October 12, 2009
First the Army, Now Ag: Who Says It’s Hard to Find a Leader for USAID?
By Sheila Herrling
This Saturday the world will observe the International Day of the Eradication of Poverty. Here in the U.S., we will likely be marking it in the absence (still!) of a USAID Administrator charged with the responsibility of voicing the development implications of and strategies for U.S. engagement in the world. Almost one year into an administration that ran on a serious, integrated, elevated global development platform, there is still no leader for that important agenda. Or is there?
Is it State?
Of course we can technically say the global development perspective has a leader in the Secretary of State, as she has responsibility for bringing the diplomatic and development voices, policies and programs to bear on meeting U.S. foreign policy objectives. The bulk of U.S. foreign assistance is also under her domain as the USAID Administrator reports to her and she chairs the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (which doesn’t give her ultimate authority but certainly the potential for powerful steerage). Structural decisions such as the role of Deputy Secretary Jack Lew being put in charge of all diplomatic and development resources, as well as the chair of the President’s interagency Global Health Initiative certainly put State in the driver’s seat of foreign assistance policy. But there are important development policies and programs outside of her jurisdiction – trade, investment, the multilateral development banks, etc.
Or Defense?
In many respects, the Defense Department has become a leader on the development agenda. There has been a sharp increase in DOD funding and authority for non-kinetic security assistance initiatives since 2002. Indeed, it manages a large share of U.S. official development assistance (16% in FY2007). Attention, funding and human resources (military, diplomatic and development alike) are heavily focused on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and stability operations in Pakistan, under the control of military commanders and senior diplomatic envoys. USAID has a voice and is playing a role in those arenas, but one that is often underappreciated and probably not listened to. In the need to respond to immediate threats, investments in long-term growth and institution building will be trumped by short-term imperatives. And agencies with operational and programmatic flexibilities (more resources, less directed/earmarked funding, less oversight on spending, etc.) will step into the leadership vacuum to “get the job done.”
Is it now USDA?
Most recently, USDA has voiced its interest in playing a greater leadership role in the development space. Quite a departure from its stated mission (including that of its overseas arm, the Foreign Agricultural Service) of helping American farmers and encouraging greater exports of U.S. agricultural products. Its point of entrée is Afghanistan, where Secretary Vilsack, apparently at the urging of envoy Holbrooke, has asked Secretary Clinton to transfer $170 million to USDA to play a more significant role in agricultural and economic development. Note that it (just as USAID is doing) would have to hire the expertise to both send to Afghanistan and manage the program here in DC to be able to meet the terms of that request. According to congressional and agency staff, however, Afghanistan is not a “one off.” Rather, USDA would like to transition from providing temporary staffing from across the department to respond to disasters and conflict into a permanent dedicated staff deployed globally, with authorities currently provided to USAID for longer-term agricultural development programs. It goes without saying that USDA plays an invaluable role in providing technological and technical expertise to U.S. strategies for agricultural development overseas. But it has traditionally been a supporting role to USAID. That is why rumors that coordination of the administration’s interagency and multilateral Food Security Initiative is to be tasked to USDA Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics, Raj Shah are being met with concern. Not because Undersecretary Shah wouldn’t be a respected, capable coordinator – he would be – rather, because it is yet another work-around of USAID. And, in this case, a work-around that doesn’t even report to the Secretary of State in her role as overall foreign policy director.
Everyone?
So perhaps what we are really facing is too many leaders of USAID, or at least their mission and operational prerogative. And what I fear we are witnessing is a decapitation and slow amputation of every limb of what once was a powerful, respected, mission-focused agency. Would a strong, empowered, high-profile USAID Administrator make a difference? Probably. An appointee of sufficient stature in the interagency, with the support of the White House, might be able to make the case that there is no other way to rebuild the morale, competence and prestige of an organization than to give it leadership over something hugely important. What might USAID look like today if all the workarounds over the past five years – MCC, PEPFAR, State Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS), the Global Health Initiative and the Food Security Initiative – were used as means to modernize and elevate the agency? Who might be incentivized to head the agency and who might he/she then inspire to work in the agency if it were given right now the leadership of, say, S/CRS (combined with its Office of Transition Initiatives) and the Food Security Initiative (convince Raj Shah to transfer to USAID)? Why, in the midst of two important development policy and structural reviews – the State Department Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the White House Presidential Study Directive, would further fragmentation and confusion be the way to go? Why, when today’s challenges are increasingly global in dimension and increasingly linked to global economic stability and development would the U.S. not be prioritizing an elevated, unified development-focused voice with the policy and budgetary means to credibly represent U.S. global development interests in the world?
A friend and colleague known for loving conspiracy theories recently said to me, “are you sure this isn’t a purposeful strategy by the administration to decimate USAID to the point where it is so irrelevant there is no longer has a case for strengthening it?” In a leadership void, we are going to continue to get what we are getting – other agencies stepping up to fill the vacuum out of claims of necessity, and conspiracy theories that demoralize those fighting for 24/7 development leadership. The problem with conspiracy theories is that the good ones always have just a hint of possibility.
October 14, 2009 at 6:16 pm
This is an extremely important, thoughtful, and helpful analysis. The lack of a clear, strong, single voice for development within the U.S. Government is hampering effective strategic choices in the new Administration all over the place. This includes policy formulation on the role of development promotion in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other fragile states. The Obama Administration should have been working from the start to correct the deep damage the the Bush Administration, particularly in its final years, did to USAID, and to development promotion in general. Instead, a weak USAID has now sunk so low that it has to fight off those more politically powerful, like USDA.
October 16, 2009 at 4:56 am
This is an interesting analysis, and give a lot of food for thought. At the same time, it is important, in today’s globalised and interconnected world, to recognise that even if USAID had a fantastic leader, more finances and increased funds – it could not be effective. Addressing developing countries that need most help requires a whole-of-government approach that brings together issues related to defense, agriculture, commerce and trade, technical development (how to build a water system), and political analysis and strategising. Development concerns, whether we like it or not, cross over defense, foreign affairs and commerce concerns. It is not possible to address “development” without addressing the other issues. What perhaps is needed is a totally new structure that can oversee the process for ensuring whole-of-government approaches. Joined up government, to be effective though, needs to ensure that the usually “weaker” “voice of development” is at the fore and protected. Investigations into pooled funding efforts of the UK (DFID/Defense/Foreign Affairs) and the Netherlands, and structures for ensuring balanced “joined-up” government in the UK could be helpful to the Obama Administration as it tries to create a new functioning and effective way forward. I have been in the aid business a long time, and although it is true that USAID has managed to do some good things, it has been dwindling in importance, efficiency and impact for a very very long time now. Amongst many reasons is the crazy and unique system of congressional ear marking. Since when did Congress know enough about development to decide which issue should be “the” one? The task facing Obama and his administration in this field is gigantic. I am happy, for one, that he his taking the time he needs to get it right. If it takes another year – so what?
October 20, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I sure hope USDA doesn’t play a more powerful role in USAID’s operations! Its interest is explicitly to benefit US farmers who are already heavily subsidized. Even when our country’s (alleged) security is on the line, US farm interests win out. From a Washington Post article, ‘U.S. Pursues a New Way To Rebuild in Afghanistan’:
Yosuf Mir, an Afghan American who lives in Fairfax County, approached Chemonics with what he thought was a no-lose solution to wean thousands of farmers off poppy cultivation: cotton, a crop widely grown in southern Afghanistan until the Soviet invasion in 1979.
When he asked farmers why they were growing poppies instead, he said, “They told me, ‘What else can I do? We don’t have the seeds. We don’t have the fertilizer. We don’t have anyone to sell to. There’s nobody to give us credit except for the drug dealers.’”
The solution seemed obvious to Mir. The Afghan government was seeking to sell the state-run cotton ginning factory in Kandahar. He would buy it.
He consummated the transaction in 2005, pledging $1 million of his family’s land in exchange for a 20-year lease. With that investment — and with USAID’s help in distributing cotton seeds — he estimated that 35,000 farmers would resume growing cotton, and his factory could employ as many as 12,000 people. “We would,” he said, “create a real alternative livelihood for the Afghan people.”
When Mir approached Chemonics, leaders of the alternative-livelihoods program expressed support for his proposal. Charles Grader, a former senior manager of a USAID agriculture project run by Chemonics, said a study commissioned by the firm deemed cotton “one of the better alternate crops.” But for cotton to be economically viable, he said, USAID or the Afghan government would have to provide a subsidy to the farmers, in much the same way the U.S. government aids domestic cotton producers.
In April 2006, Chemonics asked USAID for authority to help rehabilitate Mir’s cotton factory. USAID rejected the request within weeks — the notion of agriculture subsidies was anathema to free-marketers at the agency.
Mir eventually received a fuller explanation for the decision: U.S. law prevents the government from aiding foreign cotton producers because doing so could help them compete against American growers.
Several U.S. officials familiar with the matter said that USAID could have asked the White House to issue an exemption, given the national security importance of stabilizing Afghanistan, but that senior officials at the agency opposed funding a program to promote a crop in which Afghanistan did not have a comparative advantage on world markets.
“Their thinking is all about free trade — that Afghanistan is better suited to produce pomegranates and raisins than bales of cotton,” said one USAID official who disagrees with the agency’s stance. “But what about the goal of keeping people from shooting at our troops?”
Late last year, Mir had to let go of the last 200 employees of the cotton factory, several of whom had worked there through the Soviet occupation and the Taliban years. Most of them, Mir said, have since joined the Taliban. “Even the Taliban knew the value of keeping the factory open,” he added.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061804135.html?sid=ST2009061804190