EVENTS

Date:	Thursday, June 8, 2006
Time:	12:00 PM -- 2:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

June 2006

Can Foreign Aid Help Win the War on Terror?

The Bush administration has identified the long-term political and economic transformation of the greater Middle East as a cornerstone of its national security strategy. Yet despite rousing presidential rhetoric and increased funding for U.S. aid programs, it remains unclear how well-suited the traditional instruments of American statecraft are for this challenging new mission. In particular, questions remain about the extent to which the U.S. government should seek to promote democratic change from within by supporting indigenous civil society organizations in countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and Iraq. These and other questions were considered at a June 8 AEI panel discussion.

A. Lawrence Chickering
Hoover Institution

The concepts discussed in Strategic Foreign Assistance (Hoover Institution Press, 2006) are the result of research in the fields of economic development, conflict resolution, and education reform in developing countries. The book assesses the foreign policy challenges for the United States in an increasingly complicated international system and suggests the need for two separate but complimentary strategies: the first directed toward states, and the other toward civil societies. With this in mind, Strategic Foreign Assistance examines four particular areas in which the United States could pursue key objectives through support for civil society organizations: economic policy reform, women’s education and empowerment, conflict resolution, and the role of civil society before and after conflicts.

P. Edward Haley
Claremont McKenna College

While realist theories of international relations suggest that states are unitary actors and that elements of civil society within states are largely inconsequential in influencing their behavior, evidence strongly suggests that the international conduct of states, particularly with regard to war and conflict, can be strongly affected by internal actors. This is especially true in the case of stalled or “frozen” conflicts, which civil society organizations have demonstrated an ability to help resolve.

Emily Vargas-Baron
RISE Institute

The United States needs to reevaluate its approach to dealing with civil society organizations in foreign countries. Strategic Foreign Assistance suggests that U.S. foreign aid organizations should work more closely with religious organizations and universities, particularly in post-conflict societies, to help ensure lasting peace and stability. Strategic Foreign Assistance also identifies a series of innovations which would allow U.S. foreign aid organizations to more effectively deliver their services. U.S. aid organizations require a new system for evaluating and monitoring the progress and effectiveness of reform efforts, for instance. The current system measures only the general impact of U.S. development activities.

John Sullivan
Center for International Private Enterprise

The cliché that there is more to democracy than elections happens to be true. The prescriptions proposed in Strategic Foreign Assistance detail precisely what some of these additional requirements are and how the U.S. government can work to promote them. The creation of legislative advisory programs in developing countries, for instance, is a useful mechanism for improving governance and political representation. To ensure success, however, such programs must strive to achieve domestic ownership of advisory activities.

The oversight of nongovernmental organizations creates a unique series of challenges for U.S. foreign aid that Strategic Foreign Assistance would do well to explore further. NGO efforts are often hindered if they are not embedded in the communities which they seek to help; such organizations’ frequent lack of corporate governance skills limits their effectiveness as well.

Stewart Patrick
Center for Global Development

There is growing awareness that weak and failing states are the source of many of the challenges and threats in today’s international security environment. The questions for the U.S. government are therefore whether it is using effective foreign policy tools to address the problems caused by failing states and if it adheres to a coherent strategy for employing those tools.

U.S. support for civil society in foreign societies can provide human, economic, and social capital as well as political momentum for transformational development and democratic change. What is less certain, however, is the relationship between civil society initiatives and the war on terror; to conclude that the former has a significant impact on the latter requires unproven assumptions about the nature of both foreign aid and terrorism.

AEI intern Tim Sullivan prepared this summary.