Foreign Policy Blogs

Hillary Clinton's Speech on Development

Today U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on development at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The full speech is available here. The speech gives an overview of how development should work in coordination with defense and diplomacy and offered some specific insights into the ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development.  This major presentation comes a day before Rajiv Shah is sworn in as USAID Administrator.   There are plenty of commentaries available on the speech and I won’t repeat them here.  However, Secretary Clinton touched upon one area that is of interest to anyone concerned with how the the U.S. engages the rest of the world and the capacity of our governmental institutions to carry out that engagement: the over-reliance on contractors in development.  (I have written about that previously – available here.)  In her speech she said:

We need to ask hard questions about who should be doing what in the work of development.  For too long, we’ve relied on contractors for core contributions and we have diminished our own professional and institutional capacities.  This must change.  Contractors are there to support, not supplant. USAID and the State Department must have the staff, the expertise, and the resources to design, implement, and evaluate our programs.  That is why we are increasing the numbers of Foreign Service officers at USAID and the State Department, and developing a set of guidelines through the QDDR for how we work with and oversee contractors, to make sure we have the right people doing the right jobs under the right conditions.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - Photo Credit: US Department of State

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Photo Credit: US Department of State



 

Author

James Ketterer

James Ketterer is Dean of International Studies at Bard College and Director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program. He previously served as Egypt Country Director for AMIDEAST, based in Cairo and before that as Vice Chancellor for Policy & Planning and Deputy Provost at the State University of New York (SUNY). In 2007-2008 he served on the staff of the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education. He previously served as Director of the SUNY Center for International Development.

Ketterer has extensive experience in technical assistance for democratization projects, international education, legislative development, elections, and policy analysis – with a focus on Africa and the Middle East. He has won and overseen projects funded by USAID, the Department for International Development (UK), the World Bank and the US State Department. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House, as a policy analyst at the New York State Senate, a project officer with the Center for Legislative Development at the University at Albany, and as an international election specialist for the United Nations, the African-American Institute, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association and has also held teaching positions in international politics at the New School for Social Research, Bard College, State University of New York at New Paltz, the University at Albany, Russell Sage College, and the College of Saint Rose.

Ketterer has lectured and written extensively on various issues for publications including the Washington Post, Middle East Report, the Washington Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He was a Boren National Security Educational Program Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and in Morocco, an International Graduate Rotary Scholar at the Bourguiba School of Languages in Tunisia, and studied Arabic at the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Morocco. He received his education at Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Fordham University.

Areas of focus: Public Diplomacy; Middle East; Africa; US Foreign Policy

Contributor to: Global Engagement