to quote Mick, 'you cain't always get what you want'
which is the major threat in foreign policy?
I get up really early every day as I enjoy hearang the 5 am news (for those of you who are recoiling, before June 2022 I got up at 3.30am to drive into the District every day so this is a concession to age). I have noted earlier that I am a political junkie but you already know national security issues are my stimulant of choice, with a good cup of black Sumatran coffee. (Feeling a bit fatigued earlier in the week, I felt lost that I did not hear news to start my day as I did not arise until the scandalous hour of 6.30 on Tuesday. Whew, the sun still rose in the east!). Today the world was back to normal.
Sitting in my accustomed seat on the couch, my arm froze en route to my mouth when I heard that the Republican Leader of the House countered President Biden’s comments on the budget for Annual Year 2024 by noting the House majority intends to cut foreign aid. Wait. What? Foreign Aid? Did I hear that right?
Sure enough, when our multiple newspapers arrived I read that Speaker McCarthy did indeed say the Republicans will ‘gut the nation’s foreign aid budget’ and make other substantial cuts to domestic programs for the poor in order to balance the federal budget, arguing Biden’s anticipated budget submission is far too large.
Eventually, as they have for decades, Republicans will begin stressing that foreign assistance goes down what the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms repeatedly referred to as ‘a rat hole’. Real concerns about its fiduciary use as well as hyperbole born of outright nationalist arrogance plagues any and every administration’s proposed use of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars because we don’t like foreign assistance even as a tool of national power.
As noted in a couple of Op-eds for the Brookings Institution’s voter education website leading to the 2020 elections, foreign aid meets resistence at least partially because the assumptions regarding its size and use are so fundamentally offbase. It does not represent a quarter (or more) of the federal budget as most citizens assume. Ingram was writing in 2019 but I dare say, with the abounding disinformation, that assumption likely kisses half of our federal budget. It is not generally cash to governments but grant making fore technical, targetted skill-building for governing. Foreign assistance, in short, is yet another mystery in foreign policy aspect for which increasing numbers of Americans seem to ascribe the most negative thoughts with no basis whatsoever except doubts about people unknown.
Oh, and according to Devex, foreign aid is still—as it has been for decades—less than 1% of the federal budget. Biden will submit a budget of $6.9 trillion for this cycle, putting foreign aid at $63,100,000,000 which is more than any other single country contributes but far less than the percentages of their budgets that most developed countries offer. The latest cost for the single Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was $13 billion without the airwing which makes the whole thing valuable. For the Navy to build a much greater fleet, worldwide foreign aid would translate into about 3.15 carrier battle groups.
I grew up in a family where my father worked for one of the portions of the U.S. Government which does nothing other than foreign assistance, the Kennedy-created Agency for International Development (now known as USAID). I admit I have seen how foreign assistance has an impact on our relations with other countries and the direct effect it has on the lives of those it touches. I also know it rarely solves problems entirely and it can be used purely for messaging in mind as much as to improve the lives of those afflicted by poverty around the world. But, it can be an long-lasting memory for those who benefit from it, improving their view of Uncle Sam.
You’re wondering why I delayed sipping my coffee since I noted that foreign assistance has been less than 1% of the federal spending for decades? Because foreign aid is an absolutely vital way to approach what we refer to as ‘hearts and minds’ of people in other countries and the state that it seems every single person on Capitol Hill worries about—China—has figured out that foreign aid wins hearts and minds in a way that ships, missiles, Marines, and tanks rarely do.
To be blunt, if we are worried about China’s expanding role around the world, why are we relinquishing one of the least expensive instruments we have? It is nothing short of gobsmacking, that quintessentially perfect British term for jaw-hit-the-floor-bounce-back-to-slap-your-face-to-hit-the-floor-again, that we would take this tool off the table if we really think we are in a global competition with China.
Beijing came late to the foreign assistance game. Whatever their horrible choices, China has been more faithful in many ways to their proclaimed position of respecting the sovereign (remember: they define sovereignty as they want so I am not ignorant in any way of their selective interpretation of the concept) choices of other states. China was so backward, had so much poverty to address to keep the natives from turning on the Party, and had little they could seriously offer others for years after the CCP took power. Interestingly, Taibei had better success with aid in the period after diplomatic relations moved back to Beijing in 1979 because they had money they could spend as the economy grew in the ‘80s and ‘90s as well as technical expertise in eathquake and typhone recovery efforts, for example, which states in the Third World needed. Beijing was left out of foreign aid as made so painfully clear as recently as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami recovery efforts or the ability to address China’s own needs after the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
The Belt and Road Initiative, begun by Xi Jinping with a speech in Almaty the spring after coming to power, is investment but targetting those same governments desperate for money what we call humanitarian assistance. Foreign aid is not the same as investment, strictly speaking, but China melds these instruments into using giving money in one form or another to advance its cause—resulting support—in states near and far. Put most basically, foreign aid applies the 'soft power’ of a country rather than the potentially violence of the military. The BRI, you’ll remember, is often cited as one of our greatest concerns as China worms its way into nations too poor or too ignorant to know they are being trapped by nefarious (and some actions definitely fit this word) long-term dependencies with Beijing.
China introduced a twist, however, with the panedemic that I have alluded to in prior columns. Pandemic costs and supply shortages, drove many states to accept the now-demonstrably inferiour Chinese-developed COVID vaccinations, meaning that once the United States satisfied those willing to get their free vaccinations at home, any surplus would have been shared globally by the USAID. Instead, because China sought to emphasise its ‘vaccine diplomacy’, governments in Southeast Asia, Africa, and other portions of the world had a new source—and competitor to the virtual monopoly in gross figures for traditional USAID health assistance over the past sixty years.
Over the past three years, the Chinese medicines have proven woefully inferior but what government in the spring of 2022 as COVID cases globally spiked in what seemed a never ending rise could afford to tell their citizens to wait until Washington might come through? Oxfam or other nations besides China were too insigificant as sources to meet the need so Beijing capitalised on this global catastrophy within its budget.
Citing any fidelity on Chinese aid figures is impossible because Beijing’s numbers are never transparent while using different definitions for the assistance. In 2019, the latest figure I could find, indicated that foreign assistance was probably in the realm of $2.63 billion, far less than the U.S. figure for a general type of soft power.
The choice to cut foreign aid seriously undermines any and all competition with the PRC. The United States has been focusing its power ever more on the military use since the Reagan administration when the dramatic underfunding of non-DoD aspects of foreign policy accelerated. Again, Americans are generous in crisis as I noted early last month about the Turkish earthquake but we don’t see that help as foreign aid, even though it most assuredly is. We simply have never believed that other states cannot pull themselves up with their bootstraps without wasting our precious tax dollars, even if aid is a subtle and non-violent way to achieve our national goals. In this case, foreign aid allows us to go head-to-head with Beijing in places where we cannot otherwise compete such as Africa or the South Pacific Islands, both areas where we fear CCP encroachment and entanglements for these nations. By cutting foreign aid, we are de facto surrending a great deal to China because a strategy to accomplish anything must be multi-faceted, sequenced, and persistent. We are finding that the sheer extravagance of a military to fight around the world is getting harder to sustain, no matter how much we rue that fact.
Foreign assistance has another value, however. It is a message of U.S. interest around the globe. Foreign aid cuts would affect not only our competition with the CCP but also Ukraine, migrants in the Meditarraenan, earthquake victims, and help for states continuing to struggle with some of the institution-building processes, resulting from education programs as an example, for law and order to sustain responsible governance. The public wearies of these activities but they are the hallmark of a superpower, garnering respect by those who receive help. David Remnick of the New Yorker once noted—and I won’t remember it precisely, I fear—that the difference between big states and superpowers is that the latters extend themselves beyond on their national interests to support those of others. China does not do that which we shout from the rooftops but we do. Problem is that we must continue doing so as Beijing is on to our game. I never go to Asia, Europe, or Canada that I don’t hear them marvel at what we do for others with our assistance; yet we want to cut that back substantially.
Republicans are not the only ones who don’t like foreign aid. I am not trying to paperover the hesitancy many of you may have about investing in the future through putting out money for better ties that might not materialise for two decades. We don’t like to pay taxes but we want the benefits that result from the power that big government conveys.
Finally, foreign aid decreasing is laughable as a fix for the $31,000,000,000 federal deficit we are leaving our children. Again, in today’s New York Times was an entire page on the programs we could cut to achieve a balanced budget—which would be balanced this year, not addressing the amount we have already spent. Three slivers of interest.
If we cut equally in Social Security, Meidare/ Medicaid/CHIP/Obamacare, mandated spending(military pensionsm food help, farm subsidies, etc.), Defense, and all of other discretionary spending, that would be 27% in each of those categories.
If we use the same categories, but ‘fence’ defence cuts, it would be 31% cuts in all categories above except Defense which would remain steady (not increased as proposed).
If we fenced Defense, Medicare, or Social Security, the remaining categories would each require a 70% cut to balance the budget this year.
These are neither serious not politically feasible conversations.
As you get tired of me saying, actions create consequences. I was just gobsmacked that one party is unaware that its proposed approach on the much-hated foreign aid is guaranteed to reinforce the enemy we fear most. I leave you with Mick and the boys to give you some muscial appreciation for the dilemma. Mick Jagger and the Stones, 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' FIN
Adva Saldinger, ‘What’s in the U.S. Budget for Foreign Aid?’, Devex.com, Departme21 December 2022, retrieved at https://www.devex.com/news/what-s-in-the-us-budget-for-foreign-aid-104685
Alicia Parlapiano, Margot Sanger-Katz and Josh Katz, ‘The Programs You’d Have to Cut to Actually Balance the Federal Budget’, nytimes.com 9 March 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/06/upshot/balancing-budget-painful-spending-cuts.html?name=styln-biden-budget®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&variant=undefined
Andrew Restuccia, Andrew Duehren, and Annie Linksey, ‘Biden’s Budget Sets Up Battle with GOP, Would Cut Deficits by $3 Trillion over 10 Years’, wsj.com 9 March 2023, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-budget-would-cut-deficits-by-3-trillion-over-10-years-raise-taxes-on-businesses-b5081d03
Carl Hulse and Catie Edmonson, ‘House G.O.P. Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget Showdown’, NewYorkTimes.com, 8 March 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/us/politics/house-republicans-deficit-budget-biden.html?searchResultPosition=3
Department of State, ‘U.S. Foreign Assistance’, https://www.foreignassistance.gov/cd
George Ingram, ‘Op-ed: What Every American Should know about Foreign Aid’, brookings.edu, 2 October 2019, retrieved at https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/what-every-american-should-know-about-u-s-foreign-aid/
—, ‘Op-ed: What Every American Should know about Foreign Aid’, brookings.edu, 15 October 2019, retrieved at https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/what-every-american-should-know-about-us-foreign-aid/
Jacob Kurtzer and Grace Gonzalez, ‘China’s Humanitarian Aid: Cooperation among Competition’, Csis.org, 17 November 2020, retrieved at https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-humanitarian-aid-cooperation-amidst-competition