[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
STRIKING THE APPROPRIATE BALANCE:
THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S EXPANDING
ROLE IN FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 18, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-9
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, California MIKE PENCE, Indiana
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
GENE GREEN, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, CaliforniaAs TED POE, Texas
of 3/12/09 deg. BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
BARBARA LEE, California
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
David S. Abramowitz, Chief Counsel deg.
Kristin Wells, Deputy Chief Counsel deg.
Alan Makovsky, Senior Professional Staff Member deg.
David Fite, Senior Professional Staff Member deg.
Pearl Alice Marsh, Senior Professional Staff Member deg.
David Killion, Senior Professional Staff Member deg.
Hans Hogrefe, Senior Professional Staff Member deg.
Manpreet Anand, Professional Staff Member deg.
Robin Roizman, Professional Staff Member/Counsel
James Ritchotte, Professional Staff Member deg.
Michael Beard, Professional Staff Member deg.
Cobb Mixter, Professional Staff Member deg.
Amanda Sloat, Professional Staff Member deg.
Peter Quilter, Professional Staff Member deg.
Daniel Silverberg, Counsel deg.
Laura Rush, Professional Staff Member/Security Officer deg.
Genell Brown, Senior Staff Associate/Hearing Coordinator
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
General Michael W. Hagee, USMC, Retired (former Commandant of the
Marine Corps).................................................. 7
Ms. Nancy Lindborg, President, Mercy Corps....................... 17
The Honorable Philip L. Christenson (former Assistant
Administrator, United States Agency for International
Development)................................................... 28
Reuben Brigety, Ph.D., Director of the Sustainable Security
Program, Center for American Progress Action Fund.............. 38
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
General Michael W. Hagee: Prepared statement..................... 9
Ms. Nancy Lindborg: Prepared statement........................... 20
The Honorable Philip L. Christenson: Prepared statement.......... 31
Reuben Brigety, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................ 40
The Honorable Howard L. Berman, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, and Chairman, Committee on Foreign
Affairs: Material submitted for the record..................... 61
The Honorable Dan Burton, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana: Material submitted for the record............ 73
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 86
Hearing minutes.................................................. 87
The Honorable Howard L. Berman: Prepared statement............... 89
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Virginia: Prepared statement................. 91
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Texas: Prepared statement.................... 92
The Honorable Diane E. Watson, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California: Prepared statement.................... 94
The Honorable Michael E. McMahon, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New York: Prepared statement................. 95
STRIKING THE APPROPRIATE BALANCE: THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S EXPANDING
ROLE IN FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2009
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m. in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard L.
Berman, (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Berman. The committee will come to order. Before
the hearing starts, I have a few small housekeeping items. I am
most pleased to welcome back, although apparently not
personally, Lynn Woolsey, who was appointed to the committee
last week. She served as a member of the committee in the last
Congress, and I am sure I speak for all my colleagues when I
say I look forward to working with her again on the committee
this Congress.
So, without objection, she is appointed to serve on the
Africa and Global Health Subcommittee on which there is a
vacancy made by the leave of absence taken by Adam Smith.
Second, in light of the changes in the membership request,
without objection, the size of the Middle East and South Asia
Subcommittee will be conformed to its current membership.
I would like to welcome our distinguished panel of
witnesses today for the third in a series of hearings that the
committee will convene on the foreign assistance reform.
In the last Congress, the full committee held two hearings
addressing this issue, and our subcommittee has held several
others.
One observation that repeatedly came up during those
hearings was the Defense Department's increasing role in
foreign assistance. We have heard the same explanation for this
over and over again: DoD is filling a vacuum left by the State
Department and USAID, which lack the capacity to carry out
their diplomatic and development functions.
There is no doubt that these agencies have been weakened by
a severe shortage of resources. For example, USAID has only
about 2,500 permanent staff today, deg. compared to
4,300 in 1975.
The agency is responsible for overseeing hundreds of
infrastructure projects around the world, yet employs only five
engineers. They have only 29 education specialists to monitor
programs in 87 countries.
Likewise, the State Department lacks resource to fill
critical diplomatic posts. Today, the agency has a 12-percent
vacancy rate in overseas Foreign Service
positions, deg. and an even higher vacancy rate here
in the United States. This hollowing out of the State
Department cripples its ability to aggressively pursue and
protect American interests abroad.
President Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 international affairs
budget request--which I strongly support, and I hope my
colleagues will too--represents an important step forward in
addressing these weaknesses. And for our part, the committee
plans to tackle these troubling capacity issues when we take up
the State Department authorization bill and foreign assistance
reform legislation later this year.
But beyond capacity and resources, there are some deeper
issues I would like to examine today.
Is providing military assistance to a foreign country a
foreign policy decision that should be the primary
responsibility of civilian agencies, with appropriate Defense
Department involvement in implementation? Or is it a national
security mission that should be planned and carried out by the
Pentagon?
Does DoD have such a comparative advantage in performing
certain non-traditional defense missions that it should be
carrying out activities previously reserved for civilian
agencies? And what are the implications of putting a military
face on development and humanitarian activities?
How does this affect the way we are viewed in the world,
and what is the practical impact on USAID's ability to carry
out development projects?
The Department of Defense has always played an important
role in carrying out certain security assistance activities,
particularly implementing military training and military sales
directed by the Department of State. However, DoD's role
significantly expanded in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan,
where they took on a direct role in planning, funding, and
implementing military and police training, and other non-
military activities.
And beyond these two conflicts, the Pentagon began
requesting--and receiving--authority to conduct similar
activities in other parts of the world.
DoD's goal was to address irregular security threats on a
global scale, threats they argued did not fit neatly into
traditional State or Defense Department missions, and thus,
required new tools of engagement. These include global
training deg. and equip authority, also known as the
Section 1206 program; a worldwide stabilization and
reconstruction fund, also known as the Section 1207 program;
and numerous new training programs directly managed by the
Defense Department.
In addition, some existing authorities were expanded,
including the Combatant Commander's Initiative Fund and
Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Assistance.
DoD's argument that these programs are justified by
``military necessity'' should be given significant deference.
Indeed, I can think of many situations in which it might make
sense for military commanders to get involved in activities
that, in peacetime, would be considered foreign assistance.
However, many questions remain regarding the utility and
implications of such programs. For example, on several
occasions this committee has raised concerns about the use of
Section 1206 funds. In some cases it appears they have been
used for programs with only a tenuous link to counterterrorism.
In others, it looks more like a traditional diplomatic tool
designed to curry influence with potential friends.
In the development context, critics have argued the DoD's
role erases the distinction between military personnel and
civilians carrying out similar development activities, ignores
development best practices, such as sustainability and
effectiveness, and puts a military face on inherently civilian
programs. It can also result in waste, fraud, and abuse, which
has been well documented by the Office of the Special Inspector
General for Iraq Reconstruction.
Interestingly, in a letter attached to a report submitted
last week on one of DoD's international programs, the Pentagon
stated,
``Humanitarian assistance activities continue to
provide significant peacetime engagement opportunities
for Combatant Commanders and U.S. military
personnel, deg. while also serving the basic
economic and social needs of people in the countries
supported.''
The question remains: Shouldn't our ``peacetime
engagement'' efforts be carried out by USAID, our Nation's
premier development agency? and--our nation's premier
development agency? deg.And should our military be responsible
for performing the mission of civilian agencies? Do we really
want to ask the men and women who go to war to do the mission
of both Defense and State?
Some have suggested that a national development strategy
would serve as a useful mechanism to help coordinate and
establish appropriate roles for various agencies that provide
foreign assistance. One of our witnesses supports such a
strategy in her written statement.
I believe this hearing today is an opportunity, or
deg.I welcome this hearing today as an opportunity to shed
light on the many important questions surrounding the
military's growing role in foreign assistance.
And I now turn to my friend and ranking member, Ms. Ros-
Lehtinen, for her opening statement.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
There have been successes in international assistance
efforts over the past half-century. The Green Revolution
significantly increased food production. Ongoing efforts have
raised child survival rates around the world, and survival and
prevention of HIV/AIDS is on the rise.
We have helped develop and strengthen independent civil
society, and fostered market-based economies in emerging
democracies.
Nevertheless, I think that many would agree that the
results of decades of foreign aid provided not just by the
United States, but by European states, by the U.N. development
agencies, by the World Bank and other regional development
banks, have been disappointing. In many areas of the world, we
wonder why the significant aid provided has not produced the
outcome we all want: Stable, secure, free, prosperous states.
Analysts and policymakers today refer to failed or failing
states, and in some instances countries in conflict or at risk
falling into conflict, all despite our past and continuing
assistance to those states.
In conflict situations, we must give our military the tools
it needs to help win the support of local populations and fight
threats to U.S. national security. I support the military in
providing urgent humanitarian aid and in providing assistance
to our allies to help fight international narcotrafficking and
global Islamic militants.
However, providing the Defense Department with more of a
role in providing assistance for the development of
impoverished countries raises concerns. It is not because it
might prove difficult to coordinate aid provided by our
military with aid provided by our civilian agencies; but
rather, if the underlying concepts and approaches for
development assistance are faulty, and the strategy is based on
archaic models, then the Defense Department may prove no more
successful at achieving long-term developmental goals than our
civilian agencies have been.
I am therefore not sure that the proposals put forth, such
as creating a new aid program for reconstruction and
stabilization, or those calling for more personnel, or a
significant increase in funding, will prove any more
productive. Some of the programs being implemented by the State
Department's new Reconstruction and Stabilization Office look a
lot like the kind of programs that USAID has had in place or
that the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement has already implemented for many years.
We also should recall that not just the United States, but
many other donor countries and agencies have contributed major
amounts of assistance over the decades, with mixed results.
Providing more funds and more staff may produce some marginal
improvement in the immediate term, but it is questionable
whether this would ensure long-term sustainable progress in
light of the results of the past 50 years.
We understand the desire by the State Department and USAID
to reclaim their dominance and counter the growing engagement
of the Defense Department in providing assistance. But we
should not rush to judgment on such proposals. We first need a
careful assessment of our performance in the last five decades
through our current programs, and under our current structures;
and work toward real and comprehensive reform of our general
personnel and procurement systems.
The majority of our aid programs are operating on the basis
of a post-World War II approach and concepts that have their
roots in the 1950s. If we want to successfully help others,
then such concepts need to be updated. Flawed assumptions about
how to promote the development of impoverished countries need
to be addressed. Otherwise, we may find that we will continue
to provide significant taxpayer funds, while the impoverished
states that we seek to aid continue to fail, regardless of
which of our agencies, military or civilian, we use to provide
that assistance.
I hope that our witnesses today will take a moment to
consider that overriding question while they provide us with
their views on the proper role of the military in providing
assistance overseas.
I would like to give my remaining 1 minute to Congressman
Smith, if I could, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much to my friend, Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen.
Let me just say that I, over the many years that I have
been in Congress, 29 years, have observed that the military's
finest role is often in the emergency situation. I was there to
provide comfort when the Kurds were escaping; I was there 3
days after it happened. I joined friends and some other
colleagues on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln when, without our help
and the helicopters that were bringing emergency aid to those
in Banda Aceh and that tsunami-affected area, many lives would
have been lost.
And then most recently, in Georgia, where the military
stepped up and provided an enormous amount of help, and then
passed the baton in a timely fashion to the NGOs and to the
government in an almost seamless transition. Over the years
that has been the key, I think. And I hope we would never lose
the fact that when it comes to the ability to muster medicines
and food and all of those things that make life possible during
an emergency, no one does it better than the military. And
then, for a more sustainable approach, in comes the NGOs and
those who do it so well.
So I would hope that we would emphasize that going forward.
Obviously, our mission as the military remains, first and
foremost, the defense of our nation. But as you point out in
your statement, General Hagee, there are three pillars of smart
power: Coherent, coordinated, and adequately resourced.
I would add a fourth, and that would be cultural
sensitivity, so that we never impose values that are
antithetical to the local population, except when it comes to
fundamental human rights.
Thank you.
Chairman Berman. What do you----
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. If Mr. Burton could have the remaining
time.
Mr. Burton. I would just like to say, in the 29 seconds
that I have here, that one of my major concerns is one of our
best allies in the world, Israel, is in grave danger over
there. And I hope that the Defense Department will do
everything they can to make sure they have all of the tools
necessary to ward off any kind of an attack from Iran or
anybody else. They are our big ally, and we need to support
them.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
Two of our witnesses have to leave at noon. We may be
interrupted by a couple of votes. Does anybody have a
statement, or can we go right to the witnesses?
[No response.]
Chairman Berman. Oh, great. I will now introduce the
witnesses.
We have a really exceptionally talented panel with us today
to discuss the Defense Department's expanding role in foreign
assistance.
General Michael Hagee served as the 33rd Commandant of the
U.S. Marine Corps from 2003 to 2006. During almost 39 years of
service as a Marine, he commanded at every level, including
platoon, company, battalion, marine expeditionary unit
division, and marine expeditionary force.
He served as executive assistant to the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, executive assistant to the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, the liaison to the Presidential Envoy to
Somalia, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
General Hagee serves on the boards of several U.S. and
international corporations, and as a member of the U.S.
Department of Science Board and the National Security Advisory
Council for the Center for U.S. Global Engagement and the U.S.
Global Leadership Campaign.
Graduating with distinction from the United States Naval
Academy in 1968, he received a commission in the U.S. Marine
Corps as an infantry officer.
He holds a master's degree in electrical
engineering, deg. and a master's degree in National
Security Studies.
Nancy Lindborg is the president of Mercy Corps, an
international relief and development organization that operates
in challenging transitional environments around the globe,
including Iraq, the Sudan, Afghanistan, the Balkans, North
Korea, and tsunami-affected areas of Southern Asia.
Ms. Lindborg currently serves as co-president of the U.S.
Global Leadership Campaign Board, and is a member of the
USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. I am not
quite sure what mandatory foreign aid is, but--and I have not
proposed making it an entitlement program.
She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a
B.A. in English literature. She also holds an M.A. in English
literature from Stanford, and an M.A. in public administration
from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University.
Philip Christenson spent half his career in foreign affairs
with the executive branch, deg. and half with the
House Africa Subcommittee and as staff director of the Senate
Subcommittee on Africa.
In the executive branch, he was appointed a career Foreign
Service Officer in October 1970 at the State Department, and
served overseas at the U.S. Embassies in Vientiane, Laos, and
Brussels, Belgium, and as an assistant administrator at USAID.
In 2006/2007, he served as a senior advisor to the HELP
Commission, counseling on matters relating to African
development and personnel procurement practices of U.S. foreign
aid agencies.
He is a 1971 graduate of Georgetown University's School of
Foreign Service.
Reuben Brigety, II, is the director of the Sustainable
Security Program at the Center for American Progress. His work
focuses on the role of development assistance in U.S. foreign
policy, U.S. national security, human rights, and humanitarian
affairs.
Prior to joining American Progress, he served as a special
assistant in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and
Humanitarian Assistance in USAID, and was a researcher with the
Arms Division of Human Rights Watch.
Before joining Human Rights Watch, Mr. Brigety was an
active-duty U.S. naval officer, and held several staff
positions in the Pentagon and in fleet support units. He is a
distinguished midshipman graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy,
where he earned a B.S. in political science with merit, and
served as the Brigade Commander. He also holds a Ph.D. in
international relations from Cambridge University, England.
Thank you all for being here. And General Hagee, why don't
you start? You can summarize your written testimony, and we
look forward to hearing from you.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL MICHAEL W. HAGEE, USMC, RETIRED (FORMER
COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS)
General Hagee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and
Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you both for inviting me
here to discuss what I think is a very important issue,
especially today.
I assume that my written statement will be submitted for
the record, so I----
Chairman Berman. Yes, all the prepared testimony will be
included in the record of this hearing.
General Hagee. That is great. So I don't intend to
summarize that. I will just say a couple of words here to try
to bring my experience to bear on this particular issue.
It may surprise you that a former Commandant of the Marine
Corps and an individual who was in the military for 43 years, a
Marine almost for 39 years, is here suggesting, arguing,
supporting that we need to increase the resources for our
foreign assistance, and for the State Department. And that
comes from years of experience on the battlefield.
We have the best military in the world. And these young men
and women out there today, they get it. They know there is
something more important than themselves. And they do
unbelievable things every single day. In many cases, things
that they were not trained for, educated for, but they do it.
And I am really quite proud of them, as I know everyone on this
committee is.
But, when you have this great big, wonderful hammer,
everything appears to be a nail when you have a problem. And I
think sometimes that is what we see: Everything out there is a
nail, and we want to use this hammer on it.
We can, as Mr. Smith said, bring peace, stability to a
chaotic situation. He talked about, Mr. Smith talked about
Provide Comfort. I was in Somalia, with General Zinni, who was
also in Provide Comfort.
At that particular point in time, when we came in on the
10th of December, there were several hundred Somalians dying
every, single day. And they were fighting one another. In 14
days--2 weeks--we stopped that. We stopped the dying, we
stopped the fighting. By ``we,'' I mean the United States
military and some of our coalition partners that came in at
that time.
But then they looked to us to provide some assistance and
some development. We had NGOs there on the ground. It was
really uncoordinated, and primarily thanks to General Zinni,
who have learned in Provide Comfort, I think we set up one of
the first CMOCs, Civilian Military Operation Centers, and
started the coordination with the NGOs and other individuals
who were on the ground.
Ambassador Bob Oakley was there with two, two Foreign
Service Officers. So most of the heavy lifting, of course, was
done by the military. At that point in time, I would argue that
it was time to pass it over to civilian leadership, but the
military stood up and did what needed to be done there.
Really, all elements of National Powers need to be brought
to bear, especially in situations that we have today. As I
said, the military can stabilize, but the other elements of
national power, especially our diplomacy, our foreign
assistance, our economic aid, need to be brought to bear in
some of these very sophisticated and complex problems.
I am not sure, in fact I know from my experience on the
battlefield, they do not have the proper resources. And by
resources, I mean the capacity, I mean the capability, I mean
the education. And I hope we are able to talk about, talk about
some of these points during the general question-and-answer
period.
In the area of national security, I can think of no other
issue more important to this nation right now than the one we
are talking about. And that is, how do we properly resource all
the elements of national power, and how are we sure that they
are properly coordinated so they can carry out the goals and
ideas of our National Security Administration.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hagee
follows:]Michael Hagee deg.
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Chairman Berman. Thank you very much, General.
Ms. Lindborg.
STATEMENT OF MS. NANCY LINDBORG, PRESIDENT, MERCY CORPS
Ms. Lindborg. Thank you very much, Chairman Berman, Ranking
Member Ms. deg.Ros-Lehtinen, and members of the
committee.
I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I
think this is a critical topic, and I very much applaud your
leadership in tackling this, and the opening statements, all of
which were very thoughtful in raising exactly the right
questions.
We are at a pivotal political moment today. There is rising
consensus both here in Washington and beyond that we as a
nation have an opportunity and a need to rebalance our
development, diplomacy and defense capacities, and find ways to
apply those to meet the critical foreign policy challenges
ahead.
As you mentioned, Mr. Berman, I am here as the President of
Mercy Corps. We work in some of the toughest environments
around the world, where often the only expatriates on the
ground are NGO workers, journalists, and the military. And I
have seen first-hand the heroic work of the military, as well
as the tasks that they are increasingly pressed to undertake
that are far beyond their mission.
General Hagee is one of many thoughtful military voices
that has been ringing the alarm on this, as well as the very
eloquent statements by Secretary Gates, on the need to create a
better-capacitated, better-resourced civilian partner for the
military as they tackle some of these tough challenges.
I would just join my voice in the conviction that it is
essential that we have a stronger and more vibrant civilian
leadership, and that this is critical to fully reflect who we,
as a nation, want to be in the world. We need to have greater
ability to engage through our civilian tools of diplomacy and
development.
I want to just hit two key points in a summary of my
testimony today. One is the need to rebalance our authorities
and our capacities on the civilian and the military side; and
second is the need to create a structure that enables the best
of both to be fully harnessed.
On the rebalancing side, I think there has been a chronic
under-investment in our civilian capacities. And despite some
important advances that happened under the last administration,
we are still completely hamstrung in our ability to fully
deploy those civilian capacities, as you noted, Mr. Berman.
And I think the result, as you noted, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, is
that we are no longer cutting-edge; we are no longer thinking
and experimenting and doing the best possible work that we need
to do to tackle the challenges of these failed states. And we
see what happens when they are left unattended, as was the
experience with Afghanistan.
The civilian gap was starkly illustrated in the
Afghanistan-Iraq examples, and the military jumped in. A number
of authorities were improvised, including the 1207 and 1206
authorities, and the Commanders Emergency Response Program that
have given significant funding to the military to do what the
civilian side didn't have the capacity to do.
This has led to an increasing role of the military, as we
have seen the combatant commands, and particularly the Africa
command, set up to not only fill gaps, but in fact begin to
overlap where civilian capacity already exists.
We now have the military, our highly trained military
forces, drilling wells in Kenya and Uganda, where there is
significant access and capacity on the civilian side already
present. I would argue this is not a good use of our military
troops, deg. and it represents a profound shift in how
we pursue global assistance. And it is a concern as we look at
further expansion of the military into activities that are best
undertaken by well-resourced civilian development and diplomacy
capacities.
Most importantly, I think it underscores how important it
is to rebuild our front-line civilian capacity to enable USAID
and the State Department to be more vibrant, more forward-
thinking; to come up with innovative new approaches toward
these development challenges; and civilianize some of these
improvised authorities that accord greater resources for the
military to do this work.
As we do this, we need to develop structures that enable
the core competencies and the highest values of both our
civilian and the military capacities to be brought forward.
We talk a lot about a whole-of-government approach, which
is essential to having good coordination. General Hagee noted
the chaos that can exist when you don't have good coordination.
But we need to do so in a way that understands the importance
of differentiating these activities.
Mercy Corps works in many environments where we are side-
by-side with the military. It is essential for our security
that we are differentiated from the military. Our greatest
value, as a non-governmental organization, is, in not being
affiliated with the military, that we can begin to pursue the
longer-term development challenges in these environments that
the military is fundamentally ill-suited for, and our
association with them can, paradoxically, actually increase our
vulnerability to attacks.
As we look at structures, we need to think about how
do deg.you create coordination without subordinating
the longer-term development objectives to the shorter-term
stability and security objectives that the military is
pursuing.
Along those lines, I would suggest that we rethink the
provincial reconstruction teams, which were set up as an
improvisational structure to meet the needs in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and think about how to create security and stability
without creating greater security threats to the civilian side,
and undermine the longer-term development by some of the
counter-insurgency methods that the military has adopted to
meet these new realities.
We can do it. We did it for some years in Iraq. The models
are there to be looked at. I strongly argue we rethink that.
Essentially, the longer-term development challenge that
must be focused on, with all the innovative ways that we need
to consider must be a community-led process. World Bank
President Mr. Zoellick noted, I think quite eloquently, that
this essentially means locally owned. And without that, it is
neither effective nor legitimate in the eyes of the local
communities.
The military, by definition, has its own agenda that it
must pursue. And it is not the appropriate tool for pursuing
that longer-term development agenda.
I would just close with five quick recommendations that are
more fully noted in my testimony, but I strongly support the
need for an increased international affairs budget. I think the
recent budget that was submitted begins the journey that was
started under the last administration, of rebuilding USAID and
the Department of State. And it is critical that we have the
civilian capacities as a partner for the military.
I would urge the development of a national strategy for
global development that articulates the goals, what we need to
accomplish, and funds and invests on the basis of that, not on
the basis of what do we already have.
As a part of that, it is essential that we rebuild USAID,
especially its capacity to operate with greater flexibility and
greater effectiveness in these difficult, complex transitional
environments. It does not currently have the authorities for
longer-term, more flexible funding that the military has with
the CERP. It does not have the ability to have a strong
handshake between its disaster funding and its long-term
development funding.
As I noted earlier, I think the PRTs----
Chairman Berman. You have to--right.
Ms. Lindborg [continuing]. And reinforce civilian
leadership in the new Foreign Affairs Act.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lindborg
follows:]Nancy Lindborg deg.
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Chairman Berman. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms.
Lindborg.
Mr. Christenson.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PHILIP L. CHRISTENSON (FORMER
ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT)
Mr. Christenson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say
that many of us who are interested in foreign assistance have
very great expectations for your leadership and that for your
ranking member. We know you both to be serious legislators who
actually like to get legislation done, and have a record of
accomplishment. And we also know that you both work in a
bipartisan way, and that somehow between now and the end of
this Congress, you are probably going to hammer out something
that is going to pass the Congress in both Houses.
Chairman Berman. Your time will start now. [Laughter.]
Mr. Christenson. I see Mr. Connolly, who was a member of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff the last time we
passed the Foreign Assistance Act.
Chairman Berman. And he has overcome it well.
Mr. Christenson. I want to point out that the argument over
who controls foreign aid has been going on since 1942. The very
first aid agency got started, and 4 days later the warfare
broke out between the State Department, the Pentagon, and the
independent aid agency. We have done this for 60 years. It is
so tiresome. I hope someday we can find some sort of solution
that will put an end to the battling, and get people focused on
doing the job at hand.
On the issue of the militarization and the 20 percent of
development assistance that we report to the Development
Assistance Committee that is now channeled through the
Pentagon: I think it is important that there is a little
terminological confusion here.
DoD can, you know, report as development its money for Iraq
and a whole lot of other things that it is doing in Afghanistan
and Iraq. I think we really have to accept that these are
battlefield activities. They are not development assistance
programs. You really cannot measure them by any standard other
than how much they contribute to bringing these wars to an end.
Frankly, if they are wasteful and they bring the war to the
end, that is not too bad. We have just got to get these wars
ended.
The problem that I think the committee might want to look
at is what I consider the civilianization of the battlefield.
If you talk to State Department and USAID employees, they now
are going out to these battle zones, Iraq and Afghanistan, and
are expected to be part of a military strategy.
It is not so much that DoD is invading traditional State
Department and USAID activities; it is that State and USAID are
being asked to participate and manage part of the Pentagon's
strategy. I would say to you that these are not agencies that
are capable of doing that.
I worked for the Foreign Relations Committee when the
Beirut bombing took place. After the Beirut bombing, we
adopted--and I have to say we, because it was Congress and the
executive branch--a zero-tolerance policy toward employees'
safety. Ambassadors were told they are personally liable, and
their careers will be affected if anybody at the Embassy is
harmed or killed.
So ambassadors have adopted a zero-based approach to
personnel safety. One of the ambassadors, and I don't need to
name names, in one of the war countries announced to a staff
meeting, ``No one dies on my watch.''
If we have that policy, what we end up with is 1,000
Foreign Service employees holed up in a bunker in Baghdad,
living in what one USAID employee calls assisted living. They
have a housing office, gym, and cafeteria in the same compound,
and they are never allowed to leave.
And when they occasionally do leave, they go out with such
massive force of security presence that it is very hard to
believe that we are helping our foreign policy. What was
described to me was a USAID employee in Kabul went out a few
miles out of town to go visit an Afghani contact. He got in the
center seat of the armored vehicle; the rest of the vehicle was
filled with guards, with personal armor, and carrying loaded
automatic weapons. There was a follow-up car that followed
them, equally filled with guards.
They got to the Afghani's house. The USAID employee was
told to stay in the car while they secured the scene. The
guards got out, pointed their weapons at the man and his family
and his dog and his mother. This is no way to win hearts and
minds. We would have been better off staying at home.
So my question is whether we don't need a different type of
USAID activity, where we get young men and women who have
served in the military--they are young, they are in shape, they
are combat-trained, they know how to protect themselves. There
are 1 million Americans who have gone through Iraq or
Afghanistan who came back and went to school; they probably got
their degrees in agronomy and animal science that we need.
Maybe these are the people we ought to turn to, rather than
expecting a group of white-collar, middle-aged office workers
to go out into these war zones. I mean, what we are doing just
doesn't make sense to me.
If you look at what State and USAID are being asked for and
at the State Department's recent recruitments for Afghanistan
and Iraq: Urban planners, somebody to help redesign the bus
routes in some town in Iraq; someone to promote tourism to a
city in Iraq; museum curators.
These aren't State Department functions. Why are we asking
the State Department to provide that kind of personnel to the
PRTs? It doesn't make sense. The tourism promotion job makes
you wonder, what is our strategy here? Because none of it makes
sense.
On the issue of some of these other DoD ``development
projects,'' a lot of them are actually training missions for
our troops. They go to resource-scarce areas such as northern
Kenya or Uganda and drill wells or build houses. This is
training for our troops so that they have experience, you know,
when they are called perhaps someday when they go to Darfur and
set up a peacekeeping mission, or provide logistic support for
peacekeeping.
It is also PR. The military believes very strongly that
this is a good PR program, and that they need military-to-
military relationships.
But these are activities I don't think we should lump into
the development assistance category as this committee and the
development community has traditionally understood them. These
are military programs; they are PR programs.
However, DoD is aggressively going after some of the areas
that were traditionally USAID and State. One of the committee
questions is that how do we assure that State and USAID
continue to be the leading agency and have control.
I worked for the HELP Commission. One of its
recommendations in the commission report, which I strongly urge
on the committee, is to start working with countries to develop
long-term strategies and specific commitments to these
countries about what we are going to do with our foreign aid
program.
If we have a long-term, country-owned strategy, that will
be more useful in protecting the primacy of the State
Department and USAID than anything we can do here in
Washington.
I am saying that State and USAID need to form an alliance
with the government of each country. And if we have a
commitment, I mean it would be a very sound commitment, that we
can plan ahead--that in year 5 we are going to do this, in year
7 we are going to do that.
State and USAID need to strengthen themselves with regard
to their own capacities. USAID in particular needs help. We
have three former administrators of the agency who wrote an
article for Foreign Affairs Magazine in which they flatly said
the agency is dysfunctional. And I believe you, Mr. Chairman,
have said it is broken. Other people have said it is broken. We
are all in agreement with that.
And the question is, how do we fix it? Do we fix it now,
and then think later about expanding its responsibilities? Or
do we try to start by dumping a whole lot of new money and a
whole lot of new personnel, and then try to reform it while
they are trying to absorb all the new responsibilities and
personnel?
My argument is they should fix themselves.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Christenson
follows:]Philip Christenson deg.
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Chairman Berman. Thank you very much, Mr. Christenson.
Dr. Brigety.
STATEMENT OF REUBEN BRIGETY, PH.D., DIRECTOR OF THE SUSTAINABLE
SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND
Mr. Brigety. Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen,
it is my great honor to appear to you this morning. Thank you
very much for inviting me.
The Sustainable Security Program, which I direct at the
Center for American Progress, is based on the premise that
improving the lives of others in the least-developed parts of
the world is an important, and at times a vital, national
interest of the United States. As such, reforming the
mechanisms of our Government to perform this mission is of the
utmost urgency.
The Defense Department's expanding role in foreign
assistance comes from the recognition of two important
developments. The first is that conventional or kinetic
military operations are often insufficient to achieve the
strategic objectives of a given war. The conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan have retaught the military that you can win the war
through decisive military operations, but you cannot
necessarily win the peace that way.
The second is that there is great value in preventing
conflicts, rather than reacting to them. Investing in a
country's development today can prevent it from becoming a
battlefield tomorrow.
As such, the military is increasingly using non-kinetic
instruments of influence in the form of foreign assistance to
promote stability and prevent conflicts around the world.
Now, when considering the developmental impact of foreign
assistance activities conducted by the military, it is helpful
to think about two types of assistance: Fundamental and
instrumental.
Fundamental assistance sees improving the lives of
beneficiaries as an end in and of itself. Whether it is helping
farmers to improve their irrigation techniques in Mali, or
supporting primary education in Jamaica, these programs can
have significant development impact, but little strategic value
to the United States.
Thus, the success of fundamental assistance can be measured
solely by the extent to which it improves the lives of the
recipients.
Instrumental assistance tries to improve the lives of
beneficiaries as a means to some other tactical or strategic
end. Whether they are quick-impact projects to employ
disaffected youth in Sadr City, Iraq, or governance initiatives
in Mindanao, Philippines to fight the Abu Sayyaf Islamic
insurgency, such activities are designed specifically to
advance U.S. security interests. Yet they can only be
successful if two things happen.
First, they must actually improve the lives of
beneficiaries. And second, those improvements must be causally
linked to the achievement of discrete American policy
objectives.
It is imperative that we recognize the value in doing both
fundamental and instrumental assistance effectively. We should
ensure that our civilian institutions are properly resourced
and configured to perform both of those missions. To that end,
there are tasks which should be undertaken in the near term to
strengthen the State Department and USAID in this regard.
First, there should be an easing of the legal restrictions
on USAID mission directors in the field that critically limit
their ability to respond flexibly to changing conditions on the
ground, particularly in support of U.S. Government or U.S.
military strategic objectives.
Second, there should be an immediate increase in the number
of USAID Foreign Service Officers and development
professionals. This growth in the officer corps should provide
enough personnel to place one what I call tactical development
advisor with every deployable brigade combat team in the U.S.
Army, and every Marine Corps expeditionary unit in the U.S.
Marine Corps. And it should also be enough to support the needs
of every regional combatant command in the numbers required.
Third, USAID and State Department personnel must truly be
worldwide-deployable, and be trained to operate in
expeditionary, semi-permissive, and non-permissive environments
as a matter of course, as a matter of their training.
And finally, the U.S. Government should write and
promulgate a national strategy for global development derived
from the national security strategy, to guide the use of
development assistance in support of American foreign policy,
and to coordinate the foreign assistance activities of all U.S.
Government agencies abroad.
In conclusion, let me say that development assistance is
not just a moral good or a matter of enlightened self-interest.
It is in our vital national interest. There is no greater
evidence of this than the military's increasing involvement in
this sphere. Yet our own political culture and legal processes
have not yet caught up to this reality on the ground.
Our Government has a clear stake in the successful
performance of fundamental and instrumental assistance, and I
hope this hearing will be a meaningful step to empower our
agencies to be effective in this regard.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brigety
follows:]Reuben Brigety deg.
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Chairman Berman. Well, thank all of you very much for
your, deg.your contribution today. And I will start
the questioning by yielding myself 5 minutes, which
unfortunately limits both my question and your answer to that
time period. But I need it.
I want to raise the issue that Mr. Christenson sort of
addressed specifically. The issue, put aside for a second the
issue of who is leading development assistance in peaceful
environments, and let us turn to the non-permissive
environment, which I think is a euphemism for ``scary.''
And yesterday I met with a group that I think started in
Los Angeles. It is called the International Medical Corps. I
didn't know much about them. And this is a group of people
using lots of local hires, dedicated particularly to building
the healthcare capacity in these transitional and very
difficult areas, including the areas in eastern and southern
Afghanistan right near the border, and a number of other
conflict areas. And these are not what I would call peaceful
environments.
But they make the case that because they are focused on
doing what the community needs, and finding out the community's
desires in terms of healthcare delivery systems and
vaccinations and medical attention, and focused on capacity;
and because they do it, that if they were part of the military,
if they were uniformed or had uniformed security around, they
would become the object of attack much more than they are now.
They are quite able to function in these areas in part because
they are--even though they are all recognized as an American-
based NGO with a specific mission, it is their arm's length
from the military that allows them to function, and function
well.
You talked about the problem in these environments. I am
curious, I guess my first question is, to the extent--Mr.
Christenson, you made a point of discussing this--I am curious
about the General's reaction and the other witnesses' reaction
to that. Maybe I will just leave it to the next 2\1/2\ minutes
for you to talk about this whole question of the role of the
civilian agencies and their contractees working in these kinds
of environments.
General Hagee. I would be happy to start, Mr. Chairman.
First off, I think the role that these agencies play is
absolutely critical. I have seen it time and time again. And I
will go back to the Somalia example.
The NGOs and most of these individuals were 19, 20, 21,
under 25 years old, out there in, as you said, a very scary
environment, but doing unbelievably good work. And as they told
us, we can't do it if we are aligned with you. And to be quite
honest, we understood that.
But what we were able to work out, just one example, is
instead of them using Somalis for their own security, we said
well, we are going to be running a convoy from town X to town
Y. And I know you can't go with us. But if you happen to be in
the same area as we are traveling, then that would be fine, and
we wouldn't be opposed to that.
And when we kicked off the convoy, not very far behind
there were a couple of NGOs tagging along with us. They were
not associated with us, which we understood, but we were able
to provide that security if anything happened.
I think trying to militarize--my term--these individuals
would be the wrong thing to do.
Chairman Berman. Ms. Lindborg?
Ms. Lindborg. Yes, thank you. Mr. Berman, I think you
captured exactly the important ways in which NGOs can operate
in these non-permissive environments.
And what Mr. Christenson was yearningly describing as a
needed function actually already exists with NGOs who do go out
with local team members, outside the wire, without arms, able
to sit down, know the local customs, drink tea and gain both
community acceptance and protection based on the knowledge that
the communities have that we are there to advance projects in
their interest.
Mercy Corps has worked since 2003 in Iraq unarmed, outside
the wire, with support from USAID from the beginning, a
wonderful partner in Col. Grabowski in al Kut, who enabled us
to operate very separately. He never attempted to make it a
joint effort. We found ways to coordinate and to communicate.
And we were able to move forward community infrastructure
projects in ways in which communities could envision and invest
in their own future.
Thank you.
Chairman Berman. My time has expired. The ranking member,
the gentlelady from Florida, recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for the excellent testimony to each of our witnesses.
I wanted to ask about micro-managing other countries
through our programs. According to one report, after the State
Department created its Office of the Coordinator for
Reconstruction and Development, that office published a list of
its aims, and in the course of that, listed 1,179 steps that
the agency would take to carry out stabilization and
reconstruction efforts in foreign countries.
Those steps included: Maintaining positive relations with
the indigenous population; assessing the need for prosthetic
limbs in the population; improving drainage during road
construction to reduce excessive run-offs; et cetera. It was a
long list.
And if that report was accurate, doesn't it seem to
demonstrate that the current programs for stabilization and
reconstruction actually envision a level of micro-management in
foreign societies and governments and economies that could
result in further financial bottomless pits for the American
taxpayer? I would be interested in knowing your comments.
Mr. Brigety. Congresswoman, thank you very much for the
question.
Let me say two things quickly. First of all, with regard to
stabilization and the foreign assistance that is required for
it.
We are still relatively new at trying to understand the
best doctrine to do this sort of mission. But what I can say is
that the nature of warfare, the nature of our understanding of
warfare has changed so dramatically, that the mission will not
go away, even as we are trying to figure out how best to do it.
On the specific question you raised with regard to micro-
management. Tomorrow the Center for American Progress is going
to be releasing, which we are calling ``Swords and
Plowshares,'' which essentially looks at the development piece
of whatever our Afghanistan strategy is going to be. And the
argument, one of the arguments we make in that is that it is
actually very quite important to do what we call catalytic
development.
So as opposed to bringing in large numbers of outside
Western service providers, the question is, how can you think
about using development resources very, very strategically? So
that you actually engage the local population, engage the local
government, to begin to develop their own responses to these
sorts of issues.
Now, this is something that happens in other contexts, with
much more, much more stable development contexts that our
development NGO partners can talk about in detail.
The question is how do you do that in a way, when you are
operating in an insecure and non-permissive environment, and do
it in a way that actually links to our strategic objectives.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I look forward to seeing that report. I
am going to interrupt you just in case anyone else would like
to comment.
Ms. Lindborg. I would make a quick comment, in that I think
it is essential that we equip USAID and other civilian parts of
the government with the kind of flexibility that the military
commanders have right now, to do more contextually appropriate,
fast-moving, flexible work in the field.
To have a myriad of chains and directives coming from
Washington fundamentally undercuts their ability to be
effective. And as we look forward, that should be a cornerstone
of the reform process.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Mr. Christenson?
Mr. Christenson. I think we have to start by working on
coming up with a definition of where our authority stops in
another country's domestic affairs.
We have become enormously intrusive. After World War II
there were things that we just expected the Germans to do on
their own, but nowadays we go in and every single thing becomes
a matter of our interest.
There is a great line by George Ball, who was Under
Secretary of State under Kennedy. There was a coup in Zanzibar,
and the State Department sent him a memo on the subject. He
wrote back, ``God watches every sparrow that falls. I do not
see why we should compete in His league.''
I think on some of these projects that we are doing, we are
just way too involved at the micro level. We have got to step
back and let them govern themselves.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
The gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee, is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and the
ranking member. These have been a very important series of
hearings.
Col. Hagee, I spent a lot of early time in Afghanistan as
the war there began, and interacted in many parts of
Afghanistan, watching our military be very effective in school-
building. In fact, one CODEL that I was on brought a large
amount of schoolbooks from youngsters who collected
schoolbooks. And we were interacting with what I think is your
provisional reconstruction teams, the PRTs I think, those kinds
of names. So I frankly believe that there is an appropriate
balance to the utilization of the military.
However, as you well know in the contrast, you know the
outrage of Members of Congress when they heard about stacks of
dollars that were stacked up or piled up in blocks, going out
into Iraq. And how did $12 million, or I think it was $12,000,
get lost.
So there is sort of an accountability, not pointing the
finger, but I think I am coming down on the idea of balance,
with a higher reference to how NGOs and USAID.
And I will pose a question to you, but I am going to go to
my, to Ms. Lindborg and Dr. Brigety, please, if you would.
Explore for me again the flexibility that you are asking
for USAID, which I frankly very much agree with. They need to
be able to produce. And sometimes the regulatory maze that we
have for USAID keeps them from actually producing in that
village, or with that warlord, if they are enacting.
Tell me what you mean when you say give them greater
flexibility, as well. Now, I am talking to you, Dr. Lindborg.
Not Dr. Lindborg--yes, Ms. Nancy Lindborg, excuse me.
Ms. Lindborg. Yes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. But you can accept Doctor, that is all
right.
Ms. Lindborg. Well, thank you for the Doctor.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And then I will go to Dr. Brigety. Thank
you.
Ms. Lindborg. You know what we often see in the field is
that USAID is constrained by earmarks and by authorities that
are, and decisions that are made here in Washington, without
affording the mission directors the flexibility to make
decisions that are driven by fast-moving, often non-permissive
environments.
They are also highly constrained in their ability to leave
their compound. And I think there is an interesting discussion
enabling civilian government folks to move about more freely,
without being confined by shooters and armors.
However----
Ms. Jackson Lee. That means their escorts? You are telling
them to be unescorted?
Ms. Lindborg. It is a delicate balance between security and
over-burdening our civilian government people with too many
escorts.
The NGOs, of course, have the great flexibility of being
able to move about without shooters, without armor; and an
ability to work with the communities to develop those more
fundamental development plans and approaches.
And you often don't know what will be the most effective
until you are in it. And so to----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Ms. Lindborg [continuing]. Have that pre-wired from
Washington constrains your ability to be successful.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I would argue that you make a valid point,
but I would like to give us flexibility, as well. But I would
like to increase the flexible money versus the non-flexible.
There are some valuable purposes for some of the designated
monies.
Dr. Brigety, let me try to get what you think is the
appropriate ratio. How much more should we give? Look at the
crisis in Darfur where al-Bashir is sending people out. I can
tell you, being in the camps of Sudan, sitting on the ground in
Darfur in those camps, those NGOs were a lifeline.
How do we reinforce them and give them that flexible, NGOs
and USAID?
Mr. Brigety. Well, ma'am, let me sort of try to address the
flexibility question from a slightly different perspective with
a story very quickly, if I may.
This past November, a young Marine Corps Captain came to
see me. He was assigned to the U.S. Africa Command. And he was
given several hundred thousand dollars, and said look, we have
to spend this money by the end of the fiscal year. I want you
to fly to N'Djamena, to Chad, and go find some projects,
humanitarian projects to spend this on. You have 3 weeks to do
it.
Now, he is a very dedicated young Marine. He is a very
smart young man. He was an infantry officer, younger than I by
a lot. And the point is we have a legal system which entrusts
young military officers with that kind of flexibility; and yet,
we have USAID mission directors with masters and Ph.D.s, who
have 20 or 25 years or more experience, who cannot deviate more
than a few thousand dollars lest they go to jail. And that
makes them ineffective partners with regard to the military.
Now, I see that I am running out of time. So with regard to
the larger question of ratios, I can't speak to that with any
specificity. It really depends on the particular----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Do you think we should increase the monies
to go into USAID and have flexibility?
Mr. Brigety. There is no question. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Increase money, get more flexibility.
Mr. Brigety. Yes, ma'am, absolutely.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. My time has expired.
I thank the General for his service. Thank you.
Chairman Berman. The gentlelady's time has expired.
The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Smith, is recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank our distinguished panel for excellent testimony.
General Hagee, you mentioned defense, diplomacy and
development, the three smart power pillars. As I said earlier,
the fourth power principle I think has to be profound respect
for the indigenous, the life-affirming indigenous cultural
values, including respect for the sanctity of human life,
especially unborn children and their mothers. We need to affirm
them both. And as we build out and grow our capabilities, I am
concerned that that may not be the case.
When President Obama reversed the Mexico City policy a few
weeks ago, he unleashed $0.5 billion to promote, lobby, and
perform abortions on demand in the developing world. That
action puts millions of innocent babies, mostly babies of
color, at risk of death; and in no way, in no way can be
construed as development.
I am concerned that there could be a backlash, especially
as more high-profile efforts are underway. The military
obviously in their uniform will be out working side by side
with NGOs. NGOs have always been an extension of our U.S.
foreign policy, but very often they are integrated in a way
that people don't necessarily know who is footing the bill. It
will be very clear in this situation.
And I think we run the risk of being the ugly American. I
know many people in Africa, many politicians, many people in
the health departments who want both mother and baby protected,
and not one at the expense of the other.
Secondly, what thought has been given--you might want to
answer this--to integrating the Veterans Affairs Committee,
Veterans Affairs Administration, who has unbelievable expertise
in PTSD, poly-trauma, and issues like prosthetic limbs? I
remember when the FMLN, with their foot-taker-offer mines in
the early eighties, hurt so many children. And I was there. The
VA came in and helped fit many of those young children with
prosthetic limbs, especially legs and lower extremities.
Is the VA part of this? Because they do have an expertise
that is very valuable.
And finally, the concept of more fully integrating military
assets with diplomacy and development, I started out earlier
talking about emergency versus sustainable. I think you are too
modest when you say the military instrument can create
conditions of security to allow the others to do their job.
But when it comes to rapid response, no one does it better
than the military. I love the NGOs, but in terms of getting
there with the right kind of expertise, for safe water, for
helping people who are really on life support, no one does it
better than the military. So I hope that is being integrated,
as well.
General Hagee. Mr. Smith, could I ask for a clarification
on your question? I want to be sure I use my time appropriately
here, exactly what I should address.
Mr. Smith. How robust is the idea of integrating the VA,
including military doctors and the Medical Corps, in the USAID
plan and the plan for healthcare, in such a way that if
something happens, individuals from the U.S. military can be
rapidly deployed?
Like in Sri Lanka. I was there when there were people in
the military from my own district that were doing clean water
projects, without which people would have gotten contaminated
water and gotten very sick. And I just hope that is being fully
integrated.
Because again, Provide Comfort. I saw Kurds with American
military jackets, camouflage. Without that, the exposure to the
elements would have taken many of those individuals. They would
have died had it not been for our military. There was about a
month lead time, and after that, the baton was very effectively
handed over to the NGOs, who did a great job thereafter.
General Hagee. Well, I would say that, at least it has been
my experience, that you are right. The United States military
is the best as far as putting expeditionary forces quickly into
a crisis site, whether it is a tsunami in Indonesia or the
earthquake in Pakistan.
And I have never seen a crowded battlefield. So from a
commander's standpoint, I would say you all come. Whether it is
the VA, whether it is the Agricultural Department, whether it
is the Commerce Department. If you have got the capability and
can provide some help here, then there is room for you at this
particular situation.
I would like to comment on the NGOs, though. As I said, I
have been in East Timor, I have been in Somalia, I have been in
some of the real garden spots of the world. And it has always
amazed me. We come flying in on a helicopter; we have got
significant capability; and there is normally an NGO already
there on the ground, trying to do the work.
So I continually tip my hat to these NGOs, primarily young
men and women who are out there trying to do the right thing.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired. I
am going to yield myself 15 seconds, just to assure the
gentleman from New Jersey, no one is suggesting that for
purposes of logistical and lift capacity, that anyone can
deliver humanitarian assistance after these disasters, like the
U.S. military. Provide comfort, many other situations, we have
all seen this. That is not an issue of debate here, I don't
think.
And I do want to welcome the presence of someone on the
Armed Services Committee who has been very active on this issue
of foreign assistance, and how it is being delivered, and in
what situations: The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Snyder. It is
good to have you here.
And I now recognize the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Woolsey, for 5 minutes. And welcome back.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I understand
before I got here, you said some nice words. Thank you for
those words. And I am delighted to be back in this seat.
Thank you, witnesses. What a great panel you are.
I have introduced, and am reintroducing, legislation called
Smart Security, with a partnership of women, Action for New
Directions, WAND, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and
National Priorities Project, which includes the Friends
Committee and Church Women United. So you can imagine what,
without me saying any more, what this is all about. It is all
about war being the very last option for any country,
particularly our own. And instead, investing and focusing on
prevention, diplomacy, reconciliation, and reconstruction. And
it is much more than that, but I am not going to go into that
any further. I just want to give you a sense of it.
But because of that, we know that we need to increase the
international affairs budget in order to get our goals at least
brought forward. So in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in
our alternative progressive budget, which will come to the
floor, actually pluses up it is called Section 150, the
International Affairs Budget, by even more than the President
is asking.
And I am part of a group that is working with our Chairman
Berman in order to get Members of Congress to accept no less
than what the President is asking for this section of our
budget.
So I am going to ask General Hagee, I have a question for
you, then I have a question for Mr. Christenson. I am going to
ask both questions, and then you can answer them. We have 2
minutes left.
In plusing up the international affairs budget, do you
believe we need to offset it by decreasing the Department of
Defense budget? Do you see that as the tradeoff, if we take
those functions out of Defense and give them, put them where
they need to be?
And Mr. Christenson, what do you think about targeting
funds in the international affairs budget so that it goes for
humanitarian, diplomatic, rebuilding, education, and prevents
any expenditures in weapons of, military weapons for these
countries, nations that we invest in?
Starting with you, Mr. Hagee, General Hagee.
General Hagee. On the question, I wish I was smart enough
to be able to answer that question as to how we should balance,
how we should balance that.
One thing I am absolutely convinced of is that our foreign
aid and our diplomacy is under-resourced. These are questions
of significant national importance. And today, a couple million
dollars doesn't sound like very much when we are talking about
trillions of dollars. But to me, the amount of money that we
are really talking about is insignificant when you look at the
issue that we are facing.
So to me, it is really quite simple to provide the
appropriate resources for our Diplomatic Corps and for foreign
assistance people.
Ms. Woolsey. Mr. Christenson? You look concerned.
Mr. Christenson. On the issue of spending, I go to Africa,
and I come back just so feeling guilty for having collected a
consulting fee that I often don't bill for all the days I
worked.
If we can do things where we actually target money for
those people in the villages, paying teachers, providing books,
buying medicines, paying the nurses, training more nurses and
doctors, I think that is just wonderful.
With regard to military, this is just an Africa answer. I
have yet to see an African country, other than maybe Botswana
or South Africa, that actually benefitted from having an army.
When I think of African armies, I think of guys who set up the
roadblocks on Friday afternoon to shake down the passersby so
they could get drunk on the weekends.
What Africans need is a police force. They need an ability
to enforce the law. But they don't need an army.
Ms. Woolsey. Thank you.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Burton, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, one of the
things that is most important in foreign policy is to have a
good image of the United States. And if you, if you make a
severe mistake and the enemy can profit from it, they will.
And back in 2006, General, we had a very difficult
situation occur in Haditha, Iraq. And one of my colleagues said
that the Marines that were involved were cold-blooded killers.
And three of those have been found innocent. One case is still
pending, and I think there is some litigation taking place.
You met with our colleague and talked to him about that.
And I would like to know how the conversation went, and whether
or not you reinforced what he said, or what took place. Because
our enemies, Iran and others, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and
Aljazeera, they played that up big time. And they made it look
like the United States was a bunch of killers and murderers and
doing horrible things, when in fact this was not the case.
And I would like to know, first of all, did you reinforce
what our colleague said? And number two, what do you think we
ought to do in the future to make sure we don't have these
sorts of things occur?
I mean, before we judge somebody guilty, we should have all
the facts. And so I would like to have your answer on that.
General Hagee. When I became aware of the incident in
Haditha, I came over and briefed the so-called Big Eight, the
chairman and the ranking member of the Armed Services
Committee, and the Appropriations Committee that looks at
defense. And I told them what I knew, which was not very much,
and that was essentially that 24 Iraqis had been killed after
an IED had gone off; and that it included women and children.
Other than that, we didn't know very much; that we had
started an investigation. And I promised each one of them that
we would investigate that very carefully, both actually what
happened on the ground that night during combat, and also what
happened as far as the chain of command is concerned. And if
anyone did anything legally wrong or morally wrong, they would
be held accountable. And that is what I told each one of those
individuals.
And in fact, we did that. We spent, it was much longer than
I desired. It took almost 6 months, but we went down every
email, every trail, to ensure that we understood, to the best
of our ability, what occurred, both up the chain of command and
on the ground.
There were some, and the end result, there were some senior
Marine officers who in fact were disciplined. And there were,
as you indicated, there were other Marines, some senior, who
have been charged, and there is still one pending.
I can tell you that Marines were operating, at least a few
weeks ago, in Haditha. We were able to explain to them,
apologize for what we did. Sometimes things like that happen.
You ask how can we prevent that from happening. I don't think--
we try hard, but we cannot prevent, on the battlefield, things
like that from happening.
The main point I want to make is we held individuals
accountable, we went back and we talked with the people, and we
are back operating there.
Mr. Burton. Well, I guess the point I would like to make,
General, and I was hoping you would reinforce this; and that
is, we believe in this country that you are innocent until
proven guilty. And four of the people that are fighting for our
country in a war zone, and they are accused of being cold-
blooded killers, is just wrong. Especially when you find out
later on that three of them were not guilty, and one of them,
and the other one may not be guilty, as well.
And so I just was hoping that----
General Hagee. I can assure you, Mr. Burton, that in the
Marine Corps, that is exactly what happened. We never said a
thing until after the court martials were over, and the verdict
was----
Mr. Burton. You didn't reinforce anything that was said by
our colleague.
General Hagee. No, sir.
Mr. Burton. Well, but you would agree that in the future,
we shouldn't condemn somebody in a war zone of a war crime
unless it has been proven.
General Hagee. I think we always need to look at it.
Whenever there is a report, we always need to investigate that
report.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, General. I yield back the balance of
my time.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would ask
unanimous consent to enter my opening statement into the
record.
Chairman Berman. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. Connolly. And I want to say hello, especially to my
former colleague, Phil Christenson. Good to see you again,
Phil, in our respective roles. And I really appreciate what you
had to say this morning.
I have got two questions. The first is, I just got back
from Afghanistan a couple weeks ago. And CERP funding for the
military in Afghanistan, according to the auditors, a few years
ago was $26 million. The amount for the budget this year is
$977 million.
Now, we talked about whether, you know, the appropriate
role of the military in development assistance, that would make
it one of the largest bilateral aid programs in the world. All
being run by the military, all being run sort of on the cusp.
I understand the need to get some flexibility to local
commanders on the ground to be able to try to win hearts and
minds, but $977 million is many orders of magnitude greater
than that, and raises very serious questions about what could
go wrong with that. Let alone, does it fit into any context
that makes sense in terms of development profile for
Afghanistan?
General Hagee, your comments on that challenge?
General Hagee. Am I still on? I am still on.
I believe, as my colleagues here have all testified, that
we need to have the flexibility. The individuals on the ground
need to have that flexibility to help where help is needed. And
primarily that comes in the source of money.
How that should be divided, especially when you have a
Chief of Mission there, I think is something that should, in
fact, be discussed.
When I was operating, and if I had funds, before I would
expend those funds, I would always, if there was a Chief of
Mission, if there was an ambassador, I would always discuss
that with him. How should these funds be expended?
I don't know whether that is being done over there or not.
I would assume that it would be. I was unaware of that very,
very large figure. It is a large figure.
I don't have a good answer for that, except that I believe
that our diplomats and our foreign assistance individuals need
the same flexibility that the military has. How that should be
divided, someone smarter than I am is going to have to figure
that out.
Mr. Connolly. Ms. Lindborg.
Ms. Lindborg. Thank you. I think you raise a critically
important point. And that is, fundamentally, CERP programs are
for different purposes than longer-term development. And the
danger is that they, in fact, can undercut the objectives and
the processes of longer-term development. And we have seen that
over and over again.
If you build a school through your CERP funds, often it
isn't integrated into local community priorities, it isn't
resourced through teachers through the longer-term provision of
supplies, et cetera, et cetera.
It is important that there is a civilian-led structure that
clarifies the development priorities that are not subordinated
to the short-term objectives accomplished by CERP.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Real quickly, Phil or Dr. Brigety?
Mr. Brigety. Sir, I can't speak to the specific number, but
I think the size of that number suggests two things.
The first is that the military clearly understands that
reconstruction activities are vital to the achievement of their
objectives in Afghanistan.
And the second is that the CERP mechanism is likely the
most flexible, certainly amongst the most flexible, if not the
most flexible mechanism to get money to do the reconstruction
mission in Afghanistan.
And that suggests that are civilian processes for moving
money and for strategizing how that money is spent in the
context of a crucial foreign policy priority--that is,
stabilizing Afghanistan--is flawed, profoundly flawed, and it
should be fixed.
Mr. Connolly. It also raises questions about whether the
military has the confidence to be running that massive an USAID
program, frankly. I mean, that is not your mission.
Real quickly, Secretary Gates has characterized the global
war on terror as a global irregular campaign. What is the
proper role for the State Department and USAID in that
irregular campaign? Phil?
Mr. Christenson. Well, I don't necessarily agree with
Secretary Gates. That is my first problem in answering the
question. But I think the State Department needs to be
providing the real, solid, in-depth expertise about foreign
societies and cultures and to make sure that that expertise is
injected into the policy decision making here in Washington.
I personally believe we don't know what we are doing in
some of these countries. And we need to.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Fortenberry, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for
joining us today. I appreciate your insights.
There is a photo from the Iraq War, perhaps you have seen
it. It is a soldier sitting cross-legged underneath the shadow
of a tank, with a variety of military operations going on
behind him. And across his lap is a small child. And I think in
that photo, we right there most poignantly capture the dynamic
of what we are talking about here today.
And in that regard, Mr. Brigety, you had made some
comments, if I understood them correctly, about embedding,
effectively embedding Foreign Service Officers into military
units.
Mr. Christenson, you have the insight as to some of the
mechanics of how this is now working, where you have a lot of
white-collar workers simply in a bunker, and perhaps not being
leveraged as effectively as it could.
With this new model, though, I would like to unpack that
further. How do you envision the skill sets and expertise of a
Foreign Service Officer being embedded into a military unit? Or
should another, could an alternative model be set up, where you
have a military officer or a trained military personnel, who in
effect is a Foreign Service Officer, or has the same skill set,
and would work more seamlessly with the State Department
mission, in the midst of combat and difficult situations,
knowing full well what the expectation is.The
following changed from General Hagee by staff associate deg.
Mr. Brigety. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for that
question. Let me try to answer it quickly with a quick
anecdote.
I talked with a Marine Corps second lieutenant in 2005,
January 2005. He fought in the second battle of Fallujah
November 2004, and he won a Silver Star in that battle for
gallantry.
And someone asked him what else do you wish you had on that
battlefield? Expecting him to say better body armor or better
air support. And he said, ``You know what I really wished I
had? I really wished I had a Peace Corps on steroids.'' Meaning
I really wish I had somebody there on the tactical level who
could help me with all the vast sort of humanitarian issues I
had to deal with.
Here is how I think it could work. We already send senior
Foreign Service Officers as senior development advisors to each
of the geographic combatant commands. They are not unlike
political advisors or POLADs, senior ambassadors.
We can certainly, if we have the right numbers, have much
more junior-level development officers who are broadly educated
in things like community development, basic healthcare or
whatnot, that are attached to a brigade level and a new-level
team, for two reasons.
One, so that young second lieutenant or young captain has a
ready-made resource at hand that he can ask about how do I go
about engaging the community in these sorts of stabilization
reconstruction operations.
And two, so you have someone who could help train these
military units in garrison back here in the States, before they
deploy.
DoD Directive 3000.05 explicitly places stabilization and
reconstruction at the core mission of the Defense Department,
alongside combat operations. And yet we don't have the
infrastructure to help that, the civilian infrastructure
embedded in the teams to help them perform that mission. And we
should.
Mr. Fortenberry. General?
General Hagee. Could I add a little bit on that?
Mr. Fortenberry. Sure.
General Hagee. First off, I think it is a good model. But
meeting on the battlefield is not the place that you should
meet.
I was the Commanding General of the first Marine
expeditionary force before the war responsible for going up.
And I requested a State Department individual to come and help
us with the planning. We could not get such an individual. They
need to be an integral part of that team.
Mr. Fortenberry. Which commands, which demands a new model
for integration. Either a military officer that is cross-
trained in Foreign Service expertise, or vice-versa, where a
Foreign Service Officer is going to be in harm's way
potentially, not necessarily carrying a rifle on the front
lines. Or effectively integrated, if we are going to pursue
this direction.
General Hagee. In a pure system, sir, I would argue that it
should be a State Department individual.
And one reason why, if I could, Ambassador Bob Oakley and I
worked together in Somalia. He was a Foreign Service Officer, a
young Foreign Service Officer in Vietnam, when he was told to
write the Vietnamese Constitution. And he wrote the Vietnamese
Constitution. It sounded an awful lot like ours.
He brought that to Somalia. And when he was told to write
the Somali Constitution, he said no, I am not; they have to
write it.
An individual who has served most of his time in the
military doesn't bring that breadth of experience.
Mr. Fortenberry. Ms. Lindborg?
Ms. Lindborg. I would just add that for non-permissive
environment-assistance activities, you need to have models that
allow for differentiation. You need to have models that enable
your NGOs and some of your civilian aid workers to not be
associated with the military on the ground.
And that, especially to jump-start the longer-term
development which can and must begin as early as possible, it
cannot be connected to a military force.
Mr. Fortenberry. Well, it might be common objectives, but
separate distinct roles here. So, thank you.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Ellison, is recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Ellison. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Brigety, thank you for your words, and those of
everyone on the panel. I want to start with you, because I
represent the City of Minneapolis, State of Minnesota, large
Somali population. And as you know, Somali has been referred to
several times this morning.
It is a state where, you know, we have had some military
presence. And now, you know, it may be the world's longest
state without a government.
So I am interested, I am really interested in this topic,
as to how we merge military and aid development, State
Department-type functions, in order to get a state up on its
feet. But you could expand this more generally. It is not just
Somalia; there are other places where this is needed.
And so one of our greatest security challenges facing us is
how to strengthen weak or failing governments and states. And
this is, it is critical to strengthen these kinds of places,
and to get them to a point where they can resume responsibility
for their own development, and become strong partners for the
U.S. and the world community.
Our military is obviously concerned about how to strengthen
weak states, and even Secretary Gates has called for a greater
capacity at USAID to address this challenge.
But at the same time, all the money--well, not all--but
most of the money and resources are with the DoD. And yet we
have seen smaller resources other places.
Given the resource imbalance, what mechanisms can ensure
our development mission is not overwhelmed by priorities and
timelines of our military capacity? Can you speak about the
balance, and to make sure what do deg.we do--and I am
talking about in the short term. Because in the long term, we
can just redesign, write a bill, redesign a program. But how do
we get from where we are to that place where we have a new
model that we are working from?
Mr. Brigety. Congressman, thank you very much. It is a
terrific question.
The difficulty obviously is that there is no short-term
solution. I mean, the imbalance has to be fixed. That is the
first step.
You asked an awful lot of things there. I think certainly
with regard to what can be done in the reasonably near term, it
is vitally important that the American public understands that
foreign assistance is a national security priority. It is not
simply a matter of good works. Our military leadership has done
a very, very good job in articulating that. But once your
constituents and the constituents of others understand that, I
think that will create the space in order to be able to address
the imbalance.
In addition, I think that, certainly with regard to
someplace like Somalia, although there are clear development
things which can be done to improve the lives of the
population, that is ultimately a political issue that has to be
resolved.
And I would suggest that that is going to help us to think
through other forms of diplomacy. And the State Department I
think has been very, very good traditionally at great power
representational stuff, representational diplomacy.
But I would think they need to get better at what I like to
call tactical diplomacy. And that is being able to understand
at the very, very grassroots level who the major political
players are, what their various interests are, and how they can
be accommodated in ways that support their interests and
support ours.
That is a model, for example, that we have also articulated
with regard to Afghanistan, with regard to trying to understand
the broad breadth of the Taliban insurgency.
Mr. Ellison. And also, Dr. Brigety, is part of the problem
that we really are transitioning from sort of a great power
model of national defense, and into this new era, where we have
these weak, failing states that can be exploited by hostile
elements.
Are we really, are we looking at a paradigm shift here? Do
we need to look at the problem in that way?
Mr. Brigety. Yes, sir. I think that is the essence of the
problem. We have a structure which is still both in our
military and our diplomatic corps, but is still geared toward
Cold War large-scale, great power threats. And yet the threats
that we have, as in the case of the 2002 National Security
Strategy, are coming from weak and failing states. And we
absolutely have to restructure our Government and our foreign
policy in order to do it.
Interestingly, the military is farthest ahead on this. So
on the one hand, there is cause for concern for the military's
involvement in this space. On the other hand, they are simply
reacting to the world which they see. And now we have to have
the rest of our structures catch up to that.
Mr. Ellison. General Brigety, the last one was--I mean,
excuse me. General Hagee, I am sorry. In the last few moments,
could you talk about, do you think we know enough about how to
get a failing or weak state back up on its feet? Do we have the
intellectual capital we need to know how to do this?
General Hagee. Oh, I think we have the intellectual
capital, but I would echo what Mr. Smith said. What we need is
a true understanding of that people, that culture, and what
they want.
We, the American people have a lot of really good
characteristics; unfortunately, understanding a different
culture is not one of them.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired. I
seek unanimous consent to place into the record an article
mentioned by Mr. Christenson, ``Making Foreign Aid a More
Effective Tool,'' written by three former USAID administrators,
Brian Atwood, Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios, a bipartisan
group of USAID administrators, placed in the record. Without
objection, that will be the order.
And also a letter by a group of former top military
commanders all across the armed services, including General
Hagee, under the letterhead of the U.S. Global Leadership
Campaign, regarding the Fiscal Year 2010 international affairs
budget. Without objection, that will be the order.
[The information referred to follows:]Berman
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Chairman Berman. And the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr.
Boozman, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Boozman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Hagee, I have
had the opportunity to be in Iraq several times, and
Afghanistan, and on some occasions being in the forward
operating bases, looking at VA--not VA, but healthcare issues
and things. But being out there.
I guess it seemed like the frustration that the commanders
were facing was they figured out pretty quickly, as the war in
Iraq went on, and now in Afghanistan, that they were fighting a
war militarily that needed a great deal to be solved with
humanitarian aid, just the infrastructure aid, all of those
kind of things. You know, high unemployment, just basic things.
And yet there was nobody there to help. The State
Department wasn't there, because they were very dangerous
situations. None of the branches of government, except for the
military, Commerce, all of these things that they desperately
needed.
So as a result, they had to become the aid providers. And I
guess, I just, unless you did a situation--we talked about
embedding USAID people, State Department in there. And again, I
would argue that not only that, but there are other areas of
government that should provide a role, also. But you would
almost have to train them in a different way. I mean, that
would be a different breed of guy or girl than the normal
person in those conditions. I mean, those are very, very
difficult conditions.
But again, now we are coming back and kind of saying well,
there is this imbalance and this and that. But in that
situation, I just don't see how you get around from doing that.
General Hagee. I think what you have pointed out is
absolutely correct; and that is that we should have
individuals, depending on the situation and where we are, from
Agriculture, from Commerce, from Water and Power. In my
opinion, the armed forces should not be training police; that
is not what we do real well. But there are policemen here in
this country who do that actually really quite well.
How do you train for that? I would argue that one, if not
the most important, reason that we have the best military that
the world has ever seen, is that at each grade, we allow an
officer or an enlisted to go to school for about a year. They
learn how to plan. They argue with one another. They argue
about doctrine, they argue about how we should be organized.
And we have done that since just after Vietnam.
Unfortunately, no other agency in the United States
Government, as far as I know, has that capability, because they
don't have the capacity to do that. That is one way that you
could address that, sir.
Mr. Boozman. And I agree. The other problem in these failed
states, these situations, it is unlike fighting any other war,
I think, that we have fought, in the sense that there are no
safe havens. I mean, you are in danger almost wherever you are
at. There is no pulling back to the back of the line. Again, it
is just very difficult.
Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Lindborg. Thank you for your question, Mr. Boozman. I
would just offer that there is a model out there in Iraq, with
USAID funding for NGOs that have worked throughout all 18
governments of Iraq throughout 2003, on the Community Action
Program. Which is, even in non-permissive environments, through
local staff, through an ability to gain community acceptance
and security, working on community infrastructure and on
mobilizing citizens for action, and to become constituents for
security.
It was a minuscule amount of funding compared to what goes
in on a daily basis to Iraq. And there are opportunities to
expand what we already know can work.
Mr. Boozman. No, I understand. And yet, like I say, there
are plenty of situations where, to those guys on the Ford
Operating Base, that wasn't available.
And it might be valuable at some time to get some of those
guys in here, and sit them down and say, What were your
challenges out there?
Mr. Christenson, real quickly while I have got you here,
the Millennium Challenge Account. You know, to me that seems to
have worked well. Can you just very quickly, in 33 seconds,
share your, share what you think is going on with that?
Mr. Christenson. Yes, sir. I think the Millennium Challenge
Account is the wave of the future. It takes a little longer to
get the projects proposed by the host government, but that is
because we are relying on the host government to set forth its
priorities. When you are dealing with democratic governments,
that is who you should listen to.
I think what is important is to look at the difference
between what they propose to MCC versus what we have on offer
through our other programs. It is very instructive.
Mr. Boozman. In 2 seconds, again, in being there, the
leaders of those countries were so proud of meeting their
objectives and stuff. So I yield back.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Indiana is recognized for a unanimous
consent request.
Mr. Burton. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to put an
article that I think is relevant to the discussion in the
record. Is it okay?
Chairman Berman. Yes. Under the subjective relevance test,
it is okay. [Laughter.]
So ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]Burton
submission FTR deg.
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[GRAPHIC(S)] [NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Chairman Berman. And the gentlelady from California,
Ambassador Watson, is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Watson. Yes, and very quickly. If we run out of time, I
will take the complete response in writing. I want to address
this to Mr. Christenson.
I have heard remarks among the panel--and I really
appreciate this panel being here, and I am quite concerned,
because I have been there. We had a problem at my post in
Micronesia; it had to do with cholera.
I called down the emergency medical team from Guam, and
they came in their fatigues. And they were going to go into the
village to tell the people to heat the water for 10 minutes,
boil the water for 10 minutes before they drank it.
Well, they came in their fatigues. They thought there was
an invasion of that community.
Now, I am getting to this point. USAID has traditionally
been seen as an organization that really comes in after the
war, and really helps the people with their development. That
is ideal. And I think we ought to have a strict demarcation
between what the military does and USAID's traditional role,
and probably a better merging with the NGOs that are already on
the ground.
Would you comment, please? What you see as ideal.
Mr. Christenson. I think what would be ideal is if we had
an agency for international development that was capable of
sending that type of team.
Ms. Watson. And who is that?
Mr. Christenson. Well, they don't have it. USAID is a
contracting agency. They don't have people who are prepared to
show up that quickly. They can put out a task order, and have
people bid on it, by which time they have all died of cholera.
Perhaps the military needs to be asked to, to show up, you
know, without their fatigues. Maybe just if they are doing a
medical program, they can show up in their white uniform
instead of the other.
But I think that we should not accept the notion that the
military are somehow off limits. I have a real problem with
some of the comments as sort of--comments I have heard in the
past about people wanting not to be seen with the military. I
am proud of being seen with the U.S. military, and I think
other people should be, too.
Ms. Watson. Let me ask Dr.--yes, I just dropped your name
for a moment. Doctor, yes. And how do we fashion so that we can
improve our image, the USAID function? And how do we work, how
should we work with the NGOs?
And there was a statement made that when we got there, they
were already there. And my experience has been that they can
customize and sensitize the aid to the area that they are in.
And I find it works very, very well. I would like to get your
reaction.
Ms. Lindborg. Well, the great value that the NGOs bring
globally is that we are often there in advance during and after
a conflict, that we leverage the assistance we receive from the
U.S. Government with extraordinary amounts of public support
from across this country. And that we are able to work in a way
that understands, through relationships and cultural knowledge,
what the needs are, and what the visions for the future are in
the communities in which we work.
That value I believe is greatly compromised if we are
brought too closely into the team, and we would be wise to
develop structures that allow that kind of differentiation,
while also enabling the kind of communication and coordination
that allows a larger set of objectives to be developed.
There is a separate question about enabling USAID to be
more expeditionary and more effective. It has lost
extraordinary amounts of capacity over the past two decades. As
Mr. Berman cited, it has very little of the expertise that it
used to have.
So I think there are two related, but slightly different,
challenges that we face as we move forward.
Ms. Watson. Thank you. And in my remaining time, I would
like to go back to Mr. Christenson. Are you suggesting the need
to develop a new organization? I think that is what I heard.
Mr. Christenson. Yes, ma'am, I do believe we need a new
organization.
Ms. Watson. And you mentioned it, and you said an
international----
Mr. Christenson. Well, it could be an organization made up
of people who are actually prepared and have technical skills
that can be deployed to countries. USAID doesn't have the
technical skills because they stopped recruiting them in the
1980s.
Ms. Watson. Out of the State Department, this organization?
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Inglis, recognized
for no more than 5 minutes.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder what you
might think about a public-private investment fund for Iraq. Is
this the time to be talking about something like that, like we
have done in other countries, where we presumably would make
these as loans maybe that had been repaid? We have done that in
other places.
Is this something we should be talking about at this point
for economic development in Iraq? Trying to stabilize the gains
we have made there?
General Hagee. In my personal opinion, sir, absolutely. I
know that there have been several senior officers, the current
chairman, who has actually gone to some of the private equity
firms trying to get them interested in doing just that.
To me, the idea that we are going to separate the
battlefield, and pot A is going to do this, and capability B is
going to do that, does not work on today's battlefield. One can
even argue that it may not have worked during World War II, but
it surely doesn't work today.
And winning the war and winning the peace, that, to me,
doesn't compute. We have a situation. We need to bring all
elements of national power, and that includes the private
sector, I would argue, to this situation, if it is, in fact, in
our national interest.
Now, I think the, what the entire panel would agree on is
you need someone to coordinate that. You can't just be
haphazard. But the idea that we can fence off this current
battlefield, and that we can divide war and peace, I think is--
if we think that way, we are not thinking about the real
situation.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you.
Ms. Lindborg. I think you are asking exactly the right
question. And as we look to creating a more nimble and
innovative USAID, you would have to put a lot of work into
developing mechanisms that support public-private partnerships.
And of course, we have tools that are also funded by the
international affairs budget, like OPIC (the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation) that enables greater risk-taking by our
public and our private sector.
I would add that in Afghanistan, with support from USAID,
Mercy Corps already has partnerships with the private sector,
where we are seeking to stimulate economic development.
I would firmly support your thinking on bringing that more
vigorously into Iraq. Without economic opportunity, it is that
much harder to get stability in these conflict environments.
Mr. Inglis. Anyone else?
Mr. Brigety. Sir, I would simply add, in addition to the
comments of my colleagues, that it is important to develop
public-private partnerships not simply in response to wars like
Iraq, but it is also important to think proactively, and to
think about ways in which we could bring public-private
partnerships to bear in places that are unstable, but have not
yet collapsed into war.
Again, as I said in my statement, because if we are able to
leverage those toward capabilities, then we prevent, in many
cases, states from collapsing entirely, and preventing them
from becoming failed states, and therefore places where we may
have to respond militarily.
So this is a continuum. And we need to be thinking about it
in the context of full-on combat operations, but also in the
context of preventative action, as well.
Mr. Inglis. The reason I am asking is, the first time I was
in Iraq I met the helpful captain who had left Wall Street, and
sort of gotten back into the National Guard in order to go to
Iraq, wanted to go to Iraq. And he is now back on Wall Street,
and has already a successful project that has been, I think it
says, I understand it was profitable in the first year. A
tomato processing plant that is employing people, deg.
that has already become profitable.
And what I hear from him is there are tremendous
opportunities if people are willing to take a little bit of
risk. Of course, they need perhaps the support of the U.S.
Government to make them feel comfortable in taking some of that
risk. But if they do, there are tremendous opportunities to get
people to work in productive enterprises, and to make some
money. Because people need to eat, they need clothes, they need
supplies, they need equipment. So it is helpful to hear your
thoughts about this possibility.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Berman. The time of the gentleman has expired. We
have 2\1/2\ minutes remaining before a vote that is now going
on. I, myself, intend--if maybe only I can get to ask some more
questions--to miss the vote. And any of you are welcome to join
me, if you want to. As long as we keep--as long as we are
winning.
The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Payne.
Mr. Payne. Thank you. Thank you very much. I just have a
concern.
One, I think we are talking about two different things as
it relates to foreign assistance. And I think we are mixing
them up.
I think that in an area like Iraq or Afghanistan, this has
to be this, you know, USAID may be embedded and all that. The
thing that disturbs me, though, is something like AFRICOM,
where you don't have a war going on, where you send a four-star
general to four or five countries in a day or two, tell them we
have got a new thing going that is called AFRICOM, and we are
going to tell you more about it. But you have got a four-star
general. We are going to be assisting in your USAID, and
feeding the children, and all the other things.
And so when they leave, these countries, 52 out of 53
countries, said thanks, but no thanks. Liberia said okay. They
just, anything, you know. Give me a hand. If it means jobs, it
is okay.
But overwhelmingly, African nations said no. Number one,
they said that this is here to protect the bay, the Gulf of
Guinea's oil, that is very good for the United States. And
number two is to hunt out any suspected militant that may harm
U.S. interests, or whatever. And they, you know, ended up
saying well, what is in it for us? Why do you want to
militarize U.S. assistance? And that is what it really looked
like.
And there was to the country a question of wait a minute,
what is this all about. Which I also have questions about, and
certainly oppose in the manner in which it was initially--now
it is in effect. You know, the military, when they are going to
do something, they just do it, and so it is done.
But I think that it is wrong. I think that developing
countries that are trying democracy and so forth, the way it
used to be was that the military people dispensed everything in
their own countries. And now we are going to have duplicating
that with U.S. assistance through military.
There is no question the military can bore holes for water,
and build bridges, no question about that. Mercy ship comes in,
they could help people. No doubt about it.
However, I think it is a wrong move for us to make it
appear as though--and they say well, that is not the intent--
but that is the way it looks to me. So I just wanted to--yes?
Mr. Brigety. Congressman, thank you very much for your
comments. There is no question that the role of AFRICOM could
have been done better. I think that everyone involved in that
and that observed it recognizes that.
I do think, however, that the essential premise of AFRICOM,
which is that there are security challenges on the continent of
Africa which are not amenable to be solved through military
means. And therefore, we need to think differently about them.
I think that premise basically is correct.
Let me give you sort of an example of that. I was in the
Dob refugee camp on the Kenyan-Somali border inside Kenya in
2007. And if you have been there, you know that the Dob has a
refugee population about 150,000, many of whom have been there
since 1992.
Mr. Payne. And growing now.
Mr. Brigety. Yes, sir, and growing. And of that, when I was
there in 2007, of that 150,000 there were just over 50,000 men
between the ages of 18 and 59 with nothing to do. Many of whom,
it has been argued, could have been linked to fighting in
Somalia.
Now, that is not necessarily a development priority,
because the malnutrition rate of the Dob camp is actually very,
very low. The population is well fed, et cetera. And yet this
is a place where development mechanisms, things like job
training for men, clearly meet with our security objectives,
which are trying to figure out how we can engage that very
large population of men that otherwise have no other skills,
and will be, one way or another either be involved in Somalia
fighting today, or will have to be repatriated.
So those sorts of challenges across the continent are
things that USAID would not necessarily look at, because they
are not straight in sole, what I will call fundamental
development challenges. And yet, there are things that I think
as a country, we are going to have to be thinking about.
Ms. Lindborg. If I could say a quick comment. Mr. Payne, I
very much appreciate your observations. And I think that in
fact, the standing up of AFRICOM stands as one of the most
singular arguments for the need to increase our civilian
capacities. That the military saw it didn't want to keep
putting boots on the ground in the combat situations, and saw
that there was, because of chronic under-investment in
development and diplomacy functions, great potential for
conflict on the African continent.
With their can-do attitude, they rolled in with a set of
solutions. I think it is incumbent upon us as a country to
rebalance our civilian capacities in order to meet those
challenges, rather than using the military solutions that
AFRICOM puts on the table.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Chairman Berman. Gentlemen, my strategy worked. I get to
recognize myself, deg. and I don't have to put myself
on the clock. Because, unless you are going to hang around too,
in which case I am willing to go back and forth with you.
I wanted to--and I know several of you have to leave pretty
soon, and I won't be that long. But a couple of points I wanted
to make and get your reaction to.
The ranking member raised, in her opening statement, this
sort of discussion of building up capacity versus reform. And
Mr. Christenson spoke about that. And the chicken and the egg,
and which comes first.
But if USAID has become simply a contracting agency, you
can't really reform without building capacity. And so I don't
think it is as easy to say, Well, let us reform
first, deg. and then we will rebuild the capacity. You
want to rebuild the capacity the right way; we want to take a
lot of the things you suggested in both training and mission,
and in getting out of post-World War II models. We have done a
lot of that already. But, a deg.And I have seen a lot
of different programs in different areas that have made real
differences on the ground.
But I don't think--and I guess I wish the ranking member
were here so we could continue this discussion, but the message
can get back to her. I think there is a problem with just
saying, Let us reform it all first, deg. then we will
get to the capacity building. Because if USAID is now a
contracting agency, what are you going to do, close the
contracting down? We are not going to do that. So I think the
two go hand-in-hand.
The second point is, the question about the Millennium
Challenge Program. And I am torn, because part of me thinks
that is the right way to go. That is the model for the future.
It is a merit-based test; it ensures the capacity of
the, of deg.the society that is well-governed to most
absorb the aid. It is driven by the elected leadership, because
democracy is one of the tests. And a number of other tests of
good governance are the tests for where it goes.
And at the same time, for all the reasons the General
mentioned and others have talked about, if you turn your back
on the states that still might be dictatorships, and where
corruption is still rampant, and don't work with the,
deg.both the USAID people on the ground and the NGOs--as
opposed to the government in many cases--to do something, you
are going to go from corrupt and dictatorial states to failed
states.
And so this is a--it is not so easy to sort through all of
that, in terms of how to apportion it. But there is something
about that program I agree is very appealing, and in the long
run makes a lot of sense.
I would mention, Mr. Christenson, that, as you discussed
this, I noticed you signed the majority report of the Health
Commission. Am I wrong?
Mr. Christenson. I wrote parts of it.
Chairman Berman. Oh, you wrote, you deg.wrote it.
How about the part that called for an deg.up to
10 percent of the combined national security budget to go into
the international affairs budget programs? A significant
increase from the current level, which is about 6 percent, and
would result in a huge increase, far more than even this
administration is proposing in foreign assistance.
Mr. Christenson. No, I did not write that, I could
guarantee you. I mean, that is overkill.
Chairman Berman. All right. Well, I wouldn't have asked the
question if I hadn't thought you had signed it.
Mr. Christenson. You know, if I could suggest something
that members of the panel have to leave, if they have, you said
they have to leave at 12 o'clock. Perhaps we could ask them
their views. Maybe after they have had the chance to leave, we
could talk about that.
Chairman Berman. Well, I do want to make the second vote.
But I take your point, that you did not write that part of the
report.
Mr. Christenson. But can I just say something?
Chairman Berman. Yes.
Mr. Christenson. USAID does not have a competent personnel
office. It uses its director of personnel as a rotating slot
for mission directors they can't figure out what else to do
with for a while. They are constantly changing. The number-one
reform of foreign aid would be to have a professional human
resources office with continuity of leadership.
Chairman Berman. That is an indictment of the management.
Mr. Christenson. Yes. I said, deg. USAID needs a
management structure. It needs people to go in there and put
back in place a competent management.
This committee in the late nineties had a bill that
required that the State Department Director General, who is the
director of personnel, be somebody with 10 years human
resources management experience instead of using it as an
honorific place for ambassadors to park.
The State Department had a fit, and they insisted that it
come out of the bill.
Chairman Berman. Well, we ought to think about that.
Mr. Christenson. I think that is a number-one reform for
both agencies.
Chairman Berman. Although I do have to say, I have always
been quite impressed with the present Under Secretary of
Management in the State Department.
Mr. Christenson. Extremely impressed in my opinion. I mean,
Pat Kennedy is fabulous.
Chairman Berman. Yes, okay. It is possible.
Mr. Christenson. I once went up to CIA and spent the entire
day talking to them about how do they deal with the problems
they have that are the same as the State Department and USAID
face. It was a very valuable day.
One of the things I discovered was that the CIA has a
personnel director who has been there for a very long time.
They plan 10 or 15 years from now. They bring in people and
they have very long-term plans that they implement to train,
develop and assign them.
State and USAID have people who make plans, and then they
leave. The next guy has always wanted to do it differently, and
he starts another plan. And it turns into absolute chaos.
If you look at the cohort of people that USAID has brought
in once they were given the authority to hire more people, it
is the same template they have been recruiting against for
eternity. They are Peace Corps volunteers who went overseas,
perhaps with an English major. They came back from the Peace
Corps, and they go to SAIS or Georgetown School of Foreign
Service and got a quick master's degree in international
development. Then USAID says they don't have any engineers.
Well, yes, you didn't----
Chairman Berman. We should get them to run for Congress.
Mr. Christenson. Go out and hire them. If you are looking
for agronomists, go hire agronomists.
But if they are constantly recruiting against a template
that nobody has ever really thought about--asking, Do we really
need to hire this type of person to work in this agency and to
be the future leaders of the agency? They don't do it.
Chairman Berman. I think you ask, you deg.raise a
very, very good point that we should look at.
Well, any other reactions on this? Ms. Lindborg.
Ms. Lindborg. I would just quickly add, on your thinking
about the MCC, I don't see it as an either/or; but rather,
those I think are exactly the kinds of issues that can be
effectively addressed in the national security strategy. And to
ensure that we have capacities to deal both with the failing
states, those more or less permissive environments, as well as
those countries that are further along on their development
continuum, and create a cohesive whole. So there can be a
handshake and coordination on platforms that are shared in each
of the countries.
So I think that you are raising the right questions, and
the answers lay in creating this more comprehensive view.
Chairman Berman. And then my----
Mr. Christenson. Can I answer the question on the MCC?
Chairman Berman. Yes.
Mr. Christenson. One of the problems the MCC has an upward
limit for is program. Countries like South Africa and other
well-managed democracies are not allowed to participate in the
MCC.
One of the reforms we might look at is when you have
countries that are above the MCC threshold for eligibility.
Maybe we ought to turn to an MCC model for them; and take those
human resources that we are wasting on trying to manage
projects in these countries, and use them where we need them.
Chairman Berman. Well, I will take South Africa in
particular.
Mr. Christenson. You what?
Chairman Berman. You raised South Africa. In South Africa
in particular, we went there last July, and we looked at a lot
of PEPFAR projects. And one of the results of our heavy
investment in PEPFAR was helping to build, in South Africa,
both an openness and a capacity to take these things over. And
you saw it morphing from simply providing prescription drugs
and having just American agencies involved in education
programs and prevention programs, to the start of a development
of a South African infrastructure to do those things.
Mr. Christenson. I spent 33 years working on South Africa,
and I don't agree that that is what happened. And I apologize
for saying that.
South Africans were planning a massive HIV/AIDS program
prior to the launching of the PEPFAR program. They were
planning to----
Chairman Berman. I heard some of the things they were
talking about. And----
Mr. Christenson. If you look at what they actually did.
Forget the rumors in the newspapers of who said this,
supposedly said what, they were working on a massive program
that they were going to announce in late 2003.
If you look at what they announced in 2003, and you look at
what they have accomplished, they kept their word, and they
accomplished what they promised.
South Africans have a very different way of dealing with
the world. They work out the difficulties in advance of making
the announcement. Bush took all the wind out of their sails by
making the PEPFAR announcement, which he did in a very abusive
way.
Chairman Berman. Okay.
Mr. Christenson. Let me just finish. The U.S. Government
announced to the South Africans that they were going to have a
program with 500,000 South Africans in it, by calling them at 4
o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the State of the Union
Address.
The South Africans were livid.
Chairman Berman. You are not going to get me to defend the
way the Bush administration handled some of these issues.
Mr. Christenson. No. Then what you had was this permanent
conflict between PEPFAR and the South African Government. The
Ministry of Health's attitude was you are either with PEPFAR or
you are with us, you can't be with both. How did we do that so
poorly?
Chairman Berman. Well, that is a fair question. My own
sense that the danger of sending any of us anywhere for a quick
trip is, we can jump to a conclusion perhaps based on
inadequate evidence. My own sense is there were changes in that
tension that had, by the summer of 2008.
Let me just ask my last question. And General, I would be
curious about your response, but all the panelists.
We have been talking about development assistance and
permissive environments and non-permissive environments, all
that. I would like to go to security assistance for a second.
Because this whole issue--another phenomenon I mentioned in my
opening remarks, besides the PRTs and other sort of, the
creeping role of DoD into a lot of traditionally civilian
assistance programs, is the DoD finding different ways to take
over the decisions regarding, and the providing of, security
assistance.
Now, the military may not be right for training police, but
they are right for training troops. And the security assistance
and IMET are always going to be implemented in great part by
military people.
But I am curious about deg., is there a reason why
the actual providing of military assistance, money for systems
and all that stuff, should be carried out by DoD rather than
the State Department?
One of the reasons, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff has said, talk about not handling an issue well. The
State Department, the length of time, and the difficulty in
actually getting that out to the intended recipients needs a
huge amount of reform and improvement.
But at the end of the day, isn't security assistance an
aspect of our foreign policy priorities in--with the national
security context, I guess what I want you to say is yes, State
should still do this. But disabuse me if I am wrong.
General Hagee. I would, sir, but you are not. I would
support. But I would also echo what the chairman has said, and
what others have said, the bureaucratic process of getting that
in a timely manner so that in fact you can have a diplomatic
effect, it is just really quite burdensome.
The commander on the ground, when all is said and done,
doesn't care where it comes from, as long as it comes in a
timely manner. And I think State handling it is just--personal
opinion, Mike Hagee's opinion--is just fine.
Chairman Berman. But we have got to make it, we have got to
clean up the way it is done, I take it.
Anybody else have reactions on this issue?
Mr. Brigety. Sir, the only thing I would add is, you
mentioned briefly police training. And it is the perpetual
problem with every stabilization reinstruction.
As General Hagee has said, as other military officers have
said, that the military should not have a role in police
training, I agree with that. But I also think that we need to
seriously relook at Section 660, the Foreign Assistance Act,
that prohibits USAID from engaging in that.
Somebody has to own that mission operationally for the U.S.
Government.
Chairman Berman. Thank you all very much. I am sorry for
keeping you a little longer than you intended, and I think it
has been a very excellent hearing. I think a lot of different
issues have been raised that we can think about. And I
appreciate your being here.
General Hagee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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