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USAID Provides Critical Benefits to US National Security
The Trump Administration’s effort to try to shut down USAID and pause all foreign aid directly harms US national security, including by interrupting critical investments into resilience, adaptation, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding. In 2021, 79 senior national security leaders, including 8 retired 4-star generals and admirals, a former Director of National Intelligence, and a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, signed the Challenge Accepted report, which argued that USAID investments in resilience and adaptation were critical to preventing instability and conflict and maintaining the US competitive edge with China.
(more…)U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs Fall Short of Addressing Climate Change Risk
The Department of Defense has been incorporating climate change into its strategic policy documents for more than 10 years (e.g., here, here, and here). Despite White House pressure to the contrary, it currently is expanding how it addresses climate change to address Congressional requirements contained in recent National Defense Authorization Acts (here). Less visible, but no less important are other federal agencies that are focused on foreign assistance which could complement DoD’s security cooperation/assistance efforts (here). The Congressional Research Service (2020) released a short report on four foreign assistance agencies–U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID), the Peace Corps, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation(DFC)–and if their current planning efforts are reducing climate change risk to their own operations and programs. The result is that these current planning efforts fall far short of comprehensively addressing climate change risk, especially when compared to the more robust efforts under the last administration.
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