Imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying that if defense funding were reduced, seven hundred thousand people in Libya would die, and tens of millions elsewhere in the world. It would be considered fear-mongering of the most repulsive kind. In fact, it would be considered a threat to the integrity of our civilian-led military to  attempt such a blackmail of the Congress.

But that's exactly the approach USAID Director Rajiv Shah took last week testifying before the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee. He said that if proposed reductions to USAID's budget go into effect 70,000 children will die. He added that he considered that a very conservative estimate, and that among other effects, another 800,000 recipients of our international disaster assistance in Darfur would be at risk.

Shah testified that 30,000 deaths would come specifically from scaling back anti-malaria programs, 24,000 from lack of immunization, and 18,000 lack of skilled attendants at births. All this from cutting 16 percent of the Obama administration's international affairs budget request.  

Hard to say which is more offensive, Shah threatening Congress will have blood on its hands unless it continues to fund USAID programs, or the bureaucratic and cultural mindset that considers increased spending the only solution to a multivariate problem.

USAID was created as an entity separate from the State Department (and military assistance) in 1961, in order to remove from development assistance the taint of being provided in order to advance America's interests. USAID's official history rather unselfconsciously states that "It was thought that to renew support for foreign assistance at existing or higher levels, to address the widely known shortcomings of the previous assistance structure, and to achieve a new mandate for assistance to developing countries, the entire program had to be 'new.'"

The whiff of sanctimony pervades USAID still, which is part of why it is so unpopular on Capitol Hill, where elected representatives often find unpersuasive that the spending of their constituents money abroad should have no connection to our national interests.

Providing money through the Agency for International Development is by no means the only -- or even the most effective -- way to alleviate disease and poverty in the world. Case in point: funding for AID was dramatically cut in the 1990s, and yet that decade saw nearly a billion people lifted out of poverty by actual economic development. USAID's funding has been increased by 150 percent in the past decade -- most of that coming with the advocacy of a Republican president and his secretaries of state. 

There are many ways USAID could compensate for reduced government spending:

• USAID could build coalitions of like-minded governments to share the burden of funding.
• USAID could reach out into American society for private-sector partners to fund programs.
• USAID could use its power as a convener and facilitator of non-governmental organization involvement in programs.
• USAID could develop performance metrics that ensure it is using what money is available to greatest effect.
• USAID could prioritize its own activity to close down programs of lesser immediate importance.
• USAID could discontinue development projects in countries like China and Brazil that, as a result of their own economic development, are now providers of development assistance to others.

In fact, USAID's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review champions all these approaches. USAID just doesn't practice them.  

Events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and to a lesser extent Jordan have led both administration officials and the chattering classes to conclude that democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Having once again been caught by surprise by events overseas -- one wonders where our intelligence agencies have been hiding -- the Obama administration is now trying to push itself into the forefront of those seeking democratic change in the region.

Yet it was not democracy that led a young Tunisian to immolate himself and, apart from English-speaking educated intellectuals, it does not appear that democracy is what most people have been demonstrating about. Instead, what they are seeking, first and foremost, is economic opportunity unfettered by corruption and favoritism. Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire because he was prevented from earning a modest living. Three Egyptians have burned themselves because of lack of job opportunities. 

Secondly, Tunisians and Egyptian appear to be seeking responsive government, which is quite different from Western notions of democracy. In fact, it is arguable that they and other demonstrators in the Arab world would be quite comfortable living under a Chinese-style system, where there is a high and consistent level of economic growth and standards of living continue to rise. Would Tunisia have overthrown Ben Ali if its economy grew, as it had in the 1990s, and if the President's family curbed their greed? Would Mubarak be in the trouble he is now if he had a far greater percentage of the population benefitting from Egypt's economic growth?

It is noteworthy that for all the talk of upheavals in the Arab world, there has so far been little unrest in the traditional Gulf emirates or in Saudi Arabia. The rulers of the smaller Gulf States have long made it their policy to distribute wealth widely among their citizens. (Non-citizens don't count, of course. And if they made any trouble they would be deported.) Despite predictions of their imminent demise over the past two decades, the Saudis likewise have so far remained quiet. The al-Saud family recognized some ten years ago that it needed to spread more wealth to ensure the support of its increasingly younger population; so far so good.

Even Bahrain, which might have been expected to be the scene of riots, given the secondary status of the majority Sh'ia population, has not witnessed any major demonstrations. Again, most of the Bahraini Sh'ia appear to recognize that a stable Bahrain means more wealth for them too -- even if they do not achieve economic parity with the dominant Sunnis. They also know that Saudi tanks are not far from the causeway that links their state to its much larger and more powerful neighbor, and that those tanks would be quick to cross into the island kingdom if the ruling family came under siege.

Read on

How can we make sense of a People's Republic of China that is supposed to be, in the words of Deng Xiaoping, "biding its time and hiding its capabilities," but in fact is picking fights with most of its neighbors, including the United States? The Chinese were supposed to be using their deep reservoirs of "soft power" and practicing a highly skilled diplomacy aimed at assuring all that China is rising peacefully. But over the past year, Beijing has been rather more clumsy than the caricature of Chinese cleverness might suggest. China has in effect declared the entire South China Sea -- a body of water that is of critical importance for its abundance of natural resources and for its position as the maritime connection between the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- to be its territorial water.   

Needless to say, this has not gone over well with Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations. And, just when it appeared that China would return to a lighter touch in the face of strong U.S. resistance to its South China Sea claims, Beijing bullied and coerced Japan into circumventing its legal processes after a Chinese fishing trawler rammed Japanese ships in the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu island chains. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully.

A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the world and what may lead China to engage in the behavior we and our allies find offensive. In The Mind of Empire China's History and Foreign Relations, Christopher Ford makes a persuasive case for hardwired cultural conditioning as an explanation for China's imperious behavior. China possesses, well, the mind of an empire. According to Ford, Chinese history has no precedent for stable coexistence among sovereign equals. Moreover, struggle over primacy within China and later with other states is a fairly continuous characteristic of Chinese history. Here is Ford:

The Chinese tradition has as its primary model of interstate relations a system in which the focus of national policy is in effect a struggle for primacy and legitimate stable order is possible when one power reigns supreme-by direct bureaucratic control of the Sinic geographic core and by at least tributary relationships with all other participants in the world system.  

According to Ford, China has an enduring sense of global order. Beijing assumes that the "natural order" of the political world is hierarchical and the idea of truly separate and independent states is illegitimate.

But wait, some might argue, what about China's embrace -- if not sanctification -- of the Western construct of international relations: Non-interference in the affairs of other sovereign states? If China's natural place is atop a Sino-centric hierarchy, and other sovereign states are lesser entities that should pay deference to China, then why use the histrionic defense of Westphalian norms which codifies equal status among states?

Read on

In response to my last post about why realists should support nation building, some readers responded with a curious argument: Afghanistan (they believe) is failing, therefore nation building is impossible. Set aside the fact that this is does not respond to my argument -- which was not about Afghanistan and did not argue that nation building is easy, only that it can serve our interests when done right -- it strikes me as a lazy argument to condemn nation building on the basis of a single example. I call this the Somalia Fallacy.

According to the Somalia Fallacy, the failure of the U.N.'s effort to rebuild Somalia in the 1990s proves that all nation building interventions are doomed to fail. It is the favored argument of pundits who want to argue against overseas interventions. Fareed Zakaria gave perfect expression to the Somalia Fallacy in a Washington Post column in July. "The trouble with trying to fix failed states is that it implicates the United States in a vast nation building effort in countries where the odds of success are low and the risk of unintended consequences is very high. Consider Somalia..." Zakaria then retells the recent history of that unfortunate state, and concludes "Somalia highlights the complexity of almost every approach to failed states."

Well, no, it doesn't. Somalia is not a useful historical analogy from which to generalize about failed states (and neither is Afghanistan). To make a useful generalization, you'd want to start with a typical failed state, or, better yet, several of them. Somalia is not a typical failed state: it is an extreme outlier. It has been the most completely failed state on earth for almost two decades. On top of that, the U.N. mission in Somalia in the early 1990s was not a typical U.N. intervention: it was a singularly, uniquely inept one. Deploy an inept U.N. mission to the most failed state and you have the recipe for a famous catastrophe, not have a blueprint for how all interventions are doomed to play out.

Read on

The U.N. secretary-general is hosting a high-level meeting this week in New York calling on governments to remain committed to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015. It is clear that in the midst of a world economic crisis, the United Nations is hoping to use the MDGs to garner billions of dollars in additional financial commitments.

The United States is not a formal signatory to the MDGs (established in September 2000), but broadly agrees with the eight targets and uses them as "indicators, but not a strategy" (as Laura Hall and Elizabeth Cutler point out over at the Stimson Center blog; see also Laura’s take on the importance of implementation here).

Both the United States and Britain have in large part continued to lead the developed world in fighting poverty and bringing positive change to the developing world. Programs such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Malaria Initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, access to education, and Debt Relief for Africa all charted new paths for partnering with the developing world to provide opportunities for millions. The Obama administration has largely remained committed to the paths set forth by President Bush.

Yesterday during his speech to the U.S. General Assembly, President Obama said that foreign assistance should be focused on development, not dependence. Obama went on to say that, "Secretary of State Clinton is leading a review to strengthen and better coordinate our diplomacy and our development efforts." He further said that his administration is rebuilding the United States Agency for International Development (USIAD).

This rebuilding of USAID has been mired with challenges and problems. Phil Levy highlights below that it took more than a year for an USAID administrator to be appointed. Today, USAID still has vacancies in the majority of its top political posts. Even if the White House were to nominate appointees now, these individuals will have little affect on USAID policies and programs in the short term.

To add to the confusion, the administration is still undergoing an internal review of development assistance grappling with who actually controls the budget mechanisms to implement foreign aid. The development community continues to express its frustration that there is no clear strategy.

While governments, foundations, businesses and civil society groups continue to rally around the MDGs' call to action to slash poverty, hunger and disease by 2015, the Obama administration needs to demonstrate it is serious about foreign assistance and its overall development policy.

The infighting between the White House and the State Department should stop, and the administration must provide clear inter-agency guidelines through the White House's Presidential Study Directive on Global Development (PSD-7) or the State Department's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).

We will fail to make the grade on the world stage if we can't get our own house in order.

The policy debate over whether to press autocratic yet "friendly" regimes on democracy and human rights is often cast as "values versus interests" or "realism versus idealism," but in the case of Egypt it is better framed as the trade-off between short-term and longer-term interests (or even medium-term, considering President Hosni Mubarak's age of 81 and his regime's brittleness). For a dwindling time longer, Mubarak might continue to offer a degree of stability and be a sometimes reliable partner on regional peace and security issues. But his remaining time in office is finite, and there are positive ferments for reform brewing in Egypt that are in the strategic interest of the United States to support. In a sign of the times, even Mohammed El-Baradei, frequently nettlesome in his former role as head of the IAEA, has emerged in the unlikely reincarnation as one of Mubarak's most energetic electoral challengers.

Jackson Diehl points out as much in his excellent column urging the Obama administration to seize the democracy agenda in Egypt as a strategic opportunity in a troubled region. And he is right. But the Obama administration seems to see this as more of an annoyance than an opportunity, at least judging by its damaging cuts imposed over the past year on U.S. democracy funding in Egypt. Besides whacking the budget from $45 million to $20 million, perhaps even more damaging was the Administration's imposition of new regulations prohibiting any USAID funding going to groups not approved by the Egyptian Government -- which happen to be precisely the same groups that are the most potent reformers and that most need the funding.

While the concern is sometimes raised that visible US funding for reformers risks "tainting" them, the fact remains that the democracy funding was only given to Egyptians who applied for it aware of and willing to assume any risks. And several groups and individuals -- such as Safwat Girgis, Ahmed Samih, Radio Horytna, and the Egyptian Center for Human Rights -- have been willing to appeal publicly for U.S. funding and support in the wake of the budget cuts. Even more important than the funding itself can be the display of American moral support for democracy activists, which can increase their sphere of protection and alert autocratic regimes of the heightened diplomatic cost to any repression.

This is linked to economic reform as well. The Egyptian state monopolizes not only political life but also too much of the economy, and even though its economic growth rates have accelerated in recent years they have not kept pace with a burgeoning population. The Mubarak regime's autocratic constraints on political and economic liberty have atrophied what could otherwise be a vibrant middle class and civil society. Instead, Egypt remains mired in a negative cycle in which lack of economic opportunity leaves large numbers of un- or under-employed citizens (especially young men), who in turn have few outlets for constructive political expression -- hence in part the persistent appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite a rich intellectual and cultural history, abundant natural resources, and strategic location, Egypt continues to chronically under-perform in most political and economic development metrics. For example, in the Legatum Prosperity Index, Egypt ranks in the global bottom third on economic fundamentals, and among the world's lowest on democratic institutions, governance, personal freedom, and even social capital -- the last factor indicating that Egyptian citizens distrust not only their government but also each other.   

What to do? The Obama administration should at a minimum pursue a three-part strategy. First, restore -- better yet, increase -- funding for beleaguered democracy and human rights activists, and do not let the Egyptian government decide who receives the grants. Second, as Jay Hallen argues here, transform economic development programs so that funding helps support urban Egyptian entrepreneurs and access to capital for growing small and medium size enterprises.  Third, senior U.S. officials -- especially President Obama and Secretary Clinton -- should consistently and publicly support the principles of religious freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and open electoral competition in Egypt.

Implementing these points by no means precludes also working constructively with Mubarak, who still is Egypt's leader and can sometimes be a helpful ally. But the current "Mubarak-only" policy is short-sighted and ineffective. Moreover, it is a policy of Mubarak's own devising -- as he has squelched liberal political dissenters and presented himself as the essential strongman who is the only alternative to Islamic extremists -- and not a policy in the American interest.