Americans often hear arguments demagoguing exorbitant and wasteful development assistance spending. In an election year, these voices multiply.  And they have influence. Past polls have shown that Americans believe that their government spends roughly 25 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid. The real total actually hovers around less than 1 percent.

 What’s more is that this fraction of 1 percent is often put to good use. One example is the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has invested a little over $100 billion into the global fight against HIV/AIDS over the past 21 years, saving more than 25 million lives and preventing millions of new infections.

A new Gates Forum Report titled Reinvigorating the American Development Toolkit offers a forthright defense of the monies by which the US has delivered relief in the face of disasters, helped countries build economic prosperity, and cultivated a network of stable, democratic countries—thereby producing a more secure and prosperous world that is conducive to its national security and economic interests.

At a recent Wilson Center event to launch the report, co-hosted with the Gates Global Policy Center and AidData, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained just why US development assistance is a “critical element of our [foreign policy] toolkit.” In conversation with Wilson Center President and CEO, Ambassador Mark Green, Gates observed that while development assistance is an arena in which there has been significant modernization, its role as a crucial instrument of national power has been neglected since the Cold War. 

In their discussion, Ambassador Green and Secretary Gates also recommended three areas for innovation to ensure US development assistance is fit for purpose in the 21st century: strategic communication, private sector engagement, and international and interagency cooperation.

Getting the Narrative Right

Strategic communication that aligns development with US interests will help Americans “understand where their dollars are going,” said Gates. Such efforts will begin to break down long-held beliefs and build much needed domestic support for development programs. At present, Gates observed, “we do a terrible job, not just with American citizens but with people around the world, of highlighting what we are doing to help.”

Clarity about where American aid is going is important. But it is also helps Americans understand how development assistance is connected to national interest. Gates noted that “from the very beginning, development assistance has really been about serving American national interests, both economic and security [interests].”

Green also observed that development aid showcases the “better angels” that display the best of America’s values. “When we talk and show American compassion in action, we polish that model of being a shining city on the hill, which so many aspire to,” said Ambassador Green.

Effectively Engaging the Private Sector

To both reinvigorate development and to give teeth to strategic communication efforts, the US government must change how it engages private enterprise. Green noted that already there has been a shift in the private sector’s orientation toward development assistance. Only a few decades ago, around 10% of funding for development came from the private sector. Business now realizes it has a major role to play in the world of international development, he continued, and we need to align ourselves with this shift.

Green added that it was necessary to bring “private enterprise into the front end of program design” to capitalize on this momentum and harness private sector knowledge and investment. This means better collaboration with private stakeholders by incorporating them into initial meetings about how to design approaches to development problems. A new “collaboration ethic” will allow the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to tap into private enterprise’s wellspring of creativity to source new ideas for how to achieve program goals and address barriers to investment.

The driving purpose behind US development assistance is to move every recipient country to become global partners, and, eventually, fellow donors. “And the way you get there is by creating enough economic opportunity so countries can take care of their own challenges and also have the ability to partner and work with others,” said Green. Much of what is attractive to countries about development assistance is attractive to businesses as well. Countries seek opportunities for themselves to grow and strengthen their economies, and businesses seek stable trading partners and new markets.

Enhancing International and Interagency Cooperation

Given the breadth and complexity of the issues addressed by USAID, the agency often stretches its existing resources to their limit. Partnerships, both interagency and international, can help to meet gaps in demand for USAID’s work.

Developing countries rely on a patchwork of aid programs from wealthy countries, many of whom spend more on development as a percentage of their gross domestic product (GDP) than the US. However, there is no mechanism for sharing information or coordinating assistance efforts between donors at present. “There was an effort to do this through the UN…but it failed,” said Gates. Without a global system to coordinate development assistance between countries, international aid will continue to be disjointed.

Gates emphasized that the key is not only about better synchronization, but also greater collaboration internationally. Encouraging new actors such as China to enter the development assistance arena could scale up action on a number of global issues, said Green.

Such fragmentation also hampers US interagency development assistance. Gates observed that while USAID is the primary actor in development assistance, “the problem we have at home is that something like 20 different government agencies are doing development assistance, and there’s no one that coordinates them all…How do you synchronize all of that?”

As a partial solution, the Gates Forum Report proposes greater collaboration between the US Department of State’s Director of Foreign Assistance and the USAID Administrator on development programming. A growing recognition of development’s national security implications also leads the authors to suggest that the National Security Council’s (NSC) principals committee make the USAID Administrator a permanent member. This appointment would carry with it a “permanent and larger say on the NSC on all things development”—as well as an enlarged role for the NSC in coordinating US development strategy. 

As the world undergoes seismic shifts from great power rivalry and climate change to escalating conflicts that undermine previous development gains, reinvigorating development assistance will be more important than ever. In the face of these challenges, enhancing strategic communication, private sector engagement, and interagency and international cooperation will reinforce America’s ability to advance a peaceful and prosperous world.