From Talk to Action? A Report Card on U.S. Development Strategy

Back in July of last year, I blogged on five steps for a practical agenda on how to move beyond vision and “get on with it.”  Since then, the President’s Global Development Policy and the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review were released.  Some progress has been made on a number of fronts, but overall, much more needs to be done to get beyond talk to action.Here are the five steps and my assessment of progress:

1. Give the USAID administrator policy authority to inform and influence development issues within the State Department.  Ensure he has visibility to shore up his political standing.  He should be the spokesperson on Haiti, Feed the Future and on development programs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other strategically critical states.B+.  The QDDR endorses USAID’s new Policy, Planning, and Learning Bureau and the other components of USAID Forward, and gives the agency control of the Feed the Future initiative.  It is not at all clear on USAID’s role in strategically critical states.
2. Give the USAID administrator budget authority, because without control over resources, policy input will have little real influence.C+.  USAID has established a budget office, but it is unclear that it will have any real authority.  Budgets must still be approved by the F Bureau of the State Department proper.
3. Create an interagency development policy group chaired by the Secretary of State with the USAID administrator as the vice chair and with a seat on the National Security Council.  The USAID administrator should sit and have a voice at the table where trade, climate, and immigration decisions are discussed.  Same for currency policy with China, intellectual property tensions with India, and a host of other issues that impact development where it is crucial that decisions take into account the long-term U.S. interest in supporting the growth of viable and responsible states in the developing world.Incomplete (and if no progress by July 2011, F).  The President’s Policy Directive proposes an interagency committee and endorses the inclusion of the USAID administrator in NSC meetings, but the “as appropriate” seems like one caveat too many.  On development issues, some one person has to be responsible and accountable for managing the Whole of Government enterprise.
4. By the end of 2011:  Make USAID an independent agency, like the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the MCC, with a board chaired by the Secretary of State to ensure coherence with overall foreign policy objectives.  Make the USAID administrator the chair of the inter-agency development policy group.Incomplete.  I’m willing to wait and see, but this seems unlikely to happen.
5. By the end of the president’s current term:  Ask Congress to create a cabinet-level agency for development, with a cabinet secretary of equal standing with his or her counterparts in the foreign policy troika of defense, diplomacy, and development.  Move (yes, really) the responsibility for the multilateral development banks (but not the IMF) out of Treasury to this cabinet agency, as we recommended six years ago in our report “On the Brink:  Weak States and U.S. National Security.”F.  It is clear that this is not where the administration is going despite the fact that it would be the clearest signal that development is on a par with diplomacy and defense.

President Obama is two years into his term.  There has been some progress, especially on the rebuilding and reforms in place at USAID.  But the next two years will be difficult, and the opportunity to work with Congress on a new assistance framework (to reflect the president’s UN speech on development) has pretty much been lost.