As Washington pours billions into defense and debates alliance burden-sharing, Celeste Wallander, former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense, told Devex that development is still a core pillar of national security — even if it has fallen out of political favor.
“The classic approach in American security policy is called the three Ds: defense, development, and diplomacy,” she said. “In the same way that you don’t want to sit on a stool that only has two legs. You don’t want to cope with a national security challenge only on two of those elements.”
Even though the defense department does not directly manage aid programs, she said development players were “always part of our strategies” in preventing conflict and navigating post-conflict reconstruction. The loss of the U.S. Agency for International Development as an independent agency, she argued, leaves “a big missing piece in American foreign policy.”
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
