Can USAID Nom Rajiv Shah Lead Progressive Foreign Aid Reform in Time of War?

Rajiv Shah, the nominee to serve as US Director of Foreign Assistance and USAID Administrator, has the presence of a research hospital surgical intern. He's very much a progressive, public health guru, like someone you'd meet through friends at a Dupont Circle, Soho, or Seattle, martini night or coffee. He's young and vital and attractive and honest and really knows food security, development theory, and systems management. An MD, health economist, Gore campaign advisor, director at the Gates Foundation, then five months this year as head scientist and leader of food security policy at the US Department of Agriculture - he's got a fantastic background for a leading role in foreign aid.

But is he the creative, wise, and persuasive world leader we need to pilot urgent, dramatic reform of US foreign assistance while America fights alongside aid efforts in Afghanistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Somalia, and, beyond? If not, and he is confirmed, how can the forces for progressive change help him become that great leader, not just correcting the course in conflict areas, but globally?

Today, Tuesday December 1st, just before President Obama announced his plan to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan, I had a brief chance to take a closer look at Shah's approach at his confirmation hearing with the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC. He's good people, he's with the progressive movement for local, rights-based aid.

But it remains unclear if he is able or willing to bring the agency out of its submissive relationship with the Pentagon and unf#!*%@ the "humanity-take-number" near-colonial bureaucracy left by former Administrator and Bush appointee Andrew Natsios. Shah's intellectually capable, but he may need to summon the gravitas of a gold-tongued elder statesman before he will outplay obstinate hawks on the foreign policy chess board for the betterment of global peace and security.

I woke up at the crack of dawn at a friend's pleace in Alexandria, Virginia, grabbed a handful of oatmeal raisin cookies, and stumbled half-asleep onto the Metro. I wanted to get to the Dirksen Senate office building early to get a good seat. Got coffee and came in third behind two suits, one of which was being paid to sit in line for a lobbyist, who then showed up only to sit behind Shah's chief of staff (Maura O'Neil, I believe) and try to creepily massage contract favor out of her shoulders. When I sat down up front, opposite, I was suddenly surrounded by an Indian-American family with two small children - Shah's. His father and sister sat right in front of me. Sweet people. Now the Senators began to come in.

In attendance for the majority Democrats were Kerry (Chair), Cardin, then trickling in Casey, Shaheen, Menendez, Webb, Feingold, and Kaufman. For the minority Republicans, there were only Lugar and Isakson. None of the other Republican's attended.

Leading off, Committee Chair John Kerry pointed out that both sides of the aisle were committed to reforming US foreign assistance in legislation this coming year. It starts with the Senate's S1524 Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act, which will be built upon when a thorough Presidential and State Deparment review of all aid systems is reported on in the next couple months. If confirmed - and all the senators present including Ranking Republican Dick Lugar and Republican Johnny Isakson implied that his nomination was all but confirmed after backroom talks - Shah would have about two months to get his act together, report directly to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and take those study recommendations as the launching pad for the "new" USAID. On what little substance I could glean from the predictably thin hearing, here's the sum.

In the spring, Secretary Clinton was rumored to have floated progressive public health hero Paul Farmer as the nominee for this post, but he later became UN envoy to Haiti. He would have been a powerful reformer. With Shah, it appears - I'm speculating here based on an educated look at the events - that after losing the battle for Farmer and running into a ten-month delay Clinton fell back on a safe, uncontraversial, if young and mild-mannered choice in Shah.

Whatever disagreements Republican members may have had with Shah, it must have been discussed in the back rooms before the hearing, perhaps by tradition. So the hearing itself left nothing to share except summaries and kind hearted broad, soft questions. In response, Shah replied in summaries and kind hearted broad, soft answers, and more questions. Here's a score card.

Pluses:

• Shah is a proven leader in global food security and health economics. Even if he has not yet had the chance to reinvent the chronic food aid conundrums, he likely knows how.
• He made it clear he would work to see how aid works from the ground up, making sure that the agency opens its ears to local participants.
• And he understands the vital role of local leadership and capacity.

Questions which remain:

• Several of the Senators made it clear that Shah would be expected to step up as a global leader in a monumental undertaking, so it was surprising that he was so broad and vague on his personal goals and targets for the agency. Perhaps this is because with the nomination already in the bag he didn't want to twist any heads, but it might mean that he's more of a process leader rather than a the lyrical visionary many might wish for.
• Kerry threw one hard-ball question asking how Shah would reconcile Clinton's goal of reasserting USAID as the premier global aid agency when the Pentagon has encroached upon many of USAID's traditional authorities. Shah either avoided the question to play safe or revealed a lack of nuanced, contextual understanding of the civil-military marriage on the war fronts.
• Menendez thanked the acting Administator Alonzo Fulgham, but then shared his feeling that US foreign assistance has been "decimated" in the past couple years (perhaps under Natsios' watch when Bush-era Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld elbowed in) and that Shah would need to be able to know about using "sharp elbows" at the table. I took this as a hint that Shah had not convinced him that he could play tough to make things happen. Cardin appeared to follow the same track arguing that "There's strong support to use a strong voice...in bringing about reforms."
• The biggest question which remains for me after the hearing is whether Shah has the wizard-like wisdom needed to understand the nuances of aid in areas where the US is conducting combat operations. Where predecessor Natsios arguably knew the nuances of global aid extremely well, if conservatively, his tenure hosted a time when Afghanistan was flooded with corporate contractors, wasteful programs, and new rules requiring some aid workers to share lists of beneficiaries to security agencies, which cultivated the Afghan's perception of the US as a colonial empire, thus feeding resistance. Shah did not confront these questions, so I'm not sure if he would focus civil-military reforms only on systemic efficiency or do what is needed in de-colonizing aid.

With Shah, USAID has a righteous leader who will be the pride of moderate Democrats, but we'll have to wait and see whether he has the power to transform the agency against incredible momentum in such a complex time.

[Photo: Rajiv Shah at Asia Society conference in 2006, Gen Kanai]