USAID: Remarks by Ambassador Harriet C. Babbitt, 11/17/99

This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.

Remarks of Ambassador Harriet C. Babbitt, USAID Deputy Administrator
Presentation to Students and Faculty of the Industrial College of Armed Forces (ICAF)
November 17, 1999

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the role of the U.S. Agency for International Development in carrying out our nation's foreign policy. We increasingly work closely with the U.S. military, and we welcome more communication with you, the next generation of American defense leadership.
Let me start with the basics. USAID is an independent government agency, based here in Washington, but working directly in about 75 countries around the world. USAID has a staff of around seven thousand and we administer programs that total about $7 billion per year. We are not part of the Department of State but we receive foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State and we work very closely with State on both our humanitarian and development mandates.
USAID's six main objectives include: promoting economic growth and agricultural development, advancing democracy, delivering humanitarian and post-conflict transition assistance, improving health and population conditions, advancing education and training, and protecting the environment.
Most of our programs are carried out through contracts and grants with U.S.-based private voluntary organizations, like CARE, the International Rescue Committee, or Save the Children. We also work closely with U.S. businesses, universities, international organizations and other government agencies, including the Department of Defense.
USAID's historical goal has been to promote long-term development and economic growth in the developing world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years ago, we have also helped former Soviet states make a transition to democracy and free market economies.
In addition, we have a mandate to provide and coordinate U.S. emergency relief in the aftermath of both natural disasters, such as Hurricane Mitch, and man-made disasters, such as Kosovo and Rwanda. Last year, in the aftermath of Mitch, we worked with the Department of Defense to carry out the biggest food airlift since the Berlin airlift in the late 1940's.
President Kennedy established USAID in 1961, but the U.S. had really pioneered foreign assistance a dozen years earlier, with the Marshall Plan for post-WWII economic recovery in Western Europe.
The Marshall Plan had both humanitarian and pragmatic goals. Our leaders wanted to relieve human suffering and they also wanted to strengthen democratic governments and by doing so, discourage the spread of communism in Western Europe.
President Truman then began the Point Four program, which provided technical assistance on a worldwide basis. It also demonstrated that we were concerned not only with Western Europe, but also with developing nations all over the world.
Our foreign aid of today also has pragmatic interests. Assistance to developing nations is intended to win friends and to develop new markets. If the American economy is to continue to grow, it must develop new markets. These markets will largely be found in the developing world, where four out of five of the world's consumers now live. In helping these countries strengthen their economies, we are also creating new customers and trading partners.
Foreign assistance is also critical in promoting international stability, and in preventing the crises and conflicts that lead to the use of military force.
President Clinton recently made that point when he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars:
"Of course international engagement costs money. But the costliest peace is cheaper than the cheapest war."
The United States is obviously not the only nation which provides foreign aid. In fact, the United States ranks last among industrialized nations in the proportion of our wealth that we devote to supporting development overseas. America cannot lead without resources. But we do not need enormous amounts of resources to lead. Today, the full range of international programs costs only about one penny out of every dollar the Federal government spends. It is a very important penny, however.
Clearly, the investments we recommend are affordable. As Secretary Albright has so aptly stated, "We are talking about one percent of the federal budget. But that one percent may determine 50 percent of the history that is written about our era. And it will affect the lives of 100 percent of the American people."
Despite relatively limited resources, our assistance has contributed to remarkable progress in the developing world in the last thirty years.

The average woman there now gives birth to three children, not six.
Life expectancy has increased from 41 to 63 years.
Infant mortality has been cut by two-thirds.
The literacy rate has doubled.
Smallpox has been eliminated (imagine the miracle of that) and polio is very nearly eliminated.

However, despite this progress, vast human misery still exists throughout the developing world and of course, there are many challenges before us.
Let me quote something that George Orwell, the English political journalist, wrote in 1946:

"No honest person claims that happiness is now a normal condition among human beings, but perhaps it could be made normal, and it is upon this question that all serious political controversy really turns."

I would say that foreign assistance exists because many people in many nations believe that a decent standard of living should be possible, someday, for all the people of the world, and that rich nations like our own have an obligation to work toward that goal.
In our agency's first decades, our emphasis was on agriculture, pubic health, education, and economic development.
In agriculture, in addition to decades of research, and the Food for Peace program, we operate a people to people program that sends thousands of U.S. farmers to assist their counterparts in other lands.
On my recent visit to Russia, I met with the director of a privatized cheese plant who told me how helpful an American dairyman had been to his plant. The American shared, what to us, seemed commonplace ideas for keeping costs down and quality up. Revolutionary stuff for a cheese producer trained in a command economy where the only indicator of success was quantity. The American dairyman didn't speak Russian and the Russians didn't speak English, but they all spoke cheese and they communicated beautifully at that level.
During the decade that is now ending, our work has evolved in new directions and it is in some of these directions, primarily democratic development and humanitarian responses, that our relationship with the Defense Department has grown stronger and ever more important.
The number of democracies around the world has more than doubled in the past twenty years, in part because of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the growth of the global economy. We believe strongly that democracy is the surest path to economic growth and political stability. So just as we have in the past and continue to help nations improve their crops, roads and schools, we have increasingly helped them build democratic institutions and the rule of law.
In 1994, we established our Center for Democracy and Governance and the Office of Transition Initiatives to address many of these development areas.
The Center for Democracy and Governance helps nations hold elections. It supports civil society, the organizations by which citizens come together to improve their lives and influence their government. It also promotes the rule of law, helps countries to strengthen their legislatures and create an independent judiciary, as well as further a free press.
We have seen significant progress toward democracy in many countries. El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa are examples. Throughout Central America, where not many years ago bloody civil wars were fought, we now see political parties, free elections, and a boom in foreign investment.
To be sure, many fledgling democracies are fragile. One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one election create a democracy. In some countries, despite a democratic framework, serious civil rights abuses continue to exist, along with corruption and fears of a return to military control.
In a number of countries, including Indonesia and Nigeria, we are supporting programs to strengthen civilian control over the military, recognizing that this is a critical element of good governance and long-term stability. These programs work to give the civilian side of government, as well as legislatures, political parties, civil society organizations and the media, a better understanding of defense and security issues.
Our civil-military programs complement the Defense Department's global Expanded International Military Education Training program -- E-IMET, as it is called. Whereas our civil-military efforts target the civilian side of the civilian/military relationship, E-IMET helps civilianize the military by educating military personnel on issues ranging from resource management to the justice system to human rights to training for their new soldiers.
USAID is presently very engaged in civil-military work in Indonesia and Nigeria, both critical transition countries. As our programs in this sector expand around the world, there will be increasing opportunities for USAID to coordinate with the Defense Department in this important area of democratic development.
USAID is also increasingly responding to natural and man-made disasters. The end of the Cold War contributed to a major, unexpected problem all across the world: the collapse of nations that no longer have a superpower to keep them afloat. Not long ago, most of our emergency assistance went to victims of natural disasters.
Today we are increasingly responding to man-made disasters. By one estimate, just since the Gulf War, the U.S. has been involved in twenty-seven military operations as a result of ethnic conflicts and failed states. Last year alone, there were 59 declared disasters to which USAID responded, ranging from floods to earthquakes to complex emergencies like Kosovo and East Timor.
In terms of the humanitarian side of our relationship, we have created a Military Liaison Unit within our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance to coordinate closely with military organizations and specifically, with Jim Shear in the Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. It's important that we carefully coordinate our deployments in the field during humanitarian response crises.
The Department of Defense has been instrumental in providing logistical support to many of our response efforts. Most recently, the U.S. military provided aircraft to allow us to deploy search and rescue teams, with only hours notice, to respond to earthquakes in Turkey and Taiwan and to the horrific bombing in Nairobi a year ago.
In Rwanda, USAID and the Department of Defense jointly funded a highly successful demining program. We also helped train lawyers and prosecutors to deal with the many thousands of people who were charged with crimes of genocide. In several countries, we have carried out demobilization programs that offer education and job training to help former combatants return to civilian life, or enter it for the first time.
We at USAID are constantly impressed by the dedication and professionalism of the U.S. military. Let us continue as partners as we pursue our shared goal of a prosperous world at peace.
Thank you. I'll be glad to take your questions.

This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.

Last Updated on: July 12, 2001