Posts in "usaid"

By Roy Antoun at 12:44AM

Mar 13, 2010

Public Diplomacy: Foreign Intervention Part II

A Senate hearing on Wednesday, March 10^th, “The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy,” explained quite well where our diplomatic priorities are regarding what Senators in the Foreign Relations committee called, “Public Diplomacy.”

Chairman Kaufman explained that there is a need for the United States to “promote soft power” to the outreach of foreign populations. Essentially, public diplomacy is the act of one state influencing the culture of another by means of television, religion, radio, or internet; it is influencing another state by any means other than the military or hard power. At face value, this sounds wonderful. At least our government is no longer resorting to the dropping of bombs in foreign countries as an act of negotiation.

Senator Wicker testified and noted that the Federal government has spent $10 billion on public diplomacy since September 11^th, 2001 and plans to spend another $7.5 billion over the next five years. The plan was to target Pakistan and work with USAID, the same government agency operated by Stuart Bowen, in sending internal aid and internal educational benefits to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Congressional Hearing Review: FY 2011

Congress’s Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing today about “U.S. Policies and Programs for Global Development: USAID and the FY 2011 Budget Request.” Needless to say, USAID did not have a budget to request, which was mentioned in Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen’s opening statement. I have come to learn that Washington, D.C. is more of circus entertainment, rather than a conglomeration of competent individuals who actually have to serve the public’s needs and interests.

So, without an actual budget to base the hearing on, the questions were vague, long-winded, and uninformative. Nevertheless, Dr. Shah, Administrator of USAID, stated that “investments for future peace and prosperity” are directly related to “national security.” Seeming as if government uses “national security” as a crutch to explain all of its fiscal bastardization, Chairman Berman reaffirmed that “diplomacy and development” were key attributed to the transforming foreign policy of the new administration. Although the American people have to see this actual transformation, it’s a step somewhere, to say the least.