I work at USAID, and agree wholeheartedly with the last two paragraphs. While there are many moderate to progressive types at USAID, even those of us who are on the left see the agency as a valuable tool that can be shaped to meet the needs of a more progressive, anti-imperalist administration should we ever get one. Dismantling it will effectively dismantle the only viable tool for projecting American largesse abroad, even if it also dismantles one of many tools of imperialism.
It's also important to remember that USAID is compelled to justify its existence to a hostile Congress. Much of the Rhodes argument is a result of that need to cater both to those who believe we owe something to the world given our position and history and those who feel that all U.S. Government spending must directly advance U.S. power. Essentially every USAID employee falls into the former category, but we are subject to the policy demands of Washington and shape our message and our programming in order to protect what good work we can.
Well said, and this makes sense about the context. I'm obviously not Rhodes' primary audience! Still, I wonder whether his argument really lands with any Republican Congresspeople at this point.
Most of your criticisms could be addressed through effective design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning work (which is underfunded throughout the world, not just by USAID or the U.S. government). It's often considered "overhead" or otherwise outside of project implementation costs. If we spent more money on designing effective, sustainable, and impactful projects that truly addressed needs and then monitoring, evaluating and learning from them in ways that improved the likelihood of success, we could avoid many of the criticisms leveled at USAID and development work more broadly. Rather than burning it all to the ground, we should use evidence to make it work better.
Thanks for your comment. I thought about addressing M&E in the post - I'm actually not very confident in it. I think there is strong potential for a kind of conflict of interest; the evaluators presumably want to keep working with USAID (or whatever kind of program is hiring them), and so they have an incentive to pull punches.
my view of USAID is that it has long been an instrument of political manipulation in countries that don't tow the US line, propaganda systems, and outright coups and regime change across the globe. It is a slush fund for CIA operations working those missions. However, it's also a major aid funding source that millions depend on to live. That's the way spy agencies operate. You can't have something be a secret funding mechanism for espionage work and nothing else, or it's not secret, so you fund it lavishly, do actual meaningful aid work with it, but also it's there to pull from for dirty jobs, and to use some of the NGO's it creates for propaganda mission work in line with the covert missions. It's the same as when the spy agencies created the encrypted messaging system Signal. It doesn't work as a secret communication platform for covert missions if only spies are on there, so you release it to the public and make it work as a public encrypted message system, and now it functions as cover. The spy agencies will find new funding mechanisms though, and the people who depend on that aid will probably face suffering and death with these bull in a china shop moves from these people looking to loot the treasury.
I work at USAID, and agree wholeheartedly with the last two paragraphs. While there are many moderate to progressive types at USAID, even those of us who are on the left see the agency as a valuable tool that can be shaped to meet the needs of a more progressive, anti-imperalist administration should we ever get one. Dismantling it will effectively dismantle the only viable tool for projecting American largesse abroad, even if it also dismantles one of many tools of imperialism.
It's also important to remember that USAID is compelled to justify its existence to a hostile Congress. Much of the Rhodes argument is a result of that need to cater both to those who believe we owe something to the world given our position and history and those who feel that all U.S. Government spending must directly advance U.S. power. Essentially every USAID employee falls into the former category, but we are subject to the policy demands of Washington and shape our message and our programming in order to protect what good work we can.
Well said, and this makes sense about the context. I'm obviously not Rhodes' primary audience! Still, I wonder whether his argument really lands with any Republican Congresspeople at this point.
Most of your criticisms could be addressed through effective design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning work (which is underfunded throughout the world, not just by USAID or the U.S. government). It's often considered "overhead" or otherwise outside of project implementation costs. If we spent more money on designing effective, sustainable, and impactful projects that truly addressed needs and then monitoring, evaluating and learning from them in ways that improved the likelihood of success, we could avoid many of the criticisms leveled at USAID and development work more broadly. Rather than burning it all to the ground, we should use evidence to make it work better.
Thanks for your comment. I thought about addressing M&E in the post - I'm actually not very confident in it. I think there is strong potential for a kind of conflict of interest; the evaluators presumably want to keep working with USAID (or whatever kind of program is hiring them), and so they have an incentive to pull punches.
my view of USAID is that it has long been an instrument of political manipulation in countries that don't tow the US line, propaganda systems, and outright coups and regime change across the globe. It is a slush fund for CIA operations working those missions. However, it's also a major aid funding source that millions depend on to live. That's the way spy agencies operate. You can't have something be a secret funding mechanism for espionage work and nothing else, or it's not secret, so you fund it lavishly, do actual meaningful aid work with it, but also it's there to pull from for dirty jobs, and to use some of the NGO's it creates for propaganda mission work in line with the covert missions. It's the same as when the spy agencies created the encrypted messaging system Signal. It doesn't work as a secret communication platform for covert missions if only spies are on there, so you release it to the public and make it work as a public encrypted message system, and now it functions as cover. The spy agencies will find new funding mechanisms though, and the people who depend on that aid will probably face suffering and death with these bull in a china shop moves from these people looking to loot the treasury.