Representative Kay Granger(R-FL) is the chairwoman of the United States House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. That means she heads up the subcommittee in the House of Representatives that evaluates the State department and makes recommendations to the full Appropriations committee on how many federal dollars should be allocated to the various agencies and programs of the Executive branch that deal with foreign aid.
In the opening statements of the fiscal year 2012 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations, Rep. Granger made the following comments:
The State and Foreign Operations budget makes up only one percent of our federal spending. However, we have to cut spending in every part of the federal budget and this bill is no exception. This year’s spending will return many of the accounts back to the FY2008 levels.
But more than just cut how much we spend, this bill reforms how we spend. It strengthens the transparency and the oversight tools we have to ensure that the American people get a solid return on their investment. We don’t claim that this bill has all the answers. We do claim it asks the right questions. This bill reforms and refocuses the way we deliver our foreign aid.
First, this bill asks the most important question we can ever ask: how does each program we fund impact our national security interest? [Italics added.] If that question couldn’t be answered, we reduced the spending, added restrictions, or cancelled the program altogether.
Notice the italicized clause. Her committee is responsible for reviewing and recommending funding for foreign aid programs and by her question it appears she believes in the idea that foreign aid has an affect on national security. But what is national security?
National security is sometimes said to consist of three Ds and likened to a three legged stool:
- The first leg is Defense carried out by Department of Defense military forces deployed to protect us from hostile forces.
- The second leg is Diplomacy carried out by the State Department ambassadors, diplomats, and their staff responsible for keeping and building peaceful relationships between the United States and the other governments of the world.
- The third leg is Development carried out mostly the the United States Agency for International Development (an agency within the State Department) and is responsible for two goals according to its website About page:
- “…furthering America’s foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets…”
- ” …improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world.”
USAID’s website also states, “Spending less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget, USAID works around the world to achieve these goals.”
Notice that the two goals of USAID are very different. The first goal is essentially assisting our strategic partners (think Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia, etc.) to become more democratic and open their markets to U.S. trade. The other goal is to help citizens of developing world. Also notice the word poverty is not in either of USAID’s goals. One might assume the second goal is about ending poverty, and that is usually the purpose of USAID’s health and education programs, but that purpose is not explicit.
Consider that the two goals of USAID can sometimes conflict with each other. Expanding democracy and opening up less developed countries to international trade can sometimes reduce the living standards of the very poor in those countries. Impoverished, rural farmers with agricultural based on manual labor cannot successfully compete with with imported food or commodity crops like cotton grown in developed countries with government subsidized agriculture based on mechanized production.
So, when Rep. Granger speaks of national security, what is she really talking about? Improved diplomacy? More aid to strategic partners? More aid to impoverished citizens of foreign countries? A combination of the three?
One good outcome of the subcommittee’s review is that perhaps by at least using the goal of improving national security (whatever that is), more money can be freed up for programs that do improve national security. BUT without U.S. citizens identifying and sharing what they consider national security to be, I’m afraid that like beauty, national security will be what the beholders, in this case Rep. Granger and the other appropriators, believe it to be.
Mental telepathy is not a Constitutional requirement for any member of Congress. That’s why it’s so important for citizens to tell their Congressional representatives what national security is.
With respect to a definition for national security, the following is offered from the NSA: “National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy.”
With respect to “…the use of economic…power…”, the NSA adds the “marshalling [of] economic power to facilitate or compel cooperation.”
As the ‘Reluctant Activist’ shares with us, there are many definitions for “national security”; however, the U.S. Government, at its highest-level security agency, indicates in its definition that economic power is to be faciliated to compel cooperation between the U.S. and other nations, governments or entities. In this sense, it is suggested that economic power is another tool that can be used for coercing others to accept our viewpoints and agendas.
Just a thought to hash over.