foreign policy

RECENT POSTS

April 4, 2012 | 2:25 PM | By

Nils Daulaire brings his fight to Seattle – Global is local!

“Our only chance to keep Americans safe is if the systems for preventing, detecting and containing disease … also stretch across the globe,” Nils Daulaire.

By Lisa Stiffler, special correspondent

Many Americans just don’t get it – Global health is a domestic issue.

That was the main message last night at Seattle’s Broadway Performance Hall from Dr. Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

One might think that Americans would be anxious about the next bird- or bug-borne pandemic, the strength of disease surveillance abroad.

Not exactly. At the “Diseases without Borders” forum Daulaire said that the question he’s most frequently asked is this: “Why does (Health and Human Services), a domestic institution, even have an Office of Global Affairs?”

Luckily, Daulaire makes a compelling case for spending taxpayer dollars on health issues arising outside our borders.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, development, foreign aid, foreign policy
November 22, 2011 | 8:00 AM | By

The case for divorcing foreign aid from military support

AidWatch

Bill Easterly

Development expert and economist Bill Easterly, writing in The Guardian, argues that A firewall should be built between U.S. foreign aid and national security. Says Easterly:

US foreign aid programs should be for poverty relief and should not be taken over by national security interests, abetted by delusions of nation-building.

Easterly said the foreign aid budget was significantly increased under President George W. Bush and enjoyed wide bipartisan support in Congress until recently. So what happened to turn foreign aid into Congress’ favorite punching bag in the budget battle these days?

The answer is that the US aid program was taken over by national security interests, abetted by delusions of nation-building. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) wound up in the most self-destructive position – the unsuccessful cover-up…. The resultant failures overshadowed notable successes in more traditional aid programmes like health. These disasters and the neglect of more feasible poverty relief failed to sustain the compassionate constituency evident earlier in the decade.

I’ve written about this issue several times before, when the Arab Spring came to Egypt and many of us learned how much of our “aid” to Egypt had been actually going for military equipment in support of the Mubarak dictatorship. Here was a story the next day in The Guardian noting the risk of mixing up defense and aid.

For comparison purposes, here’s a chart from GOOD comparing how much we spend on aid vs. the military.

Easterly says it’s clear most Americans want to help the poor overseas. He contends the only way we can rescue foreign aid is to disentangle it from our national security interests:

Compassionate American taxpayers continue to make private donations at a rate higher than any other nationality in the world. The bipartisan coalition that came together to increase aid in 2002 may be nearly extinct, but it could be resurrected by redirecting aid to where it has a decent chance of working. Aid will not get too many more chances.

FILED UNDER: Politics, Bill Easterly, foreign aid, foreign policy, military
August 8, 2011 | 11:50 AM | By

Let’s bring about world peace while Tom Paulson is gone for two weeks

Updated with new information at 6 p.m. August 8th, 2011

Since Tom Paulson is going to be away on vacation for a full two weeks, I thought I would tackle some of the major problems we face today, starting with world peace. That way, when Tom returns he’ll have fewer tasks and can focus on other issues like health, justice, science, etc.

Besides, I think the role of wars on the entire humanosphere needs much more examination.

Some of you may think I’m being a little ambitious. Well, maybe so. Just keep in mind that I’m trying to help out Tom. Besides, if we really put in some real effort, world peace shouldn’t be that hard. It’s what we all want. It’s what every world leader calls for. In fact, since President Obama already has won the Nobel Peace Prize, world peace would be a way to live up to the award, right?

And, the United States, even though it couldn’t qualify for a revolving charge card at Sears right now, is still the world’s one-and-only superpower. With that clout, I would think we could bring about world peace. For the sake of expediency, and brevity of this post, I’ll just say that it does seem we are moving in the right direction. The United States has pledged to pull all troops out of Iraq this year, and we could do the same in Afghanistan by next year, surely. (Let me know if you think there is a problem with my expedient/brevity thinking here.)

Wikimedia Creative Commons photo

Damage after the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2008.

With Iraq and Afghanistan at peace, where then could the United States turn its tremendous peace-making powers next? I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems like a good candidate. Leaders of violent opposition groups in the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon have told me that solving this conflict would go a long way in bringing peace to the entire region.

Some people think that gaining recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations will lead to peace. The International Middle East Media Center, developed in collaboration between Palestinian and international journalists to provide independent media coverage of Israel-Palestine, said Monday:

“Palestinian sources reported that President Mahmoud Abbas will be visiting Lebanon in the middle of this month as he accepted an official invitation from the Lebanese president, Michael Suleiman Aoun. Lebanon will be heading the UN security Council in September. The sources added that Abbas will be in Lebanon on August 16th and 17th, and that his visit will focus on the Palestinian UN move this coming September that aims at an international recognition of an independent state in addition to a full membership at the UN and its security council.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, foreign policy, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama Administration, peace, United Nations
May 19, 2011 | 12:10 PM | By

President Obama says two interesting things about the Middle East

President Barack Obama said a lot today in his speech focused on our policy approach to the inflamed Middle East, but two things stood out for me:

1. He sided with popular revolutions trying to overturn Arab governments, many of which the U.S. had previously supported despite their history of repression and dictatorship. “The people have risen up to demand their basic human rights.”

2. He called for reinventing foreign aid so that it serves the need of people rather than governments. We’ll have to see what this means. Obama cited the $1 billion in proposed aid to Egypt as if this was somehow a new thing. We’ve been giving massive aid to Egypt, and Egypt’s former dictator, for years – mostly for military purchases.

Here’s a brief clip from the AP excerpting Obama’s speech.

The conservative Heritage organization denounced Obama’s aims to assist Egypt as a “mini-Marshall Plan” — claiming that the original post-WWII Marshal Plan was also a fraud. I dunno enough to say.

The Washington Post also “deciphered” Obama’s speech and offered perspective on the rhetoric.

Much more was made of Obama’s call for Israel and Palestine to agree to a two-state resolution of their conflict based on the 1967 borders — which has already prompted internecine media conflict, such as the Atlantic referring to the AP as providing “the nuttiest” perspective (really? THE nuttiest?).

But haven’t we all heard this two-state-resolution sort of thing from the Obama Administration before?

What most interests me is exactly how President Obama intends to support the popular Arab revolt (he forgot to mention Bahrain’s revolt, I think, and didn’t talk about democracy for Saudi Arabia) and in what way our approach to foreign aid will change to avoid supporting repressive governments.

FILED UNDER: Politics, Arab revolt, foreign aid, foreign policy, Obama
May 3, 2011 | 9:50 AM | By

With Bin Laden’s death, foreign aid to Pakistan under the microscope

Flickr, k-ideas

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, many are taking a hard look at the massive U.S. program of foreign aid to Pakistan – about $3 billion a year, half of that to pay them for helping us fight terrorism.

I hope they’ll take a hard look not just at what we’re getting for the money but why we give it.

What exactly are we trying do with what we call foreign aid?

We actually give very little, per capita and compared to most wealthy nations. And we seem to be giving it mostly for political reasons.

When Egypt erupted in popular protest against dictatorship, many Americans (including, apparently some members of Congress!) were surprised to learn that Egypt was the second or third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid — and that most of that “aid” went to buy military supplies. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, foreign policy, global health, Obama Administration, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan
April 4, 2011 | 9:12 AM | By

New humanitarian standard for warfare?

Flickr, Jayel Aheram

Except for euphemistically calling warfare “intervention,” I think this article in The Atlantic about our current military efforts in Libya “The New Standard for Humanitarian Intervention” is a good read. Says the author Robert Pape:

We may be witnessing an historic shift in international norms.

Flickr, Runs with Scissors

Gandhi and Che, two kinds of freedom fighters

Pape’s article answers a question I raised a few weeks ago in my post asking “What determines the humanitarian military response?”

I will refer Pape’s article to my brother who, over the weekend, was challenging me on this — about Obama deciding to wage “intervention” against Libya without congressional approval, about the geopolitical wisdom of using warfare as a means to stop or resolve conflict and so on.

And it’s not just me and my brother. The chattering class (of which I am a card-carrying member) has been all over this issue as well, with some pundits who had been criticizing President Obama for not taking action in the Middle East now criticizing for him taking this action.

I recently looked at the reasons why I believe it is in our national interest to take aggressive “humanitarian military action” in Libya, as did Nick Kristof, who argues it is the better of several bad choices. For more than a month now, I’ve been citing stories about Ivory Coast that raise the question of why there has been so little international response to that crisis so similar in nature to Libya.

Pape goes beyond these specific cases and issues to look at what the rapid military intervention in Libya may mean for the future of foreign policy, and if it signals a more “humanitarian” approach by the international community — a lower threshold of intolerance for brutality. Says Pape:

Crises short of genocide, such as the Libyan conflict, justify a military response when it can save thousands of lives with reasonable prospects of virtually no or only very low casualties to international allies.

FILED UNDER: Justice, Politics, Arab revolt, Barack Obama, Congress, foreign policy, Libya, military, Nick Kristof
March 19, 2011 | 12:38 PM | By

What determines the humanitarian military response?

Flickr, Runs with Scissors

Gandhi and Che, two kinds of freedom fighters

Most of us prefer to avoid using the military and killing people to solve problems.

At least, that’s what we say — that we prefer non-violence. Hollywood and the entertainment industry, however, seem to think shooting at people is, in fact, our favorite problem-solving strategy.

The reality is that a military response is sometimes the only course of action that will work.

Take what’s happening in Libya.

Is there a credible argument out there that challenges the need for the current international military response to Muammar Gaddafi’s murderous retaliation against those Libyans who are — as part of the broader Arab revolt — seeking an to end his dictatorship?

I’ve seen a few articles questioning the political validity of this move, or the specific tactics. Here’s a thoughtful post by Yale development expert Chris Blattman noting that military interventions imply broader failures in foreign policy.

But I can’t find anyone (other than Gaddafi and his few supporters) arguing that the military response aimed at stopping the pro-Gaddafi forces is fundamentally wrong. Rather, this action has become a humanitarian obligation. Yet: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign policy, Ivory Coast, Libya, military
January 26, 2011 | 8:51 AM | By

Obama on foreign policy, global health and development: Nearly nada

President Obama gave his State of the Union address last night and, apparently, most people heard him talk mostly about salmon (and hope) and very little about the world outside our borders.

Here is a “word cloud” created by NPR based on listeners’ response to the speech:

NPR and Wordle

State of Union word cloud

Now, it turns out the welfare of salmon is pretty important — to us here in the fish-focused Pacific Northwest as well as an indicator species of overall ecosystem and environmental health.

But the health and well-being of the rest of the world actually has more of a significant impact on the state of our union. So it was disappointing to hear so little from Obama on that front. Basically, the little he did say was mostly just about our military adventures. President Bush, by contrast, almost always included significant remarks on foreign policy and development issues in his annual address.

Is isolationism coming back into vogue?

The Washington Post called the speech thin on foreign policy (which may be generous) and ABC News says international affairs appears to be fading as a priority for Obama if public remarks are any measure.

Given how little Obama said on these matters, Foreign Policy magazine decided to read between the lines and do a humorous translation of what was implied. For example:

Obama said: “We saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.

FP Translation: “We haven’t pushed that whole ‘democracy’ thing with Arab dictators but we can’t just come out and say we support their crackdowns on protesters, now can we? I guess we can burn the (former) government of Tunisia but I’ll stop short of mentioning the tear-gassing of students in Egypt….”

According to GlobalPost, rather than look at how we should collaborate and work together with other nations Obama says we should simply work harder to compete and best other nations. Not mentioned in this article was the President’s oddly characterizing our situation today as a “Sputnik moment” — a reference to the beginning of the U.S.- Soviet Union space race.

Great, yeah, we could sure use a Cold War right now.

Basically, Obama said very little about foreign policy and, unless I missed it, nothing much about global health or development.

This is disappointing, given all the previous statements this Administration has made about how important efforts are in these arenas to improving our standing (and national security) in the world.

Such lack of attention also may further open the door to the current push by some in Congress to cut back on foreign aid, given the implication that what happens outside our borders matters little to our future prosperity and safety.

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign policy, Obama Administration