After their spring recess, Congressional Budget Committees in Washington are resuming their annual work of carving up the United States presidents budget request. Post-9/11 America has witnessed big budget increases for defence and homeland security and, if the costs for Iraq reconstruction are included, funding for international programmes has almost doubled. But, with the size of the budget deficit becoming an election-year issue, Congress now wants to put the brakes on the (financial year) 2005 budget and, in doing so, is targeting programmes that support US foreign policy.
Some of the increases in national security were long overdue. The secretary of state, Colin Powell, has moved to hire more diplomats and invest in secure embassy buildings and modern communications. President George W. Bush launched a major HIV-Aids initiative, and the Congress has funded it even providing more than requested.
But much of the new spending, while copious, is neither strategic nor sustainable. Large amounts benefit favoured ideologies and causes, while failing to address fully the most serious potential problems.
Overall, the administration fails to take a strategic approach to its investment in international programmes:
- Going it alone. There are great international institutions (Nato, forexample) and programmes (Kofi Annans Millennium Development Goals) that promise innovative and effective approaches to foreign policy challenges. Each was developed, within Democratic and Republican administrations, to reflect US preferences. But the current administration promises new initiatives, without consultation and without considering how they will engage others who have invested in those international initiatives.
- Paying for it alone. Traditionally, other countries match US aid commitments at rates of 1-to-2 (for development programmes) or 1-to-4/5 (for security operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the first Gulf war). This president has been unable to enlist support from others in the international community. The result is less money to deal with problems and a drain on the American taxpayer. The price of unilateralism in Iraq is $80 billion and climbing.
- Limiting new aid programmes, like the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), to the best performing countries. While intended to eliminate waste, offer an incentive for reform, and serve as evidence of American compassion, the new programmes fail to do anything for countries like Afghanistan, Sudan and Haiti that do not qualify but can, as we have seen, develop into threats to US security. Even the seemingly generous Presidents Emergency Plan for Aids Relief is designed on the basis of more than ever before and more than other donor countries instead of being scaled to turn the tide in the pandemic.
- Letting domestic politics dictate the content of development programmes (relying on abstinence to fight Aids, courting faith-based charities, slighting family planning programmes) instead of clear-eyed analysis of what is needed to be effective overseas.
- Casting the fight against terrorism in simplistic us versus them terms, instead of adopting a broader understanding of what is needed to build coalitions and go after a host of criminal behaviours (such as corruption and trafficking in narcotics, arms, and humans) that undermine societies. Shutting down opportunities for foreign students to study in the United States and making it harder for foreigners to visit thus losing an opportunity to win long-term friends.
- Failing to craft an overall national security budget that bridges between military and civilian agencies. The short-sightedness of this approach may soon be played out in Iraq, when the military turns its entire operation over to a state department embassy.
- Believing that America can bring the rest of the world around to our way of thinking if the administration just does a better job sending out its message, rather than listening to what others have to say and engaging in an active dialogue.
Organisations that traditionally lobby for funding increases for international programmes have, in some ways, been bought off by the administration. Rather than criticising the White House, they engage in small-scale sniping from the sidelines about how new programmes are structured.
For example, analysts argue about the way the Millennium Challenge Corporation will be operated instead of insisting that the administration identify what is wrong with existing aid programmes and re-engineer them. Aids advocates are sidetracked by arguments over the capacity of poor country health systems to absorb aid instead of demanding that the United States take the lead to build the needed capacity in those countries. Members of Congress congratulate each other for funding ambitious new programmes, but ought instead to question some of the administrations more counter-productive requirements.
International programmes are a small part of the federal budget. President Bushs request for $31.6 billion is still less than 2% of federal spending. Nonetheless, the House Budget Committee has moved to cut international programmes by 15%, believing that foreign aid programmes have had too large an increase over the past few years and that it is time to focus on domestic programmes.
But a return to US stinginess in the conduct of foreign relations will neither solve nor prevent problems. Instead, Congress should ask members of the administration to explain how their proposals will address foreign policy dilemmas likely to arise in the future. The answer to these mistakes is not to close international programmes or cut funding but to design programmes better, in coordination with other donors, taking into account whats missing: the big picture.
