[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AMERICA'S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP:
WHY DIPLOMACY AND DEVELOPMENT MATTER
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
FEBRUARY 27, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
35-366PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York Member
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida JOE WILSON, South Carolina
KAREN BASS, California SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts TED S. YOHO, Florida
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
AMI BERA, California LEE ZELDIN, New York
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas JIM SENSENBRENNER, Wisconsin
DINA TITUS, Nevada ANN WAGNER, Missouri
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York BRIAN MAST, Florida
TED LIEU, California FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota JOHN CURTIS, Utah
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota KEN BUCK, Colorado
COLIN ALLRED, Texas RON WRIGHT, Texas
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania GREG PENCE, Indiana
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey STEVE WATKINS, Kansas
DAVID TRONE, Maryland MIKE GUEST, Mississippi
JIM COSTA, California
JUAN VARGAS, California
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
Jason Steinbaum, Staff Director
Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
Ami Bera, California, Chairman
Ilhan Omar,Minnesota Lee Zeldin, New York, Ranking
Adriano Espaillat, New York Member
Ted Lieu, California Scott Perry, Pennsylvania
Tom Malinowski, New Jersey Ken Buck, Colorado
David Cicilline, Rhode Island Guy Reschenthaler, Pennsylvania
Chad Obermiller, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
OPENING STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
Chairman Ami Bera................................................ 52
WITNESSES
Higginbottom, Honorable Heather, Chief Operating Officer, Care
USA, Former Deputy Secretary of State, Management and Resources 9
Natsios, Honorable Andrew S., Director of the Scowcroft Institute
of International Affairs & Executive Professor, George H. W.
Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University, Former Administrator, United States Agency For
International Development...................................... 16
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 49
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 50
Hearing Attendance............................................... 51
AMERICA'S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: WHY DIPLOMACY AND DEVELOPMENT MATTER
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Washington, DC
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in
Room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ami Bera
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Bera. Before I gavel in and do my opening statement--
this is all new to me. So but in my three terms in Congress and
now my fourth term, I really have had the desire to try to work
in a bipartisan way, especially when we approach foreign
policy.
And I think we have been blessed to have the prior
chairman, Ed Royce, as well as the current chairman, Eliot
Engel, as our leaders and, historically this had been a
relatively bipartisan committee looking at solving some of the
issues and, it is certainly my desire and my intent, working
with the ranking member, Mr. Zeldin, for us to approach this in
a bipartisan way because, if you look at our history, America's
soft power but America's diplomacy and development really has
been incredibly important to how we have shaped the world and I
would argue that we have shaped the world for the better.
I also, when I think about the members on this committee,
both in the majority and the minority, you look at the quality
of the membership and the number of veterans, including the
ranking member who currently, I believe, still serves in the
Reserves, bringing that experience to have a senior diplomat
like Mr. Malinowski, to have a refugee who understands that
experience, like Ms. Omar, and to have folks that either came
here as immigrants or are children of immigrants.
I think that breadth of knowing what the American
experience is and, hopefully, will bring that spirit to who we
are on this committee. And, again, I could not be more honored
to have the privilege of chairing what I think is going to be a
very important committee on oversight. So----
Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it has been a
privilege over the course of the first couple months here of
the new Congress with this new subcommittee.
In conversations and meetings with the chair I could
certainly confirm his desire, his strong interest, in
bipartisanship. That certainly will result in a stronger
product coming out of this committee. It helps empower the full
committee and I think bipartisanship is something for all of us
to be very proud of.
So thank you to Chairman Bera for setting the right tone,
and with regards to his priorities coming out of the gate I am
confident that at the end of this Congress a couple years from
now, a year and a half from now or so, we are going to be able
to have real product, maybe in legislative form, maybe through
oversight, that will help strengthen America.
So I look forward to serving with you and all the other
members of this committee, and I yield back.
Mr. Bera. So the hearing will come to order.
This hearing, titled ``America's Global Leadership: Why
Diplomacy and Development Matters,'' will focus on why the
State Department and USAID are critical to the success of our
country, our foreign policy, and how Congress can ensure that
they thrive.
Without objection, all members may have 5 days to submit
statements, questions, extraneous materials for the record
subject to the length limitations in the rules. I will now make
my opening statement and then turn it over to the ranking
member for his opening statement.
Good afternoon. I want to welcome all the members to this
first hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Committee.
Chairman Engel reestablished this subcommittee to strengthen
Congress's oversight of the executive branch and reassert our
authority in foreign policy.
This subcommittee will work closely with the full committee
and other subcommittees to exercise our role, and as we heard
this morning from Secretary Albright, it is her belief and I
think it is all of our belief, as I listen to the questions and
testimony of members on both sides, that foreign policy best is
done in a bipartisan way and that the best foreign policy at
our best is when the executive branch is working closely with
the legislative branch in partnership, sending a singular
message to the world so there is no ambiguity to our allies and
others, and I think, as we mentioned earlier, that really is a
goal and I would like to acknowledge the partnership that I
think we will have with the ranking member, Mr. Zeldin, from
New York.
To begin with, as we look at Article 1 and, again,
Secretary Albright said now is the time for Article 1 to really
reemerge.
It really has far too long under both Democratic and
Republican administrations Congress has allowed oversight to
falter and more and more of our ability, really, has shifted
over to the executive branch both under Democratic
administrations and Republican administrations and I think this
is our opportunity to re-exert that oversight and start
bringing things back to what we should be doing.
With that, if I look at our history as the United States,
particularly in the post-World War II history as we looked at
the three pillars of defense but also diplomacy and
development, our foreign policy and our approach to the rest of
the world really did make the world a better place.
And I know Mr. Natsios in his opening comments will talk
about the Marshall Plan and the remarkable work that we did
rebuilding Europe, rebuilding Japan, going and protecting Korea
and the miracle that is the Republic of Korea today.
And you would rightfully argue that our presence around the
world--the American presence--leading with our values and
leadership in the 70 years post-World War II made the world a
better place, made the world a safer place, made the world a
more democratic place.
But I think we can also, as we think about the purview of
this committee over the next 2 years, we understand that the
world has changed. It is a different place today.
You see it is not a given that the democratic model of our
values will rule the 21st century. You see more autocratic
leaderships--the rise of China, the reemergence of Russia.
You also see the failed States, the terror States that
are--have to be approached in a very different way than we may
have approached a cold war with the Nation State and this is an
opportune time for us to take a step back, take a deep dive
into where America's diplomacy is today, where America's
development is but then also come out of this thinking about
where we need to go.
And this committee is Oversight and Investigations and we
will use the tools that we have available to investigate where
we are today.
But that would be only half the battle if we did not
actually try to come out and present to this administration or
the next administration and then this secretary of State or the
next secretary of State a roadmap of where we think we could go
to continue to lead the world both with our soft power and hard
power and, again, there is no reason that this next century
cannot be an American century because the last century
certainly was an American century.
And with that, I would like to thank both Ms. Higginbottom
and Mr. Natsios for joining us and I will turn this over to my
esteemed colleague, Mr. Zeldin, the ranking member.
Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is the first
hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. I
look forward to working with you on bipartisan priorities we
both share.
This hearing is, certainly, the first step. We both believe
in American leadership and Congress's role in oversight and
investigations.
I wanted to extend my thanks to today's two witnesses for
being here today to discuss the importance of American foreign
policy, aid, and development around the world.
There is no question that targeted and measured foreign aid
and level-headed diplomacy further American national security,
business, and humanitarian interests.
Today, we are not here to question this consensus but,
rather, examine the tools and resources used in these endeavors
in an effort to ensure they are the most effective and
efficient means possible.
Too often, we have witnessed programs with good intentions
originally established to forward American values and improve
the lives of those around the world go off the tracks and it is
our responsibility as the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee to monitor these programs and help correct course
when necessary.
For example, and given the backgrounds of our two witnesses
and I am here with Congressman Perry, who has joined us, I will
touch on the stated mission of the previously U.S. taxpayer-
funded United Nations Relief and Works Agency, also known as
UNRWA, which has a mission to provide humanitarian support for
Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West
Bank and Gaza.
The education of children, especially those in war-torn
areas, is a noble mission. But over the past 6 years, UNRWA and
the State Department have failed to provide Congress with an
accurate picture to implement oversight measures by
deliberately withholding information and certain reporting
requirements and we recently found out why.
In a recently declassified portion of a GAO report, we
learned that the textbooks in the educational program of UNRWA
were delegitimizing Israel and that supplementary material to
counter this textbook content that promotes anti-Semitism, paid
for with American tax dollars was being rejected on the ground.
The underlying mission of foreign aid programs like UNRWA
is critical. But holding them to that mission and ensuring its
funding goes to furthering that goal may be even more
important.
U.S. foreign aid should be an investment, building a strong
foundation with our allies. However, providing economic
assistance to the Palestinian Authority, which supports a
``pay-for-slay'' program to financially reward terrorists for
killing innocent Americans and Israelis is in direct violation
of this ideology.
Last Congress, the Taylor Force Act was passed and signed
into law. It withholds economics assistance to the Palestinian
Authority until it publicly condemns these acts of violence and
stops inciting and rewarding the terrorists who perpetrate
these horrific crimes, therefore protecting the innocent
Americans and Israelis and better allocating these limited
foreign aid resources.
The United States must support aid programs that promote
the interests of our Nation and, therefore, of our allies. For
example, foreign aid that promotes good governance in a country
like Venezuela is a proud show of what an important investment
this funding can be.
There are so many different examples all across the entire
map for the entire world that this committee can get into. Just
touching on a couple of examples there, but I am sure we will
hear a lot more over the course of today's testimony with our
two great witnesses.
There should be an integrated policy approach to aid and
diplomacy in which we leverage greater influence per aid
dollar. We must employ greater accurate oversight and
accountability internally within the State Department as well
as over these foreign assistance programs ensuring those
utilizing U.S. funding are better aligned with our Nation's
values.
We need to examine whether the millions of dollars we give
to multilateral agencies serve our needs and whether they
continue to maintain the high standards Americans would expect.
We need to share the burden so that we can offer the
opportunity for other regional actors to contribute as well.
Are there administrative efficiencies we could implement to
make our dollars go farther? How can we improve transparency
and accountability in a manner that does not hinder development
efforts?
These are the questions I hope our witnesses will address.
Thank you both again for being here and I look forward to your
statements.
I would like to thank our subcommittee chairman, Mr. Bera,
full committee chairman Mr. Engel, and lead Republican, Mr.
McCaul, for their leadership and assistance on these issues.
I yield back.
Mr. Bera. I will now introduce the witnesses.
As I stated earlier, you know, Ms. Heather Higginbottom is
the chief operating officer of CARE USA, one of the world's
largest humanitarian organizations. She served as deputy
secretary of State for management and resources in the Obama
Administration.
Andrew Natsios is currently the director of the Scowcroft
Institute at Texas A&M. He served as the thirteenth
administrator for the United States Agency for International
Development.
Thank you both for being here, and with that, Ms.
Higginbottom.
STATEMENT OF MS. HIGGINBOTTOM, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, CARE
USA, FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE, MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES
Ms. Higginbottom. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Zeldin, and
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify as you work to make the State Department
and USAID more effective and more efficient. I have edited my
remarks for time and ask that my full statement be included in
the record.
Mr. Bera. And without objection, your full statement--
written statement will be part of the record. Thank you for
reminding me that I was supposed to do that.
Ms. Higginbottom. For the last 6 years, first as deputy
secretary of State for management and resources and currently
as CARE chief operating officer, I have had the privilege of
seeing American diplomacy and development in action and the
responsibility of thinking about how to strengthen it.
With just about 1 percent of the Federal budget, the United
States gets no better return on its investment than the work of
our diplomats and development professionals which saves
millions of lives, builds stronger economies, and creates a
safer world.
Mr. Chairman, I know that it has never been popular to
invest money overseas. President Reagan acknowledged that,
quote, ``Foreign aid suffers from a lack of a domestic
constituency.''
The very DNA of care is a daily reminder that Americans
have always stepped up to address global challenges. Seventy-
three years ago, a small group of Americans joined forces to
create the first ever CARE packages for starving survivors of
World War II.
Today, instead of delivering aid in a box, CARE works to
address the roots of poverty using proven tools to empower
women and girls and help entire communities create long-term
prosperity, stability, and resiliency.
We are here today to focus on what we can do better. But we
should not lose sight of what the U.S. already does so well and
I saw it firsthand in 2014 as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa
threatened whole countries.
American leadership made the difference. Working with
partners in a coordinated, rapid, innovative way, we brought
every tool we had to bear from deploying civilian health and
development experts to engaging our military and Border Patrol
agents.
We work with Congress to provide resources, pharmaceutical
companies to develop a vaccine, manufacturing companies to make
protection suits for health workers, and we galvanize partners
to build an aircraft to evacuate patients with infectious
diseases.
As a result, Ebola was contained in West Africa and in our
interconnected world where a disease knows no boundaries we
should be building upon, not weakening, instruments of
diplomacy and development.
The U.S. is a catalytic leader and what we do encourages
other countries to act, and it is why over the past 25 years
the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty has
been halved as has the number of women dying during pregnancy
and the number of children dying before their fifth birthday,
and this has been a bipartisan effort across Republican and
Democratic administrations.
Despite these clear results, the president's budgets for
Fiscal Year 2018 and 2019, and we fear once again in Fiscal
Year 2020, have proposed slashing foreign assistance by 30
percent, jeopardizing countless lifesaving programs.
We appreciate that Congress has rejected these cuts, but
there has been damage done due to uncertain funding levels and
time lines, the threat of recisions packages, and government
shut downs.
Just earlier this month, we came days away from halting a
Food For Peace program in Haiti that supports 100,000
chronically poor households. We are very grateful to our USAID
colleagues who managed to release funds at the eleventh hour.
But when lives are on the line we cannot afford crises of
our own making. To be sure, the State Department and USAID are
not perfect institutions. The 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and
Development Review, which I oversaw, contains many
recommendations to make these institutions more efficient and
more effective. I will highlight just three.
First, the currency of the State Department is information
and relationships, and yet there is no enterprise wide system
for organizing, collecting, and sharing information.
Second, better utilization and expertise in data analytics,
science, and technology is essential, and the siloed natures of
both the State Department and USAID mean that crosscutting
analysis and engagement is often unavailable.
Third, performance management and strategic planning at
both agencies should be strengthened and collaboration and
communication across agencies should be enhanced.
As the history of the CARE package shows, often the best
way to combat fragility, address poverty, and prevent mass
displacement is by harnessing the generosity and talents of the
American people in partnership with communities around the
world.
This work, backed by continued American engagement and
diplomacy in development, is essential to building a future
worth having for ourselves, our children, and our neighbors
around the world.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to answering your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Higginbottom follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STATEMENT OF MR. NATSIOS, DIRECTOR OF THE SCOWCROFT INSTITUTE
OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS & EXECUTIVE PROFESSOR, GEORGE H. W.
BUSH SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE AT TEXAS A&M
UNIVERSITY, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Natsios. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and
members of the committee. I want to thank you for the
opportunity to speak today on the importance of foreign aid
programs.
My comments today are my own. I am not representing Texas A
& M Univ. the Bush School of Government and Public Service at
Texas A&M.
Since World War II, the United States foreign aid programs
have played a leading role improving the livelihoods of the
world's poor, cultivating good governance and democratic
practice, protecting human rights, and accelerating economic
growth.
We are living through the greatest golden age in civilized
history for the common people of the world. The reason I say
that is based on the statistic that Ms. Higginbottom here just
mentioned.
There has been a dramatic improvement in the lives of the
poor. Ninety percent of the population a hundred years ago in
the developing world was poor. In fact, there was not even a
developing world; there were colonial empires a hundred years
ago.
But that has dramatically shifted. The number of poor
people has dramatically declined. The number of democracies,
until recently, has been on the rise. Certainly, there have
been terrible abuses of human rights. I know this firsthand: I
was in the center of the Rwandan genocide. I was there when
Darfur took place. I like to think we blew the whistle in USAID
about what was happening in Darfur before anyone else even
noticed what was going on. But the fact is that people did not
even know what human rights were a hundred years ago. They did
not use those words, and there were no institutions protecting
human rights.
We have made enormous progress and we are living through
it, but we do not see the forest from the trees. We do not see
what things were like 200 years ago, or 300 years ago, when a
life expectancy of 40 years was regarded as long.
The Marshall Plan was our first organized, systematic
effort to extend American humanitarian power abroad in a
lasting way. We had carried out humanitarian efforts before:
Herbert Hoover ran the greatest food aid program in world
history during World War I and its the immediate aftermath. But
that was a temporary program. By the way, Hoover also went into
Russia in the middle of the Great Famine after Lenin took over.
It is a very interesting story regarding how he prevented the
central government from manipulating the food aid at that time.
The same problems we have now concerning the manipulation of
food aid took place in Russia in the early 1920's. Hoover
simply told Lenin that the U.S. would leave the country if he
did not stop interfering. We would not distribute food on a
political basis. It will only be done based on need.
That is one of the hallmarks of our aid programs,
particularly in humanitarian assistance and in health programs.
We distribute aid based on need.
Now, I understand some aid has to be distributed to our
allies--economic aid, that sort of thing. But when it comes to
the survival of people, including women, and children, and
noncombatants, we need to focus on aid distributed based on
need, not based on interest.
USAID helped the United States win the cold war more than
most people realize, even within USAID. For example, in South
Korea there are amusing stories regarding how intrusive USAID
was in the Park government in terms of forcing reforms. The
same thing happened in Taiwan, in Indonesia, and in Thailand.
In Greece and in Turkey in the early 1950's after USAID
encouraged reforms Stalin worked to destabilize both countries
in the late 1940's.
We have had remarkable successes in countries that were
extremely poor and are now developed countries in Latin
America, in Asia, and, more recently, Africa.
One of the greatest success stories--my favorite--is the
Green Revolution. That was an effort started by Dr. Norman
Borlaug, who was a professor at Texas A&M later in his life; we
have a Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture there.
The Green Revolution doubled yields in Asia at the same time
that Mao was killing 45 million Chinese through the Great Leap
Forward Famine, USAID's work increased and contributed to a
dramatic decline in famine in Asia.
In fact, a study has been done on the topic. The book is
called ``Mass Starvation'' by Alex de Waal and it came out last
year. Alex de Waal is a good friend of mine, he teaches at
Tufts. In the book, he says that with the creation of the
international humanitarian response system, there has been a
massive decline in the number of famine deaths, since 1980.
He traced famine deaths from 1870 until 2010. So, we have
empirical evidence showing that starvation deaths and famines
have massively declined at the same time that this
international response system was set up.
Now, I have mentioned in my paper four challenges. I am
running out of time now so I cannot go into them, but they are
the forced displacement crisis, the pandemic disease risk, the
risks posed by fragile and failing States, and food price
volatility (which was a major factor in the uprisings in the
Arab world). People said it was the Arab Spring. It was not a
spring. It has been a nightmare in Syria, Yemen, and Libya in
particular. There is a direct connection between food price
increases (which make people hungry when theye cannot afford
the food)--and political uprisings. The evidence--empirical
evidence from political scientists and scholars--is very
convincing in showing that there is a direct relationship.
There are three things I propose in my testimony that we
need to do to address these challenges. First, we must
decentralize back to the USAID missions. The reason we were
successful in the Cold War is that the mission directors (and,
I might add, our Ambassadors) had far greater discretion to
carry out policies and programs at the country level than we do
now. Everything has been centralized over the last 30 years,
and it is not helping things because we, in Washington, are
separated from the reality of what is going on in these
countries.
Second, we need to deregulate USAID. USAID is overburdened
with the regulatory requirement that have been imposed on it in
order, supposedly, to reduce abuse. These reporting
requirements do not reduce abuse. They just generate a huge
amount of paperwork. The abuse still takes place anyway, and it
costs USAID a lot of money to fulfill these reporting
requirements.
The third proposal is consolidation of programs. Having
USAID programs at 18 different Federal agencies is very unwise.
Those are the three reforms that I propose at the end of my
written testimony.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Natsios follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bera. Thank you.
Obviously, you have got a lot of say there and all of it
really important. I will go ahead and start the questioning.
Ms. Higginbottom--and let me frame it this way. I think it
is incredibly important for us to, you know, recognize our
veterans every day and have a day like Veterans Day to just
remind us of what they do to protect our freedoms and represent
us around the world and the sacrifice that they and their
families make.
But I do think far too often we forget about the others
that are out there representing us from our diplomats to our
aid workers to the folks that are working through the NGO's
and, you know, I just want to make sure that we do not lose
sight of that and, you know, our generals are the first ones to
admit that that partnership that they have with the development
community and the diplomatic community is incredibly important,
because it is this combination of our hard power and our soft
power.
You have been inside the building at State Department and
certainly have looked at how the department is working
currently and if you would just make a few comments on, as we
get this committee underway, some of the things that we should
be thinking about and how we best could work with the folks
inside the building.
Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think that this committee can play a really important
role in highlighting some of the challenges that both the
Foreign Service and the civil services face as well as to
understand, to your point, Ranking Member, about how to have
oversight of program and ensure we have accountability and that
we have the right processes in place for those things.
With respect to some broad areas that I think are important
for the committee to consider, we are seeing a decrease in the
number of people taking the Foreign Service exam and we are
seeing some attrition.
The building is built on the professional nature of its
Foreign and civil service employees. I think it is really
important that we understand what is happening there. We need
the best and brightest to represent us around the world and
that is really critical.
I mentioned in my testimony something that I am really
seized of and I want to just mention it again, and that is that
we do not have an enterprise wide knowledge management system
and it is inefficient and ineffective to have a personal system
that is contingent upon rotations with no clear way of
maintaining information and relationships that is organized and
centrally housed.
I think that is a critical issue. It takes investment and
it is complicated, but I think it is really, really necessary.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Natsios, you are a long-serving USAID director and,
certainly, served at a very interesting time. As you think
about your lessons and as you think about where we need to go
in aid and development, we are seeing other governments, you
know, taking a different approach, the Chinese for one
certainly how they are approaching the rest of the world.
What would, if you were to just imagine the absence of the
U.S. presence there, who is going to fill that? And then the
flip side is the importance of how should we be thinking about
this as we go forward as we think about aid and development in
the 21st century and the importance of the U.S.'s role in that
capacity and what it says to the rest of the world when the
United States shows up.
Mr. Natsios. Well, I can tell you I am a very strong
internationalist. I am right of center rather than left of
center. But that is where the bipartisan nature of this
coalition is.
There are conservative internationalists and there are
liberal internationalists, and I think we agree on more than we
disagree, frankly.
Mr. Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations,
publicly said something we all knew privately. The U.N. does
not work without American leadership. It does not. President
Bush used to have a weekly call with Kofi Annan, the U.N.
Secretary General at the time.
He would sit there and go through a list of things we
needed done and Kofi would say we need help on this or that.
They were not the best of friends, I have to tell you. They
disagreed on some issues.
But they worked together on a regular, systematic basis and
it made a difference. That relationship between the U.S. and
the U. N. is weaker now, and it has been weakening for some
time. That is not a good thing.
I am an Africanist--that is where I spent a lot of time. My
African colleagues tell me that African States that signed
these infrastructure agreements with the Chinese are kicking
themselves for failing to read the fine print.
One colleague told me that the financing agreement says if
the recipient country cannot pay the bill, the Chinese take
over their ports. I think it was in Zambia recently that the
Chinese took over a mine.
We do not do things like that. Everybody knows the United
States protectds its interests. But we have other interests,
including the broader development of poor countries.
It is in our interest to have a stable world order in which
fewer people are poor. No one thinks that the Chinese have that
anywhere in their foreign policy.
If the Chinese displace us--which I do not think they are
going to do--I think this notion the Chinese are going to take
over the system is nonsense. It is not going to happen for a
variety of reasons that are beyond this hearing.
But if it should happen, the international system will not
be functional.
Mr. Bera. Well, my sense, having traveled a lot and talked
to leaders around the world, is they would much rather the U.S.
presence be there because they know, you know, obviously, we
have our interests. But we do act in a much more benevolent way
in helping build the capacity of the countries that we are
involved in.
In my remaining time, you know, Ms. Higginbottom, you are
now at CARE International and as we think about our role in
diplomacy but, more important, aid and development, how should
we be thinking about our partnership with the NGO sector and
also, potentially, with the corporate sector?
Ms. Higginbottom. I think in the NGO sector we look at,
across the spectrum, at partnerships. That is how we work.
Whether it is with USAID or with private sector companies with
other INGO's, and I think as we see the world changing and
particularly the development landscape changing, what we see is
that official development assistance, as critical as it is, is
a very small percentage of private revenue flows that are going
into countries, and that means if we are going to be really
effective with our work we have to look across a whole range of
partnerships.
And I think as we look at State and USAID, ensuring they
have the capacity--both agencies--to develop those partnerships
and relationships and work more seamlessly across different
sectors, I think we will be much more effective and efficient
with our--with our resources.
Mr. Bera. Well, maybe expanding on that then as well,
knowing that we have limited and we certainly have challenges
that we will have to look at here domestically, I think my
perception is, it will not be the United States going it alone.
We now have multiple allies that are developed nations and
so forth and the president is not incorrect that we should be
working with them.
Maybe, Mr. Natsios or Ms. Higginbottom, how do you envision
us working with the international community? And, again, let me
couch I think the Americans should be leading because of our
leadership and our values. But what has changed from the 20th
century to the 21st century?
Mr. Natsios. I think when political systems--democratic
systems in particular but even dictatorships get under severe
stress they begin to behave differently.
And it is not just in the United States. This has been
happening across the world in other democracies. You are seeing
what is happening in Europe right now.
The Democratic Party of Sweden is actually the Nazi Party
of Sweden from the 1930's. It got 17 percent of the vote in the
last Swedish election. That is very disturbing.
The auditor general, which is a big job in this party, was
a member of the Waffen-SS. He is an old man, but he was a
member of the Waffen-SS, one of the most horrendous parts of
Hitler's structure of terror.
This party received 17 percent of the vote in Sweden
because of the immigrant issue in Europe. So it is an issue--
these issues are churning across the world.
We interviewed someone for admission to the Bush School.
She is Chilean and works in refugee issues. She told me that a
million refugees have escaped to Chile--a million.
The Refugee crisis is having an effect across the world,
and that is why people start turning inward, becoming more
protectionist, more ultra nationalist, more isolationist, and
that is not good.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Natsios, I notice that votes have gotten
called.
Mr. Zeldin, I think you can probably do your questions and
then we will recess and come back after votes.
Mr. Zeldin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier in my opening remarks I referenced the GAO report
that Congressman Perry and I recently secured the
declassification of revealed a number of concerning issues
regarding staff who failed to implement appropriate policies
and push back with the host country.
When UNRWA developed complementary teaching materials and
seminars to address concerning content following three textbook
reviews, some staff refused to attend training and workshops
and utilized this supplementary material, which countered the
content that was not aligned with U.S. values and, in many
cases, not aligned with reality.
I want to ask you this question more generally. It is not
specific to that report. But based on your experience, how did
you deal with local beneficiaries who did not implement
appropriate standards?
Mr. Natsios. Well, Congressman, I hesitate saying this, but
I will say it. It is not this committee, but this Congress and
other committees have placed draconian limits on American
diplomats and USAID officers getting out-- not just of the
capital city--but out of the mission itself.
The USAID mission in Kabul is called ``the prison" by the
USAID staff. You can go for one year on duty in Kabul and never
leave the mission. They will not let you out because of the
security restrictions.
Mr. Zeldin. Just so you know, the question, though, is with
regards to the local----
Mr. Natsios. The question is: How do you monitor programs
if you cannot go out and see them? If you to improve
accountability, you need to take the authority over our
embassies and missions out of those other committees, because
they have told everyone there is no tolerance for risk. If
there is no tolerance for risk, we should not have embassies.
We should not have missions around the world. You have to get
out of the capital city, out of the mission, and out of the
embassy to find out what is going on. These abuses are taking
place because we cannot see what is going on.
Why? Because of these security restrictions and, more
importantly, because of restrictions on how many USAID officers
and diplomats can be assigned to these countries. We hire more
Foreign Service Officersand then we cannot send them out to the
field.
I used to blame the State Department for this until I
became a diplomat and realized it is not the State Department
that is the problem. It is Congressional Committees, but it is
not the four committees that oversee Foreign Affairs.
The committees that are the problem are giving exactly
opposite instructions than all of you are giving to the State
Department and USAID, and that is the problem.
There are conflicting instructions in terms of access and
openness to get out of the capital city and the mission and the
embassy.
Mr. Zeldin. Ms. Higginbottom, if you could, I guess, just
speak to the interaction with the locals, based on your
experience. What else can we improve upon?
Ms. Higginbottom. I do--I just want to agree with what Mr.
Natsios said. The issue of how we manage risk, not how we
eliminate it, has got to be taken up and I think this committee
can play an important role because a lot of the concern we
would have about program implementation would be the limit that
we would have imposed for mobility and not having the ability
to really know what is happening in a given program.
When you do know that there are--there are a lot of
mechanisms, I think, actually to deal with staff that are not
following policy or guidelines and when it is very clearly the
case then the line management has a lot of tools at their
disposal to take action and they should.
The inspector generals at both agencies play an important
role. I met with our inspector general every week. It was not
my favorite meeting but it was really important, and I think
they can highlight critical areas where we need to focus and
where there are problems. They do inspections of embassies.
They can highlight some of these issues.
So I think there are tools. I do think the risk issue is
really important and I do think that this committee can play an
important role in helping to address that.
Mr. Zeldin. OK. So I am going to just continue based off of
your answers as opposed to--I had a couple of other followup
questions.
But I guess going back to Mr. Natsios, can you now take
your point, I guess, to the next level a little more? Is there
more specificity you can share? I know you did not--you were
not naming other committees but what can we get out of your
exchange that we can act on?
Mr. Natsios. Well, you cannot reassign responsibility
within the congressional system.
But if I had my way, the only four committees that would be
allowed to deal with the State Department and USAID would be
the four appropriators and the authorizers in the House and the
Senate.
Even though I have had disagreements with these committees
over the years, I have never seen then do things that are
damaging to either institution. But I have seen other
committees in this Congress who do not travel.
They do not know what is going on in the world, and their
objective is not the carrying out of American foreign policy or
USAID programs. It has nothing to do with party. The Democrats
and the Republicans are equally damaging to the operational
capacity of State and USAID.
I wrote a article for the Weekly Standard about 10 years
ago called ``American Fortresses,'' because the embassies often
look like medieval fortresses.
Mr. Zeldin. Well, we all have more to talk about. I know
that--I will yield back to the chair at this time because I
know we only have a few minutes left of votes.
Mr. Bera. I want to--at this time the subcommittee will
recess so that members can vote and then the hearing will
resume immediately following the votes.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Bera. The committee will come to order. I ask that, you
know, at this juncture, Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania. So we will
go to you.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate coming
directly--oh, do you want to defer to the----
Mr. Bera. OK. Thank you for that. See, we are already
acting in a bipartisan manner, as you know, working together.
What a tone.
Mr. Malinowski.
Mr. Malinowski. OK. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony earlier today and for your
patience with us as we vote.
Let me start with this question to you, Mr. Natsios. As a
general matter, I assume you would agree that when the United
States military deploys to a complicated dangerous place it is
helpful to have civilian agencies involved as well providing
humanitarian assistance, development, reconstruction, good
governance, and all of that. I presume we are in agreement.
Yes.
And Ms. Higginbottom, OK. Let me--let me apply that
principle then to a situation we are dealing with right now and
that is Syria.
A number of us, on a very bipartisan basis, over the last
few weeks and the last few days including at the Munich
Conference made an effort to try to persuade President Trump
not to follow through on his policy or tweet or whatever it was
to pull all of our forces out of that country prematurely
before the mission was complete.
And he heard us and I think, fortunately, made the decision
to retain around 400 troops with our allies as part of the
effort in that country.
But what has been lost in the debate over our presence in
Syria is that late last year the administration also made a
decision to completely end, not to spend some $230 million that
the Congress had provided for stabilization programs in Syria
because, they argued, others, particularly the Saudis, could
fill our shoes.
So I wanted to ask you, do you think that is a good idea if
we have 400 troops or any number of troops deployed in Syria to
have absolutely no civilian component to that mission?
Mr. Natsios. Congressman, I was the co-chairman of the
Committee on Human Rights in North Korea with my good friend,
Roberta Cohen, when you were assistant secretary of state. You
were our biggest supporter in granting money for investigating
the outrageous atrocities that the North Korean regime has
committed against its own people, and I do want to thank you
for that.
Mr. Malinowski. Thank you.
Mr. Natsios. It made a very great difference to us. We are
a small organization and we appreciate it. Thank you.
The first thing is that it is not about how much money we
spend. It is about who is spending it and how it is spent.
USAID has expertise in war zones that even our friends in
Europe do not have--and I think some of our friends in Europe
do some things very well.
We perhaps, because of the U.S. being a great power, have
mastered, though not completely, how to work in very difficult
places and run programs.
The Saudis have no experience in this. They do not have any
experience even in stable environments. That is point number
one.
It is not going to work with the Saudis taking over in
Syria. Second, if we are going to keep troops on the ground, we
need to have a civilian component next to them.
So I, frankly, do not support the withdrawal of these
civilian personnel from Syria. I think we are going to have to
send them back in again. I know we keep telling the Russians
and the Iranians they are going to fund the reconstruction.
I have to say the Russians do not have a lot of experience
doing reconstruction work in the developing world and the
Iranians have no experience.
Mr. Malinowski. Right. Well, we are keeping them as--so we
are actually keeping the troops with no----
Mr. Natsios. I know, but what about the civilian component?
Mr. Malinowski. Nothing. It has been completely eliminated
and, I mean, does that make our troops safer? I mean, is there
an issue potentially with--in terms of the safety of our troops
if there are no civilian eyes or ears? If we are not working
with local governments? If we are not working with NGO's on the
ground to counter extremism, which we were doing?
We were funding in Syria these extraordinary women-led
human rights organizations that operated under ISIS control
and, in my view, are the most effective counterweight to ISIS
at a time when, well, they were obviously risking their lives.
Would the Saudis fund those kinds of organizations, do you
think, if we turned it over to them?
Ms. Higginbottom. I would not expect that they would and I
agree that--Congressman, that the type of relationships and
engagements that you have with some civilian capacity in a
context like that is really important and I do think it can
have a direct contribution to the security of the troops. I am
pleased to see that there has been a shift in that--in that
posture from the president.
Mr. Malinowski. Thanks. And just, finally, a comment on a
different issue that has come up--our assistance in Palestinian
areas--and I take the point about criticism of UNRWA.
But let us also not forget that we have completely
eliminated USAID programs operating to improve water systems,
to encourage Palestinian and Israeli children to get to know
each other, to support schools.
Presumably, you do not think USAID was teaching people to
delegitimize Israel. Who do you think benefits more from the
complete elimination of those programs, Israel or Hamas?
Mr. Natsios. I think eliminating the programs helps Hamas.
That is not what the intention was by the administration, but
that is what the effect is.
I can tell you from personal experience, and I might add a
little story. When we went into Afghanistan the first thing we
did, not just to educate kids but to get them off the streets
into school, was to print 7 million textbooks from the old
royal curriculum used when the king was in power. These were at
the University of Nebraska, where there was an archive from
Afghanistan.
I had nine Afghan intellectuals--journalists, women's
groups, and academics--read all 200 textbooks to make sure
there was no anti-Semitic or anti-Russian content. (There was
anti-Russian content because of the civil war.) Female stick
figures--stick figures-- had been scratched out from all the
textbooks.
We fixed these issues and I had the Afghan intellectuals
read the books twice to make sure we did not miss anything. The
point is that there is a utility in having USAID there because
we are sensitive to these issues, and without us there I think,
frankly, the extremists will have more license.
I understand the pressure of politics. I was in the
legislature of Massachusetts for 12 years. But I think it is
unwise to shut these programs down. That is my experience.
Mr. Malinowski. Thank you. Fully agree.
Mr. Bera. Thanks, Mr. Malinowski.
And Mr. Perry from Pennsylvania.
Mr. Perry. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen,
thanks for being here. These foreign assistance dollars are
precious and, of course, I do not have to tell you or remind
you they come from the hardworking taxpayers of the 10th
District in Pennsylvania and everybody else's district here,
too. So it is really important that we safeguard them.
And, you know, oversight is important and I am sure you are
familiar with the stories of fraud and abuse and so this is the
Oversight Committee. I think it is important to highlight some
of these things and then just have a discussion about it.
There is a 2018 report that assistance provided to
Afghanistan through the reconstruction trust fund was at risk
for misuse. The special inspector general for Afghanistan
reconstruction who was appointed by Congress stated that once
the U.S. or any other donor provided its contributions to
fund--to the fund, neither the World Bank nor USAID could
account for how those funds were specifically spent.
There is also--this goes back a way--but, you know,
because, Mr. Natsios, I have listened to some of your comments
and also Ms. Higginbottom. I want to get to some of those about
why this is happening if you are not able to monitor correctly.
But this goes back to 2013. An investigation by the Wall
Street Journal found that more than 20 percent of the malaria
drugs sent to Africa under the president's Malaria Initiative
were stolen or diverted each year and then sold on the black
market.
Is the circumstance that you have described where the risk
assessment or the aversion to risk is so great that we are not
letting the people that would oversee--that staff that oversee
these funds and these programs, is that--is that something
fairly new?
Is that the--let us be candid--is that the advent of this
administration or does it go prior to this administration?
Mr. Natsios. Oh, no. This goes back 20 years. This goes
back to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in
the 1990's. I wrote an article, as I said, for Weekly Standard
in 2006 called ``American Fortress.''
But it was based on what had happened earlier. This is now
new at all.
Mr. Perry. So----
Mr. Natsios. And it is not just in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is across the world.
Mr. Perry. Across the spectrum. So when the IG does
inspections and finds these flaws and the lost money, so to
speak, or the evidence of lost money, do they include in their
report the circumstances, and why is that? Do you know?
Mr. Natsios. Well, I am being very candid here.
The special IG for Afghan reconstruction is outrageous in
some of the accusations he makes. I will give you an example.
He said: we went to a school that USAID rebuilt. There was no
one in the school. That is true.
You know why there was no one in the school? Taliban had
taken out the headmaster and beheaded him in front of all the
teachers and the children. If your child watched the headmaster
being be headed,--would you send your child back to the school?
Of course the school was empty. He did not mention that in
the audit, however. In fact, their people did not even go to
see for themselves. They sent someone else from one of the
ministries to go in. Half of his staff has never even been to
Afghanistan.
I think the regulators overstepping, and I say that
carefully. The IG for USAID, in my view, does very good work.
But he has to be in competition to find more abuse than the
special IG. They compete with each other, and if he does not
show that he is saving money, his budget gets cut by the
Congress.
I wrote an article about this in 2010 called, ``The Clash
of the Counter-Bureaucracy and Development.'' You can access it
on the website of the Center for Global Development.
I would urge you to read it--I know it is a long article
but your staff could read it. It discusses the consequences of
these systems that have been set up. When you have competing
IGs to see who can find more abuse, you get inaccurate
reporting.
Are there problems in USAID? Absolutely. But half the
problems that I have seen they got reported by the IG because
they never discovered them.
Ms. Higginbottom. If I could just add very briefly, I think
that as USAID and State, to a certain extent, have come up with
new ways to try to monitor when they are limited in access,
particularly in places like Afghanistan, questioning the
efficacy of those frameworks I think is worthwhile because they
are really committed to ensuring that the programs that are
being funded work and that they are not subject to fraud.
But I think there is a good conversation to have to see
whether that oversight--the accountability framework that USAID
and State are doing is effective and I do think that the risk
issue is more acute in some places than others. But post-
Benghazi it is more--it has been more constrained.
Mr. Perry. Sure. So what is the--if we are not--you know,
these are all policymakers up here interested in making sure
that you have the resources that you need, that American
foreign policy and interests are furthered and that is what we
are doing here.
So and we count on things like the IG, right? I mean, that
is what we are supposed to do. We are not there and they are,
allegedly. So is there--what is the mechanism for people
inside--and thanks for the indulgence, Mr. Chairman--inside the
organizations?
What is the--what is the internal mechanism? Is there an
internal mechanism when you--you said, you know, they are not
reporting on half the things that you saw that apparently you
found problematic at some level.
Is there a mechanism for you to find a way to report and
make sure the right thing is done?
Mr. Natsios. As Administrator, I used to meet with the IG
every week. We had a very good relationship. When I saw
something wrong I would tell him: I want you to go in and find
out what is going on here.
There are two functions of the IG. One is to make sure the
management systems work properly and conduct do financial
audits. That is sacrosanct. We cannot touch that.
The other function is to look into fraud and abuse. Most of
the things that the IG investigates USAID officers report.
The IG does not discover the abuse. We discover the abuse
and we call in the IG. I can give you a lot of examples--some
of them entertaining, some of them very disturbing.
But the staff calls up the IG--that is the standard
procedure in USAID. If you discover something wrong and you do
not report it, you can get fired for not reporting.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Perry, if I can also--I would like that to be
part of our role as congressional oversight as well. You know,
if we are authorizing and appropriating funds for programs I do
think it is part of our responsibility to say are these
programs actually working the way they are--are we using the
taxpayer dollars in the most effective way.
And, you know, if programs are working really well in one
part of the world, you know, certainly, thinking about how you
take that and, you know, if programs are not working or funds
are not being used the way we intended them to be used as
Congress.
I also think it is our responsibility to expose that and--
--
Mr. Perry. Without a doubt, and I appreciate the chairman's
indulgence. And for the purposes of the discussion, it seems to
me that there is somewhat of a breakdown in the system here and
maybe, you know, while we rely on the IG as well is there any
way reconcile between what the folks that work for the agency
report to the IG and what the IG reports to us, right? I mean--
--
Mr. Natsios. The special IG for Iraq reconstruction was
more responsible than the one in Afghanistan, in my view. I
worked with the guy. I sent the IG into Iraq. When the Marines
took the city, the IG and the USAID officers were right behind
them.
The mission director called me up and said, Andrew, could
you have given me a month to set the systems up before you sent
the IG in? I told him, ``I do not want any problems". We had
one contract that got screwed up.
Guess where the contract was? The U.S. Air Force. We asked
the Air Force auditors to look into it. It was a corrupt
contract, and we had to dump the whole thing. That is the only
contract that got screwed up.
Mr. Perry. Well, as two Army guys, look, we like picking on
the Air Force but that is another--Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Natsios. I am Army too or I would not have told you the
story.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Bera. Well, and I know Mr. Espaillat is on his way over
here. You know, I have additional questions. So since we do
have a little bit of time we will go and do a second round of
questions if you also have questions.
I am conscious and supportive of what Mr. Perry brought up
in terms of, you know, we do have a responsibility to use the
taxpayer dollars in the most effective way and in conversation
with the current USAID administrator, Ambassador Green, I
really do think the shift to capacity building and looking at
the assets in the countries that we are going into and trying
to, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all, saying, you know, each
country in each situation is specific.
Ms. Higginbottom, we had a chance to travel together to
Europe and I think there are some specific examples of how
CARE, working with USAID and the U.S. Government, are doing
some specific programs to help empower women in villages to
care for themselves.
And if you want to share some of those, you know, because
those are not ones that demand donations from the United States
in the long term. What it is doing is building self-
sufficiency.
Ms. Higginbottom. Yes, thank you. A lot of the care
programming is really aimed at how we build capacity over time,
how we make sustained investments, not--I mean, we do
humanitarian response. We respond to emergencies.
But we also look at investments we can make that can really
lift up communities and we do that with a lot of USG support,
with a lot of resources from the USAID as well as other
partners, and we have a variety of different programs. We saw
some in Sierra Leone and the idea--and I think it is consistent
with Administrator Green's approach--to get a path to self-
reliance.
We want to lift whole communities out and one of the
reasons why--the principal reason why we have over time come to
focus on women and girls is that the data shows that by
targeting not just women and girls--we benefit boys and men as
well--but by targeting them we see that there are greater
returns in terms of investment in health care and education for
their children and it lifts them up into becoming
entrepreneurs.
We have an incredibly powerful--it is called the Village
Savings and Loan Association. They are small savings groups but
they are much more than that. They become really a platform to
save some money but also to become empowered in communities and
make permanent and sustained change.
I think that is the type of development assistance that we
know is successful and that works and that over time should
become really the lever that lifts these countries.
Mr. Natsios was talking earlier about countries that were
once the recipient of aid and are now our trading partners--
some of the biggest countries in the world. That is our
objective with the approach on poverty reduction.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Natsios, in the remaining time that I have
left, your focus on Africa, and when we think about there is
many things that we should be focused on in Africa.
You know, one, that I spend a lot of time worried about is
the youth bulge that we are seeing in sub-Saharan Africa and,
you know, a large population of young people, young men, who
may not have anything to do--you know, potentially
destabilizing to the region, et cetera.
And I would just be curious if we were thinking about how
we approach that and how we are approaching it and, again,
sticking with what is working, what is not working--you know,
just in the remaining minute and a half I would be curious
about your thoughts on that.
Mr. Natsios. First, when I became administrator one of the
first things we did was set up the Office of Conflict
Mitigation and Management. Some people said, ``Why? That's the
State Department's job." I said, diplomatically it is.
Developmentally, we can do things that cause conflict if we are
not careful, and we can do things that prevent conflict if we
are strategic in our planning.
We asked how many of the 70 missions had civil wars or
major conflicts in the preceding 5 years. Sixty percent. Sixty
percent had major conflicts.
I asked this office to intergrate ways to deal with that
into their country strategis. The research showed that the
youth bulge and illiteracy are correlated with conflict. The
young men who join these militias in West Africa, in Yemen, and
in other places are often illiterate and unemployed.
So the youth bulge is affecting the stability of the world
order, even if we do not see it. It is at the grassroots level,
and when we begin to study what is causing this, it is very
interesting.
We sent teams in with the State Department and DOD in 2003
into the Sahelian region to see why people were joining al-
Qaida--I think it is called al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
now.
They started interviewing young men. It was not poverty
that was causing them to join. It was the sense of belonging,
of purpose in life. Most of them were not Islamists. They had
no theological training. They did not even know what that
meant. They were being propagandized by the leaders who were
using them for this purpose.
But it is the same mentality for young people--young men
particularly but young women now, to joining gangs in L.A. and
Central America and other places.
So what we have noticed is if you can get these vulnerable
young people into youth groups--more soccer teams--it helps.
When I first saw this I asked why we were spending money on
soccer teams. My staff told me, ``do you want them joining
militias or a soccer team?" I chose the soccer team.
You will notice in the USAID RFPs that workforce planning
for youth is now a much bigger theme in all of USAID
programming. I have noticed it much more than when I was in
office.
Mr. Bera. So it is a worthwhile area for us to pay
attention to.
Mr. Natsios. It is a very worthwhile area.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin has been kind enough to let me go to
Mr. Espaillat from New York first. Then we will come back to
Mr. Zeldin.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chairman.
Violence and illicit trafficking in Latin America and the
Caribbean has become a more serious problem and I think that it
deserves further attention from the U.S.
I believe we need to do more with the State Department's
Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and the Central America
Regional Security Initiative Programs to curve the persistent
violence in the region.
Now, previously, many of these countries, so like
transported drugs to the north, to the U.S., and they were
involved in that aspect of the trade. But now there seems to
also be a very dangerous and persistent code of violence in
those urban cities of those countries that need to be addressed
as well.
And so what are--what are some of the recommendations that
you can share with us today and with regards to improving the
situation regarding this violence and illicit trafficking in
Latin America and the Caribbean?
Ms. Higginbottom. Just a couple of comments and ask Mr.
Natsios to jump in.
I think that it is clearly an issue. It is impacting us
directly, whether it is because of migration and drivers there
or because of the drug trade itself.
I think we can look at the success of Plan Colombia for
some lessons learned when we have a long-term sustained
commitment. We talked about an incredibly fragile State,
dealing with many of those issues. Now over 15 years later we
get to Paz, Colombia and we see a different opportunity.
I think the investment in the Northern Triangle of Central
America where we see a lot of those conditions is absolutely
critical to both addressing the drivers of migration but also
encountering, you know, the cartels and the drugs that are--and
the gangs in that area that are driving it.
During the last administration we made a significant
increased investment there. It is a longer-term commitment that
takes some time to address the violence and the corruption and
the security issues. But I think that is critical to maintain.
Mr. Espaillat. But in addition to the sort of like
traditional law enforcement efforts that could be augmented via
additional funding, what are some of the social programs beyond
the soccer leagues, right, that could help relieve the
situation locally and also curtail the migration problem?
Ms. Higginbottom. Yes. What I have seen, particularly in
the Northern Triangle countries, is a combination of things.
You are working with law enforcement. You are doing
training. You are cracking down on corruption. You are working
with the three governments to ensure they are making
commitments to follow through.
But there is a lot of programming for kids and young
people, A, to give them something to do to keep them out of the
gangs, to protect their safety. They are complicated to
implement in certain very, very dangerous places but when done
well are very successful, and I visited many of them when I was
at the State Department and I think sustaining that investment
is really important.
But it has to be alongside a crackdown on corruption and
really focusing on law enforcement as well.
Mr. Natsios. Can I just add to that?
Mr. Espaillat. Sure.
Mr. Natsios. There is a part of that program, just to drill
down a little further, that Ms. Higinbottom is referring to
that looks at the indices that help us understand whether a kid
is vulnerable to being recruited into the gang.
What USAID and its partner organizations have done in those
three countries--and this is based, by the way, on a model used
in L.A. to keep kinds out of the gangs is identify what all
those risk factors are, the figure out which kids are
vulnerable, then put them in specific programs that reduce the
vulnerability based on the factor that put them in the category
in the first place.
They are showing a substantial decline in gang membership
as a result of this system. So the programs work. But the
biggest problem--and this is something, Mr. Chairman, that I
strongly urge the committee to consider--is the time horizon.
USAID programs do work. They take 10 to 15 years sometimes
to work. When we cut a program halfway through, we wipe out
half the investment because it takes 10 years--sometimes 15
years, particularly in democracy programs--change to occur.
So one of the things this committee can do is look at the
time horizon problem.
Now, if there is mismanagement, I am not saying you should
not absolutely look at it. We are not talking about
mismanagement. But if you want to see results, realize that the
Green Revolution took 30 years to implement. Thirty years.
I am the chairman of a the board of Harvest Plus, a member
of CGIAR, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural
Research. Harvest Plus breeds plants for micro-nutrients--
specifically zinc, iron, and vitamin A--to address micro-
nutrient deficiencies among the poor in developimg countries.
The reason I am bringing this up is that it will take 30
years to fully inplement this program. Harvest Plus has bred
these micro nutrients into 298 crops grown by poor people in
the developing world. We have proved this can work. Now we have
to get the seed out to farmers in a sustainable way. It is
going to take at least 15 years, additional years to do that.
Washington policy makers want want immediate results. I
say, how are you going to get the seed out to a billion people
in a year? It takes years to do this stuff.
Mr. Espaillat. Yes. Mr. Chairman, just to conclude, and
these programs, obviously, cost money and this current
administration continues to repeatedly send to Congress
requests for deep cuts, and so that is, obviously, a major,
major problem that--there is a perception out there that we are
giving away everything when in fact foreign aid is just
minuscule in regards to the entire budget and there is proposed
cuts to begin with.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Natsios. I do not support these cuts, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin.
Mr. Zeldin. USAID put forth a plan to partially reorganize
a lot of consultation with Congress. I do not know if you had
any thoughts you wanted to share that would be pertinent to the
topic of this hearing with regards to the plan the USAID
Administrator Green has.
Ms. Higginbottom. I will just say one brief thing because I
know you will have a lot to say. I think that there are some--
it seems to be, from my perspective, some really good ideas.
How they are implemented is really important.
But when I look at, for example, the proposal to bring the
food and nutrition programs into--to stop isolating them and
bring them into more comprehensive that is just aligned with
the way we do programming, for example, that we know is much
more effective when it is combined with other interventions.
I think there is a lot of logic there. From what I have
understood from the proposals there is still a lot to learn
about its implementation.
Mr. Natsios. When I was the director of OFDA--the Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance--which was our emergency response
mechanism in USAID for famines, civil wars, and disasters like
earthquakes, we considered seriously merging Food for Peace and
OFDA together.
If Bush 41 had been elected to a second term, we were going
to implement it. We were seriously considering it.
Mark Green just did it 2 weeks ago and he asked me for
support. This has nothing to do with the Trump administration.
We were considering doing this 30 years ago.
So I strongly support what Mark Green is doing. If I
thought he was damaging the agency, I would say it in public.
He is not damaging the agency. I think he is a very good
administrator. He was a good choice. He is an honorable guy. He
is trying to do the right thing.
Now, do I agree with every single detail of everything he
is doing? No. But the reorganization you are talking about,
Congressman, I support and as I said before, we were
considering it in 1992.
Mr. Zeldin. Any other specific suggestions that you want to
throw out there for our consideration and his?
Mr. Natsios. Regarding the oversight functions, a council
needs to be formed of the special IGs, the IG for USAID. The
OMB, the GAO, and the Congressional Oversight Committees.
A council should be formed statutorily to meet and
coordinate so they are not auditing the same program in the
same country at the same time. We had three different agencies
auditing capacity building in Iraq in the middle of a war.
We spent much of our time responding to three different
agencies auditing the same program. That is a waste of taxpayer
money while our people and soldiers are getting killed.
We lost 300 people in Iraq, 600 in Afghanistan, while we
were in the middle of answering three different audits by three
different agencies. It is too much.
Ms. Higginbottom. I would add a couple of things that are a
bit different. One there is, in the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy
and Development Review, some recommendations about how to
increase efficiencies across the two agencies that I think
regardless of administration this is--this is separate from any
sort of strategic priorities I think are important.
One of them that I led was a joint strategic planning
exercise across the two agencies--that does not happen
anymore--as well as joint reviews, and the reason for that--
there is some tension, of course, between what development
priorities and what foreign policy or diplomatic priorities we
might have in certain places.
But the fact of coordinating and communicating and
collaborating is just a more efficient use of our dollars and
it does not--it does not subjugate one department's priorities
to the other.
It is really about coordination and making sure. In
Washington, we have the same level of understanding that you
might have in a mission or an embassy, which does not--is not
always the case.
And also I would say--Mr. Natsios said something earlier
about empowering the field. One very practical thing--when the
State Department begins its budget and planning process it
starts at the mission and it comes up to the bureaus and then
eventually to the--and at State it is the--excuse me, at USAID
it is the other way, and I think there is a lot of inefficiency
in having those processes sort of start in different places and
end up differently. They need to be separate processes but they
should be better aligned.
Mr. Natsios. We used to do planning at the mission level,
but because nearly every dollar is earmarked in USAID, we had
to tell the missions, ``These are the earmarks that they are
going to get imposed, and you need to plan accordingly.".
The old system, for 40 years in USAID, was that everything
was done from the bottom up. Now, everything is earmarked.
There is no discretion left.
Mr. Zeldin. Briefly, I just have just over a minute left.
Switching over to State Department and the special envoy
positions, Secretary Tillerson was starting to look at the five
dozen or so special envoys. Are there any that your--that you
have identified as wanting to elevate higher?
Are there any positions--any of the special envoy positions
that you think are unnecessary? Do you have any thoughts that
you want to share as far as----
Ms. Higginbottom. I think from a--excuse me--from a process
perspective, I think there should be a regular and I would do a
every one-or 2-year review of the special envoy offices.
Many are congressionally mandated. Others are appointed
because at a moment in time you need them and those are
important and we should not say all special envoys are bad, in
my opinion.
But some are outdated and it is not a great use of
resources. We did that under Secretary Kerry's leadership and
we got rid of a bunch. It was not the most popular thing within
the building but it was the way that we could then say we need
a special envoy to counter ISIL or another--a strategic
priority.
So I think it is an important regular process that should--
that should occur in the State Department in terms of
currently. I do not think my--I am as familiar with the current
spectrum but I think they should be regularly reviewed and they
should be presented to Congress as well.
Mr. Natsios. I was a special envoy myself under President
Bush for Sudan. I think I did a pretty good job under difficult
circumstances in the middle of two terrible civil wars.
Still, we have to understand the effect this has on the
assistant secretaries when we put special envoys in to do their
job, because that is what is happening.
Now, are there situations in which you need a special envoy
for a major crisis that requires someone's full attention. Yes,
there are, and I agree with Ms. Higginbotom that saying all
special envoys are a bad idea is not wise.
However, having 50 special envoys is excessive. Why do you
have a State Department, then? Why are there assistant
secretaries? What are they left to do?
I know it is very difficult from a political standpoint to
get rid of some of these titles. But from a management
standpoint, it does not make any sense.
Mr. Zeldin. My time is up. I will yield back to the chair.
Ms. Omar. Thank you. And in line with some of the things
that sometimes does not make any sense, Ms. Higginbottom, it
seems that sometimes our humanitarian goals under--are under
cut by other parts of U.S. foreign policy.
To me, there seems to be--an emblematic example is the
horrific situation that is happening in Yemen. Money for
humanitarian aid does not seem to be a problem.
We sent over $700 million trying to alleviate the enormous
human suffering that is taking place in Yemen but it cannot get
to the people because of the political and the military
realities there.
And one of those realities is that under the Obama and
Trump administration we have been militarily supporting the
Saudi-led coalition. I was proud to co-sponsor the Yemen War
Powers Resolution and my question to you is to kind of think
about the big picture.
Is it the case that our diplomacy and development
objectives sometimes seem to severely undercut our military and
political objectives?
Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you, Congresswoman. I mean, the
situation--the humanitarian situation in Yemen is just awful.
It is one of the worst crises, obviously, in the world. There
is 80 million--80 percent of the, excuse me, of the Yemeni
population that is in need of humanitarian assistance.
We have a very large program with CARE trying to address
some of those needs. I can speak to my perspective from the
Obama Administration in which we were deeply engaged in trying
to support a political solution--a peace solution--and had
quite a deep involvement in that, which is ultimately how we
are going to reduce the violence, and I think that diplomacy
and engaging in that is critical important.
Obviously, you know, we find ourselves facing just an
absolutely horrific crisis there and we have got to figure out
what are the steps forward now.
Mr. Natsios. If I could just add.
Ms. Omar. Yes, I actually was going to have you answer this
question for me. Would you explain why a focus on humanitarian
aid and human rights and development are important from a
national security standpoint?
Mr. Natsios. Sometimes there is a conflict between defense
and development, Congresswoman. I watched it. I would get
enraged sometimes. But this has been going on for 70 years. It
is not new, though sometimes it is more public than it used to
be.
Food was used as a weapon against North Korea during the
nuclear negotiations 25 years ago when there was a famine and 2
1/2 million people died. I was part of the NGO community. I was
vice president of World Vision and we had a coalition to stop
using food as a weapon in diplomacy.
President Bush said we would never do it, and he did not
for the 8 years he was President, I do not think President
Obama did it either while he was in office.
There are clear tensions, and you have to make a judgment
as to what is most important and whether aid is appropriate to
use in achieving other ends. For me, using food aid as a weapon
in negotiations is like blaming the people who have been the
object of atrocities for the atrocity.
They are not the ones that caused the problem. The people
who are dying in a famine are usually weak, vulnerable people
who have no way of protecting themselves. Why are we punishing
them?
Sometimes we fail to consider the ethical consequences of
what we are doing. With respect to Yemen, I wrote an op-ed
piece with the former director of OFDA--the Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance--in the Obama Administration. It was a
bipartisan op-ed criticizing the Saudi government's blockade.
And we timed it for the Saudi Crown Prince's visit. He
apparently got a little upset that it appeared in the newspaper
when he arrived.
Ms. Omar. Yes.
Mr. Natsios. Then, President Trump actually issued a tweet
attacking the Saudis for doing this, and they suspended the
blockade for a few months, but then they reimposed it.
Reimposing it was not ethical. You have to consider the
ethical consequences of this.
Ms. Omar. So we are in agreement that humanitarian aid
should never be politicized?
Mr. Natsios. I do not think it should be politicized and I
have spent 30 years of my career trying to prevent that from
happening.
Ms. Higginbottom. I agree with that.
Ms. Omar. I appreciate that. I yield back my time.
Mr. Bera. Mr. Zeldin, if you do not have any additional
questions----
Mr. Natsios. Now, let me just add one little qualification.
Mr. Bera. Please.
Mr. Natsios. If we find out that large amounts of food aid
is being diverted by the regime or by any combatants or
militias, then we must stop the program. That is what we found
in North Korea. The North Koreans were diverting food.
I sent someone up, under cover, to the Chinese border with
North Korea to interview refugees. We found that 40 to 60
percent of the food was being diverted by the secret police and
the military. So I ended the program. We did it very quietly,.
But the aid was not going to the people who were supposed to
get it.
That is a legitimate reason for ending it. That is not
politicizing the aid. The purpose of the aid is to feed hungru
people.
Mr. Bera. And part of our job as oversight----
Mr. Natsios. Yes.
Mr. Bera [continuing]. Is to make sure our aid and
humanitarian efforts are getting to the folks that we are
actually trying to help.
Mr. Natsios. Exactly. Exactly.
Mr. Bera. Sure. Go ahead.
Ms. Omar. Can you think of an example where a country that
we might send humanitarian aid into can see it as inciting
violence within that country?
Mr. Natsios. Well, you might get that view point, if you
talk to Omar al-Bashir, who I dealt with for 30 years as the
president of Sudan, and who may be leaving office shortly,
involuntarily, given the uprising going on in northern Sudan
right now. He saw all of the humanitarian aid as helping his
opponents and prolonging the war.
He said, ``If you would only stop the aid, all these people
would stop fighting." I said, ``They will stop fighting because
they will all be dead. That is what you want to happen."
I understood what he was saying, and he did argue that some
of the food was being diverted and we had to be careful not to
let that happen--to let aid get to the rebels, for example, in
Darfur.
But 2 million people's villages were burned down. Thirty-
eight hundred villages were burned by the Janjaweed in
cooperation with the Sudanese government. Are we supposed to
just ignore that? Three hundred thousand people died in Darfur.
Ms. Omar. Yes. Well, thank you. I think we are in agreement
that sometimes in particular situations, depending on who is
looking at it, sometimes we can see it as being diverted and we
can--we can have a moral clarity and ethical understanding of
why we are doing it, and sometimes people within those nations
can look at it as having an alternative motive in getting
involved and sending that aid.
And so there is a balance and oftentimes we have to be
cautious of towing the line and making sure that we are not
being seen as bad actors intervening in other people's affairs.
Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Thank you.
I want to thank both of the witnesses for being here. We
will get you to your plane on time and----
Mr. Natsios. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Bera [continuing]. Again, we look forward to continuing
to work with both your organizations and both of you as well.
So thank you.
Mr. Natsios. Thank you very much.
Ms. Higginbottom. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bera. With that, I adjourn.
[Whereupon, at 4:39 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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