Foreign Policy: Why Is the United States Letting Its Best Foreign Aid Tool Fall Apart?
Christopher Holshek, senior fellow at Alliance for Peacebuilding

“…USAID’s own capacity is on the cusp of crisis: its staff is divided between veterans who are aging out and greenhorns, with too few in the middle. From the standpoint of national capacity, America has a development donut. And it’s a problem that so far has gone all but unnoticed by policymakers or the public. … The nation’s global development budget this coming fiscal year — covering Development Assistance, Global Health Programs, International Disaster Assistance, Food for Peace, Transition Initiatives, Complex Crises Fund, and organizational administration — will be somewhere around $22 billion, or about half what the Defense Department spends on petroleum, oils, and lubricants for all its equipment. That does not represent a serious investment in something that, as the president put it, demonstrates how America leads with ‘the example of our values.’ Development … is part of the core business of a country the world continues to rely on but now also more relies on the world, a business linked to peace and prosperity as well as to security…” (6/22).