Politicizing Aid

However, in consolidating USAID under the State Department, the Bush administration is tying aid money to U.S. strategic interests in a far more overt manner. This is part of a wider trend. As Oxfam America argues, "[S]ince the attacks of September 11th there has been a drastic shift in U.S. foreign assistance that has blurred the lines traditionally separating development and humanitarian aid from political and military action."

The paradigm of "transformative diplomacy," unveiled by Secretary Rice in January, is the latest embodiment of this shift. It will include the redeployment of U.S. diplomats from Washington and European cities to countries in Asia and the Middle East. A main thrust of transformative diplomacy is a closer alignment of foreign aid with political concerns. Development advocates worry that this will mean that dollars for poverty- reduction programs will become conditional aid used as payback for allegiance from poorer governments--those countries sufficiently eager to join a "coalition of the willing" or to sign a "free trade" pact.

It's not just outside critics who are concerned. In a meeting between the Secretary of State and USAID staff in January, employees bombarded Rice with questions about the political nature of the changes. Reporting on the meeting, the Boston Globe quoted an anonymous USAID official who at once defended Rice's strategic plans and confirmed the worst fears of his co-workers: "He said the days when aid workers could set their own agenda, without concern for national security priorities, are over. 'That's a peacetime luxury,' he said. 'We're a country at war.'"

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that, even in the best of times, very little of the money we direct to "foreign assistance" actually goes to health and education programs for the poor. The bulk takes the form of military aid and economic assistance for states with strategic importance, such as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Colombia. In recent years, an increasing amount of money has been shifted away from development and toward programs aimed to "strengthen democracy," "encourage good governance," or "promote economic reform."

This type of rhetoric usually sounds fine, but the goals are vague and easily politicized. They can allow aid to be put to nefarious ends. In the case of the Millennium Challenge Account, one of the new programs created by the Bush Administration, a country's "openness to international trade" is listed as one of the criteria used to select aid recipients. Openness is measured using an index provided by the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation. In Central America, leaders quickly got the message; observers in the region widely believed that receiving assistance from the account went hand in hand with supporting the controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Likewise, the White House has often sold its reforms as efforts to promote effectiveness in foreign assistance--undoubtedly a worthy goal. But the case of AIDS funding, where the Bush administration went on to ignore the scientific data about effective prevention, has cast doubt on its sincerity. On a more general level, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Carol Lancaster recently observed to journalists that aid recipients such as Egypt that receive money for political purposes know that the U.S. won't cut them off if funds aren't used efficiently. Thus, they have little incentive to stem corruption.

Working to address U.S. security concerns is not an illegitimate goal of foreign assistance. However, the invasion of Iraq provides tragic illustration that when the Bush administration pursues long pent-up policy goals under guise of fighting terror, it can have disastrous consequences--and in fact make the world a more dangerous place. It gives us ample reason to be wary of aid programs used to buy or bully allies, and to be skeptical of arrangements in which health and education professionals must answer to White House political operatives or Pentagon planners.

The Bush administration's current bureaucratic maneuvers do not mean that Americans should give up on the idea of foreign aid altogether. Real aid—long-term development assistance offered out of the belief that societies with less poverty, disease, and inequality are more likely to be healthy democracies—can contribute to creating a world that is both safer and more just. That's what we want when we demand more funding for poor countries. That's what too often went missing when aid programs were politicized in the past. And that's what we're even less likely to get under Randall Tobias.