USAID merged into State Dept

Interesting article from the Financial Times. Basically, Bush has decided to transform both its foreign aid and diplomacy efforts by merging the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into the State Department.

To give the Bush administration some credit, they are providing more foreign aid than the Clinton administration. But they still give well under the 0.7% benchmark established by the UN. And as the article notes, politicizing foreign aid will cause USAID to lose a lot of whatever credibility it has left in many countries, especially in the Middle East. As an article in the Boston Globe a two years ago pointed out, "along with food and rebuilding supplies, USAID carries a reputation for doing more to promote US corporate interests than Arab economic growth, according to some business people and former US diplomats in the countries where it has been most active, Egypt and Jordan. They say the agency's policy of compelling countries to buy US-made goods inhibits local businesses, and overlooks the need for long-term changes to create sustainable economic growth."

One reason US democracy-promotion measures in the Middle East, including the ill-fated Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) failed to work is because many regimes in the region distrust meddling from the State Department and would prefer to work with NGOs. Moving to literally subsume USAID into State will make similiar efforts much more difficult--if not impossible--in the future.

Recently, USAID issued a dire report on the security situation in Iraq. Once subsumed into the Department of State, will USAID be as candid in its assessment of global events, especially if it goes against our diplomatic agenda? One of the advantages USAID has is that its members are literally on the ground in conflict situations around the world. It remains to be seen how this restructuring will affect our ability to know what is really happening, as opposed to relying on diplomats who speak mainly with leaders in the countries they are assigned to.