The 3Ds: “Co-Equal Pillars”?

Posted on 06 May 2010

By Steve Feldstein

In late April, Sherine Jayawickrama’s post Great Expectations, Rising Impatience: A Watershed Moment for U.S. Foreign Assistance posed several questions. This post responds to her question related to the evident imbalance among the 3Ds (defense, diplomacy and development).  

I think there are several different ways to approach this issue.  On the one hand, it is accurate to say that despite the “3D – co-equal pillar” rhetoric between defense, diplomacy and development, the relative amount of resources, political attention and priority paid to each of the three areas remain vastly unequal. 

The numbers themselves are extremely telling – the President’s FY 2011 budget request for defense and national security spending totals approximately $733 billion.  In contrast, the FY 2011 budget request for the international affairs budget (funding both development and diplomatic programs) totals $55.8 billion. 

While resources and numbers are not the complete story – there is a basic truth to what an institution is able to accomplish with a $10 million program and a hundred million dollar intervention. That being said, it is equally important to consider larger trends and general levels of support for foreign aid today, versus 15 or 20 years ago.

The recent history of U.S. foreign assistance, especially after the Cold War, was not encouraging.  Foreign aid was decried as wasteful, unrelated to our national interests and faced wholesale cuts.  The Congress threatened to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) completely, and only a last minute deal that placed USAID under the control of the Secretary of State saved the agency. 

That did not prevent USAID from undergoing several staff rescissions, which decimated the talent, personnel and operational effectiveness of the agency.  Quite simply, the dialogue in the 1990s did not center around how to strengthen and elevate our development efforts.  Instead, it centered on a more basic question – should we undertake foreign aid programs at all, and is there any relation between development programs and U.S. foreign policy and national security interests.

Moving ahead to 2010, we find ourselves in a vastly different universe.  There is near unanimity in the policy community that development is an indispensable partner to our defense and diplomatic efforts.  There is little talk about scrapping our foreign aid programs.  Part of this shift in thinking is due to the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent recognition that failed states are direct threats to our national security, and that development assistance can be a key instrument in restoring governance to unstable areas, reducing terrorist safe havens, and preventing conflict from undermining fragile states. 

Thus, a key component to renewed support for development has been its nexus with U.S. diplomatic and defense priorities.  But this does not paint the whole story.  While national security imperatives have increased support for U.S. foreign aid, an equally significant driver has been increasing public awareness of humanitarian issues, greater involvement of faith-based groups in development programs, and broader American interest in international engagement. 

Several milestone programs, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as well as a series of high profile U.S. humanitarian interventions (i.e., 2005 tsunami, Haiti earthquake relief) have resonated in profound ways with the American public.

And so we find ourselves in an interesting and complicated era, where real potential exists to increase U.S. engagement, resources and priority towards development issues, while recognizing that the funding disparity between development, diplomacy and defense will persist for years to come. 

If we view our development efforts simply as a subset of our national security efforts, then development will always remain subservient to our national security agenda.  Instead, if we look upon U.S. foreign aid as inhabiting several different roles – both as an essential partner towards achieving national security priorities, but separately as a critical agent for accomplishing humanitarian and developmental objectives – then we can continue to build a broad and sustainable base of support for future development programs and initiatives.

Steve Feldstein serves as a Professional Staff Member (majority staff) for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He shares these views in his personal capacity and is not speaking for the committee.