Humanitarian Aid and NGOs

For my transnational politics class today, I invited three guest panelists from the humanitarian/non-profit sector. Pete from Food for the Hungry, Brendan from Save the Children and Lynn from National Endowment for Democracy. Unfortunately, Lynn fell victim to the swine flu so we only had two panelists.

The panel discussion was not only informative and inspiring for students, but for me as well. Pete's story - from a logger in Montana to the director of policy with FH - and his recent experiences in Indonesia and Afghanistan were particularly inspirational. A few things I learned from the panel and students' questions.

1. NGO Vocabulary:
- The 3 M's (Military, mercenary, missionary): This was in reference to the three types of groups involved in aid work. Mercenaries are the contractors, and NGOs who follow the money (or the military). Missionaries (not necessarily in the religious sense) are those who are genuinely concerned about the people and there to bring change/improvement.
- The 3 Ds (defense, diplomacy, development): What's needed to bring stability, good governance, and improve quality of life in places like Afghanistan.

2. Afghanistan:
Pete just returned from an assessment trip to see whether and how FH could get back into Afgh, and returned a bit discouraged. A lot of money is going to waste. While aid has been pouring into the country, it hasn't been used efficiently or wisely. As an anecdote, Pete mentioned how a friend in a different NGO said it cost a million dollars just to "open-shop" and 90% of the funds were spent on providing security to the workers and operations. This doesn't even get into the corruption issue. Only a small percentage is being used directly to provide aid for people on the ground.

3. Value chain
Brendan, who's working on aid reform, mentioned the importance of the "value chain" -working on projects which provide added value to other projects. For instance, delivering food aid requires establishing a distribution system. FH might help farmers grow crops, but if they sit in storage and can't be distributed efficiently, they end up rotting, and everything goes to waste.

4. Working with corrupt or despotic regimes
In relief or disaster work, sometimes you have to work through the corruption if you're going to save lives.

5. Militarization of Aid
As a long term trend, the development sector needs to think carefully about delegating humanitarian tasks to the military. However, the US Navy's role in the 2005 Tsunami relief effort demonstrates the military's potential for effective and efficient mobilization of disaster relief. Although the US military sometimes acts before it thinks, in the tsunami relief effort, the quick response saved thousands of lives. On the other hand, after an earthquake in X region, FH requested the UN to helicopter in FH's disaster kits. However, the UN stated they hadn't processed all the necessary paperwork. The helicopters stood idle on the launch pad for eight days as NGOs waited for approval. Meanwhile, with each passing hour, the death toll climbed.

6. Protecting NGO workers in security scarce zones
FH's protection comes through relationships rather than guns. In other words, they are basing their protection by gaining trust from the locals.

For more on these issues, here's a recent book on humanitarian assistance and foreign policy: Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1939

Coburn Bill to Cut NSF Funding to Political Science Defeated

"After a cloture vote on November 5, the Senate voted on the Coburn's amendment and soundly defeated it by a margin of 36-62" - APSA website. See APSA president Henry Brady's letter to the Senate stating the value of poltical science research.

Mr. Kim's Scam?

A sobering reminder to those (including myself) with rising expectations whenever NK discusses "engagement." North Korea has perfected its gamesmenship over three US presidents now. As the Post editorial writes, the scam goes something like this:

Pyongyang raises tension by firing off missiles, ejecting inspectors from its nuclear facilities, testing bombs and promising to produce more. Then it turns conciliatory, suggesting it might be willing to freeze its nuclear program and even begin to dismantle it in exchange for economic and political concessions. Next it begins talks, collecting as much in cash and diplomatic recognition as it can from Washington and its Asian allies. Finally, it breaks off the process before it has taken any irreversible step to give up its weapons or the means to produce them.

Hard and Human Security: North Korea and Iran?

I met my former dissertation adviser at a conference in Baltimore earlier this month, and shared with him my research ideas related to North Korea. He was OK about the use of network analysis, but troubled by a study focusing on just one country. He sees a fixation on one country as a bad career move. Instead, I should make NK one case of a larger theoretical problem. Iran immediately popped to mind.

Iran and NK are both nuclear proliferaters with dubious human rights practices where the US focuses almost exclusively on the former and treads lightly on the latter. However, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has made a pointed case that supporting democracy (i.e. the opposition) and human rights (those arrested or beaten after the June election unrest) can result in both moral and tactical benefits.

But paying so much more attention to Iran's nuclear ambitions than to its trampling of democracy and freedom is a mistake both tactical and moral. The Post writes:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "is at the lowest level of popularity one can imagine," Ms. Ebadi said. "If the West focuses exclusively on the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad can tell his people that the West is against Iran's national interest and rally people to his cause. But if the West presses also on its human rights record, he will find himself in a position where his popular base is getting weaker and weaker by the day."

Ms. Ebadi suggested that the nature of Iran's regime is more crucial to U.S. security than any specific deals on nuclear energy. Iran's people are not as wedded to the nuclear program as the regime wants outsiders to believe. A democratic government would be unlikely to build a nuclear bomb, she said, and even if it did, the weapon would not be a threat in the hands of a government that would not view America or Israel as enemies. By contrast, she argued, even a seemingly ironclad nuclear agreement with Mr. Ahmadinejad might be of little value: "Imagine if the government actually promised to stop its nuclear program tomorrow. Would you trust this government not to start another secret nuclear program somewhere else?"

Hmmm...we could ask this same question about trust in signing an agreement w/Kim Jong Il. Unfortunately, in NK there is no visible opposition to work with. We only have the regime to work with. However, as with all governments, hard-liners and moderates do exist within the regime. If there's a way to identify and sway moderates, and perhaps open the country to the outside, could a more credible nuclear deal be struck?

Relevance of NATO

A few weeks we talked about "security communities" in my grad seminar on the role of ideas and identity in IR. Thanks to a North Atlantic identity, NATO endures even in the absence of a Soviet threat. Anne Applebaum, however, seems to disagree. She writes:

The fact is that the idea of "the West" has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless "whither-the-Alliance" seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Applebaum's evidence is found in the way that countries frame the Afghan War. She notes that countries are not discussing the Afghan War as an international operation. Rather, national governments and the media portray sacrifices in nationalistic terms rather than as a collective enterprise. I suspect this is partially for domestic consumption, and perhaps elites privately concur that this is an international concern.

Political Science: Methods and the Policy-Academic Divide

In light of Senator Coburn's mission to end NSF funding for political "science," a friend/colleague decided to start an open forum on his f.b. The debate revolves around 1) the usefulness of political science research to the real world and 2) the types of methods we use. This debate was featured in a NY Times article. In addressing issue #1, my friend writes:

I also think Political Science could do more to address relevant policy questions and make our findings more accessible to the general public. My friend suggests the academic rules of the game should slightly change in the following ways:

1) Graduate students should be encouraged to take classes in policy analysis and media communication in which they learn to write concise and jargon-free memos. Such exercises will help them explain their research to both media representatives and policy makers;
2) Graduate students in Political Science should be encouraged to do policy relevant research;
3) Faculty should positively value the media and policy outreach of assistant professors and include achievements in these areas in the tenure review process;
4) Departments of Political Science should welcome back both assistant and tenured professors who temporarily depart from academia to pursue public service in government and other important work with international organizations, since they bring valuable experience to both teaching and research.

Since I'm at a DC-based university, I've thought quite a bit about these questions - especially as I apply for research fellowships. Joseph Nye's op-ed in April on about the lack of policy relevance in poli-sci research was particularly apt. I am largely in agreement with my friend, but at the same time, we need not always look for convergence...even in the natural sciences and engineering, there is both basic and applied research. the "big picture" theoretical questions in the social sciences are equivalent to basic research. Some researchers will be more interested in basic, others in applied. And then there are those who connect the bridge. it's this middle category that our discipline could promote.

Not In Anyone's Backyard

My article on the emergence of a transnational anti-base movement was published this month in ISQ. I was surprised when a colleague at Temple forwarded me a link with a review of it on the Duck of Minerva blog.

http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2009/09/not-in-anyones-backyard-andrew-yeo-on.html