Reuters: How to fix foreign aid
Paul Brinkley, former deputy under secretary of defense and founding director of the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations from 2004-20ll

“…America’s inability to provide even symbolic access to economic opportunity is crippling our image abroad. The mistaken belief that the United States is the great rebuilder of postwar countries — a belief that stems from the U.S.-funded aid to the postwar economic expansions in Japan, Germany and South Korea — has fostered expectations that our diplomatic and foreign aid institutions cannot fulfill. … Re-establishing foreign assistance as a stand-alone organization is an essential first step to solving our broken foreign assistance system. USAID could be free to refocus on its core mission of humanitarian aid — and be better able to excel at it again. We could then move to take a fresh look at economic development and how to best leverage all elements of U.S. capability, from our vibrant private sector to our academic institutions. After a decade of lackluster results in spite of billions of dollars of taxpayer investment, this fresh look is long overdue” (2/25).