I think almost everyone agrees that the existing legislation that governs U.S. foreign assistance is one of the prime reasons American aid is so muddled. New laws are surely needed. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) released parts of a consultation draft of his proposed Global Partnership Act of 2010 and my colleague Sarah Jane Staats has already posted a good analysis of the pros and cons.Yet one provision made me gasp in horror: Section 1017 mandates a new ‘‘United States Strategy for Global Development’’ to be written every four years by a committee (also mandated) representing at least fourteen (!) federal agencies. Of course, who could be against setting a coherent interagency strategy? But let’s imagine what this provision might really create in practice, given experience and what we know about how the U.S. government operates. I can think of three possibilities:
- The strategy quickly produces interagency consensus on agreed objectives and a clear division of activities. This is the likely intention of the legislation: get everyone talking around the same table, get them to agree on goals and benchmarks, who does what, and with what resources. Then, all the agencies can go out and implement. Sounds great.
- A meaningless time-suck. The strategy process could degenerate into a pro forma exercise that is devoid of any real decision-making. In order to reach consensus--and get the report to Congress with as little fuss as possible--the final report will be dumbed-down so that it says virtually nothing of any substance. This could happen partly because once it is law, then the mandate itself becomes the rationale for writing a new strategy rather than any connection to evolving U.S. interests or changing global conditions. The dozens and dozens of staff members would quickly recognize that this is a waste of time but still would be forced to go through the motions, mainly to just make sure any of their turf wasn’t infringed upon or some of their bosses’ (or powerful constituents’) favorite buzzwords weren’t excluded.
- A deadlocked distraction. If the interagency takes the strategy-writing process seriously and there are real issues at stake, then the exercise quickly becomes a fierce battle between the agencies for authorities and budget -- effectively re-opening all of the issues that are supposed to be resolved with the current Presidential Study Directive-7. Can you imagine the ongoing, dispiriting experience with the PSD-7 and QDDR every four years? Do we want every administration losing the first two years of each term, fighting the same battles over and over, pulling top officials into countless strategy meetings instead of doing real work? This seems likely to handcuff every administration from the start and probably, ironically, would lead to less development policy innovation.
My guess is that the probability of each of these scenarios is maybe 50-50 between options 2 and 3. (Need we guess the chances of option 1? Rhymes with “schmero”.) None of this is to suggest that administrations don’t need strategies - of course they do. But any administration that won’t devise and articulate a development strategy on its own without a Congressional diktat is probably not going to do much on development anyway.We certainly need a better U.S. foreign assistance approach, and new legislation could be hugely helpful. But this particular mandate might be better left on the cutting room floor.
