed many aspects of American foreign policy, including the role of HDA. Shortly after the start of the global war on terror, a general consensus developed in the foreign policy community that this struggle constituted not simply a clash of arms but a war of ideas. As such, it was imperative to find a way to defeat both the ideologies and the material conditions, such as poverty, that fueled terrorism, and demonstrate American benevolence to a skeptical Muslim public that distrusted American motives in its application of force.
This understanding of the nature of the war on terror led to a rapid reassessment of the role of foreign aid in American foreign policy. No longer was such activity dismissed as inherently irrelevant to the attainment of U.S. foreign policy objectives or, at best, reluctantly accepted as a method of enlightened self-interest. Instead, it was embraced by the Bush administration as a vital tool in America’s fight against terror.
CHANGES
This convergence in thinking about the role of humanitarian and developmental assistance has led to some importance changes in policy. Chief among them is the official position of the U.S. government of the role of HDA in its foreign policy. The National Security Strategy of 2002, which is the official document outlining objectives and approaches to American international interests, argues that the greatest threat to the United States is not from hostile sovereign states but from failed states that cannot govern their own territories, and that supply a permissive environment in which terrorists can operate. As such, development assistance is a vital tool for building the governing capacity of these states. Because of the importance of this mission, this latest iteration of the National Security Strategy for the first time places development assistance on par with military force and conventional diplomacy as an instrument of national power.
Second, the U.S. government is undergoing a massive reorganization to improve its ability to make HDA a useful tool of foreign policy. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has announced that the new administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Randall Tobias, is to be given the rank of deputy secretary of state and report directly to her. Additionally, he will be given the title of director of humanitarian assistance, and made responsible for coordinating all foreign assistance programs across the U.S. government. These changes mark a dramatic sea-change in how the United
States approaches foreign aid in policy and practice.
Finally, the Bush administration has presided over an unprecedented role for the U.S. military in the delivery of HDA. While the military has always been involved in providing logistical support to aid efforts for natural disasters or war zones, its participation in such activities as an active provider of assistance in the same theater of operations in which it is a combatant is relatively new. Furthermore, that it does so not simply out of moral or legal obligation but as a means of trying to win local or global support for its combatant activities by the demonstration of benevolence is striking. Combined with the scale on which such activity is occurring from the Horn of Africa to the mountains of Afghanistan, and with the close proximity of these operations with the work of independent civilian humanitarian agencies, the result is a truly unprecedented state of affairs in humanitarian action.
CONCERNS
Given the peripheral relevance of HDA in U.S. foreign policy for many decades, one would think that its recent prominence would be universally welcomed. However, this has not been the case. The Bush administration’s approach has proven controversial on at least three accounts.
First, many international aid workers complain about what they perceive to be the instrumentalization of humanitarian assistance. By definition, humanitarian aid is meant to provide immediate, lifesaving assistance to anyone who needs it, and should not be made an instrument of state policy. Particularly when associated with military action, the use of humanitarian action as a tool of foreign policy not only distorts the original intent of such aid, but it also endangers neutral civilian aid workers who may be wrongly associated with the broader political objectives of a state that tries to politicize the humanitarian enterprise.
Second, longtime advocates of development assistance as a means of alleviating global poverty similarly fear that the politicization of such activity will mean that aid will go to those states who either are the best allies in the war on terror, or whose governments show the most progress in standards of evaluation set by Washington. It will not go to citizens in the poorest countries who may be in most need but whose governments may not be high on Washington’s priority list of recipients. Furthermore, critics of the recent reorganization of the U.S. government’s aid structure fear that assistance funds will be siphoned off from poverty reduction programs to fund projects more directly in keeping with U.S. security objectives.
Finally, even if one were to accept the proposition that HDA has a role to play in America’s fight against terror, we do not have an empirical understanding of how that is best done. Is the hypothesis of enlightened self-interest correct; that is, are America’s broad foreign policy interests best served by ensuring that the basic human needs of at-risk civilians are met around the world? Or is it the case that, in a war of ideas and perceptions, it is more important for America to be seen as the purveyor of assistance as a demonstration of its benevolence–even if it is not the most effective provider of such aid? Should one ensure that aid is uniformly distributed or that it only goes to those with similar political leanings or security interests?
How one answers these questions necessarily leads to very different policy options, but we simply do not know enough about how HDA, as opposed to military force or conventional diplomacy, actually works as an instrument of statecraft.
No matter how one views this development, it is undeniable that there has been a dramatic shift in how the United States views the use of foreign aid. The center of gravity of this debate has shifted dramatically from whether aid is an important foreign policy tool to how it should best be used.
The implications of this have been dramatic for the funding of U.S. foreign assistance, and for the way in which the U.S. government organizes itself for this mission. As America settles in for what the Pentagon has called the long war, and as failed and fragile states from Sudan to Iraq become more of a geopolitical concern, this debate will only become more important. It is therefore vital that soldiers, statesmen, scholars, and citizens engage this question as an integral part of the discussion of the war on terror.
Reuben E. Brigety, II (rbrigety@gmu.edu) is assistant professor of public and international affairs (http://pia.gmu.edu) and an affiliate of the Center for Global Studies. He has previously served as a U.S. naval officer and as a field researcher with the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch, where he conducted research missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
