Getting foreign aid right

(Photo: Unsplash)

Rhetorical restraint is not prominent in Washington these days. Given the volatile personalities involved and the escalatory effects of social media, one hesitates to declare that the apogee of apoplexy has been reached — or ever will be. Elon Musk’s denunciation of the U.S. Agency for International Development as a “radical left political psy op” and a “criminal organization” did raise the bar to new heights, however.

I am no uncritical celebrant of U.S. foreign aid programs. Catholic University’s Jakub Grygiel was certainly on-target in arguing that “funding ‘net-zero emissions goals’ in Vietnam” made no sense; the “woke imperialism” of aid programs that “undermined the stability of states we are supposed to help, [through] DEI directives [and the promotion of] an ever-mutating spectacle of sexual preferences” was even worse. Such foolishness, Professor Grygiel rightly noted, makes for lose/lose situations: recipient countries are harmed, and so is America’s reputation in those countries. 

Nonetheless, there were good things that USAID did well — and by doing good things well, USAID made friends for the United States around the world. Food aid programs were, and are, one example. PEPFAR was, and is, another.

The President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief was one of the noblest accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration. Overseen by the Department of State, PEPFAR is — or, must we now say, was? — largely run by USAID through partnerships with governments and healthcare organizations in 55 African, Asian, and Latin American countries. With bipartisan congressional support through four presidential administrations, American taxpayers, through PEPFAR, have helped save some 25 million lives while preventing untold millions of HIV infections and contributing to increased health security in some of the world’s most impoverished regions.

According to the current administration, lifesaving programs were to be exempt from the ransacking, indeed demolition, of USAID by Elon Musk’s DOGE operatives (the same geniuses who, until corrected, thought a Pentagon website mentioning the B-29 “Enola Gay” was an exercise in LGBT advocacy). We must hope that that exemption remains the administration’s intention. At the outset, however, a blunderbuss approach to reorienting U.S. foreign aid has created chaos at the receiving end of PEPFAR funds — suspension of local workers, interrupted supply chains, breakdowns in the distribution of already-acquired medications — and that chaos resulted in unnecessary deaths. Moreover, while treatment programs continue under PEPFAR funding, prevention programs seem to have been stopped, leading to the possibility of 2,000 new infections a day. In dealing with HIV/AIDS, each leg of the prevention/testing/treatment triad has to function if PEPFAR is to continue to work as it has in the past, saving lives and winning America innumerable friends in the process.

“Soft power” foreign aid programs like PEPFAR are an indispensable part of any serious U.S. approach to world politics. To dismiss these programs as a matter of America playing the world’s “Sugar Daddy” – as opined by Kentucky senator Rand Paul – is strategically myopic to the point of blindness (ironic, in that Senator Paul was an ophthalmologist before entering public life). Xi Jinping’s China, eager to position itself as the true champion of Third World development, has spent over $1 trillion on its “Belt-and-Road Initiative,” creating badly needed infrastructure in poor countries while tying those countries to Beijing through loans and credits. That play for hegemony will doubtless be expanded into areas such as healthcare and food relief if the United States abandons the field – and abandons it to the power that administration officials claim is the primary threat to American and global security in the 21st century.

USAID was certainly in need of deep reform. Most of the federal government is. But there’s a difference between effecting genuine reform and playing Demolition Derby. Shock-and-awe approaches to hidebound federal bureaucracies may make for great news clips and soundbites, but they risk eliminating the good along with the waste. So here’s a suggestion for a reform of U.S. foreign aid that makes it great again.

Texas A&M’s Andrew Natsios, who ran USAID from May 2001 until January 2006, and Ambassador Mark Green, USAID administrator from August 2017 until April 2020, are two of the finest public servants I’ve known in my forty years in Washington. Both are Republicans; both are adults; and both are fiscal conservatives who understand the connection between foreign aid and a coherent national security strategy. Let Secretary of State Marco Rubio give these two men a mandate to reshape USAID or a successor agency in the next six months – with precision tools, not sledgehammers.

Doing so might help improve America’s moral standing in the world, which could use a boost right now.