There is a growing consensus in the Washington development community that as a bureaucracy, the U.S. Agency for International Development has become too cumbersome and inefficient. To date, the Obama administration's plan to improve the agency is to add more foreign service officers. This would enlarge the bureaucracy, a move that almost everyone acknowledges doesn't work.
This contradiction and the role that development should play in democracy promotion were among many topics discussed at the New America Foundation April 22. The panel, convened for the release of the foundation's report, "Revitalizing U.S. Democracy Promotion: A Comprehensive Plan for Reform," said for now, USAID, with all of its flaws, remains the biggest player in Washington in terms of the federal government's development efforts.
"We have to go to development with the army we have rather than the army we wish we had," said Thomas Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House.
Despite acknowledging the need for wide reforms across the development bureaucracy, the report recommended a Cabinet-level department focusing on development issues. Michael A. Cohen, who co-wrote the report with Maria Figueroa Küpçü, said he recognized the conflict between these two ideas – why create more bureaucracy when the one the U.S. has right now isn't working? – but argued that an executive office focusing on development is the only way for it to become a key part of U.S. foreign policy.
"We have talked a big game but our follow-through wasn't as good," he said.
The future of the Millennium Challenge Corp. was also discussed. The report suggested criteria similar to that used by MCC be a condition for aid. However, Chris Homan, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said tight resources for development make it difficult to fund the corporation.
"MCC sometimes has its money taken away not because [Congress] doesn't like the model," he said, "but because there's not enough left in the foreign affairs budget."
The panel was also critical of the current development focus. Ted Piccone, senior fellow and deputy director for foreign policy at the Brookings Institute, said giving through institutions such as the United Nations Development Program and Organization of American States depoliticizes giving and is an effective way of answering critics who charge that the U.S. gives aid with political conditions.
Piccone was also critical of the lack of specifics coming out of the Obama administration in terms of a development strategy and for his failure to appoint many high-level foreign policy positions, including who will head USAID.
"Obama is striking a pragmatic engagement approach," he said. "But what does this really mean?"