Commentary
The EU can impose sanctions but struggles to enforce them without the United States. With Washington increasingly disinterested in backing European interests, the bloc must now fend for itself.
Nicu Popescu, Tiago Antunes
REQUIRED IMAGE
Paper
Assessing Secretary of State Rice's Reform of U.S. Foreign Assistance
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ambitious reorganization of the U.S. foreign assistance efforts last year is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed, but did produce some positive results, says a new paper from the Carnegie Endowment.
By Gerald F. Hyman
Published on Feb 11, 2008
Source: Carnegie Endowment
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ambitious reorganization of the U.S. foreign assistance efforts last year is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed, but did produce some positive results, says a new paper from the Carnegie Endowment.
Reforms aimed at making foreign assistance an instrument of the administration’s “transformational diplomacy,” and ensuring greater transparency and oversight instead created an overly centralized and complex system that was rushed into practice.
In Assessing Secretary of State Rice’s Reform of U.S. Foreign Assistance, former senior USAID official Gerald Hyman analyzes the objectives, implementation, and impact of the Secretary’s effort to create a cohesive foreign assistance program fully integrated with U.S. national security policy.
Key Conclusions:
• The new system confuses strategic decisions, which should be made in Washington, with tactical ones better suited to context-knowledgeable field officers. Reforms also require that any change made to a foreign assistance project receive approval from the newly created Director of Foreign Assistance (DFA) position, creating huge potential for gridlock.
• In the quest for greater strategic control, the reorganization actually diminishes Washington’s ability to evaluate the objectives and successes of foreign assistance projects. Detailed narratives which provided rationale for programs under the old system have been replaced by a complex, numbered grid system that lacks critical information, making a serious assessment of projects in Washington difficult.
• The reorganization was led by “core country teams,” the members of which, in many instances, had only a passing knowledge of the country they were to plan for. The implementation process also failed to involve many key stakeholders, including ambassadors, USAID missions, and congressional leaders.
• The reorganization was instituted due in large part to the Secretary’s inability to answer congressional inquiries regarding U.S. spending on democracy promotion. The new system places an exaggerated emphasis on the ultimately futile attempt to instantly report on U.S. foreign assistance expenditures and detail the outcomes of an $11 billion program.
“The old system was a fractured, nonstrategic, hodgepodge of bureaucratic satraps in need of a fundamental fix. Greater coherence was certainly necessary. But the Rice reform is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed. There were available corrections far short of, and far better than, this foreign assistance reform,” writes Hyman.
Click on icon above for the full text of this Carnegie Paper.
A limited number of print copies of this Carnegie Paper are available.
Request a copy
About the Author
Gerald (Jerry) Hyman serves as both a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) senior adviser and as president of CSIS’s Hills Program on Governance. He also serves on the Advisory Council to the Center for International Media Assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy. Hyman served with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1990 to 2006, and was director of the Office of Democracy and Governance from 2002 to 2007.
About the Author
Gerald F. Hyman
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie Europe
- Europe Needs its own Sanctions-Enforcement Muscle
- Containing Escalation in the Black SeaCommentary
Russia is testing the waters of NATO’s mutual defense clause. What do strikes in Romanian territorial waters mean for the alliance’s posture toward Moscow?
Dimitar Bechev
- Taking the Pulse: Does the EU Have a France Problem?Commentary
With its public finances in shambles, the far right polling at 35 percent ahead of the 2027 presidential election, and a growing protest movement, is France’s crisis a threat to the EU’s geopolitical awakening?
Rym Momtaz, ed.
- Trump Blindsides Ukraine But Gives Europe an OpportunityCommentary
Ahead of a tough winter for Ukraine, Donald Trump’s swing back toward Russia bodes ill. But instead of panicking, Kyiv’s European allies are focusing on action.
Rym Momtaz
- Turning Russian Assets into Financing for Ukraine NowCommentary
Funding Ukraine remains a priority for European leaders. As Russia’s war of aggression heads into another winter, two feasible options to mobilize support for Kyiv should be fast-tracked.
Vladyslav Rashkovan, Gregory P. Wilson
