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Category: Foreign Policy

Published March 27, 2013

On the DFAIT–CIDA Merger

CIDA

As part of its 2013 budget, the Harper government has decided to fold the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

It is not uncommon for a developed country to have its development agency depend directly on its ministry of foreign affairs. In the United States, for example, the US Agency for International Development depends on the State Department. In France, the Agence française de développement depends on the Quai d’Orsay.

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Many in Canada were up in arms about the DFAIT–CIDA merger. I suspect that reactions would have been very different had this merger taken place under a different (i.e., not Conservative) government: the Zeitgeist in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia is that nothing the Harper government does is ever right. (This isn’t to say I support the Harper government; those who know me well also know that I have spent two summers working for a Liberal cabinet minister when I was in college.)

I was given the chance to express my view on the merger in a Toronto Star article by Rick Westhead:

“We wish foreign aid was altruistic, but it’s always been an expression of foreign policy,” said David Morley, president of UNICEF’s Canadian operations. “Sometimes you felt the two (CIDA and Foreign Affairs) were going off into different worlds. This could be good, getting the aid portfolio closer to power.”

“Canada doesn’t do aid out of generosity or good nature,” said Marc Bellemare, a Quebec native and assistant economics professor at Duke University who studies development assistance. “Aid has always been tied to foreign policy. This is more transparent. At least we’re being more open about what it is.”

The story features the views of many other people, who have much smarter things to say than I do about the whole thing. Owen Barder, for example, notes that having development assistance and international trade be part of the same organization may well help Canada have a more consistent stance toward developing-country agriculture, given that most agricultural imports to Canada are slapped with a 19 percent tariff.

Owen also had an op-ed on the topic in The Globe and Mail in which he argues that Canadian development is more than just CIDA.

Published January 30, 2013

Resources on the Conflict in Mali

I have been taken by my research and teaching on food policy issues so far this year, so I haven’t had a chance to write anything about the conflict in Mali, where I have done some work which was cut tragically short by the March 2012 coup d’état.

The Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley, however, has a very nice collection of resources on the current conflict in Mali, which seems to be updated very frequently and which you can find here.

It includes everything from recent scholarship on Mali (including a link to my colleague Bruce Hall‘s most recent book, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960), Wikipedia pages, fact sheets, congressional hearings, blogs, media and journalism, background, statistics, as well as how to help.

Two sources which the above does not include and which are my personal favorites on the current conflict in Mali, however, are Tommy Miles‘ and Alex Thurston‘s Twitter feeds. Alex also has a blog called Sahel Blog. And in terms of scholarly research, Notre Dame’s Jaimie Bleck, a fellow Cornell alum, is doing really cool work on Malian politics.

Published November 5, 2012

Africom: Not Ready for Prime Time?

The [Benghazi] assault, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has already exposed shortcomings in the Obama administration’s ability to secure diplomatic missions and act on intelligence warnings. But this previously undisclosed episode, described by several American officials, points to a limitation in the capabilities of the American military command responsible for a large swath of countries swept up in the Arab Spring.

At the heart of the issue is the Africa Command, established in 2007, well before the Arab Spring uprisings and before an affiliate of Al Qaeda became a major regional threat. It did not have on hand what every other regional combatant command has: its own force able to respond rapidly to emergencies — a Commanders’ In-Extremis Force, or CIF.

To respond to the Benghazi attack, the Africa Command had to borrow the CIF that belongs to the European Command, because its own force is still in training. It also had no AC-130 gunships or armed drones readily available.

As officials in the White House and Pentagon scrambled to respond to the torrent of reports pouring out from Libya — with Mr. Stevens missing and officials worried that he might have been taken hostage — they took the extraordinary step of sending elite Delta Force commandos, with their own helicopters and ground vehicles, from their base at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Sicily. Those troops also arrived too late.

From an excellent article in the New York Times last weekend on how Africom — the United States Africa Command — is not ready for prime time because it is understaffed.

Continue readingAfricom: Not Ready for Prime Time?