Response to the Atwood article

Response to "Arrested Development: Making Foreign Aid a More Effective Tool" by J. Brian Atwood, M. Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios.

(When referring to the authors of the article or the article itself, I will just use "Atwood" from here on out.)

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While Atwood is a big proponent of USAID and its goals, the article suggests many criticisms of the current program(s). Most specifically, Atwood strongly condemns the takeover of USAID by the State department, citing ineffectiveness in organization and policy regarding USAID action in countries that need such aid. In addition, after the Cold War, foreign aid from USAID was substantially decreased as a result of its "merging" with the State Department, which drastically changed the way it carried out operations and organization. What I get from the third and fourth paragraph in the Downsizing Development section is that because of the increasing ineffectiveness of USAID under its new management, other organizations began involvement with foreign assistance which, overall, because of their relative lack of resources, experience, and etc compared to the main USAID department, and lack of coherence, ultimately created chaos and a complete decline in productivity. Although some aspects of the agreement may be politically balanced, ultimately it is at the sacrifice of the program's effectiveness.

Honestly, Atwood spends so much time talking about how USAID would be so much better off on its own and how being absorbed and controlled by the State Department really screwed up its activities, and it's repeated quite a bit. I understand that the authors want to reiterate and really hammer in the points, but it's just as effective to summarize and condense the main reasons rather than continuing to say essentially the same thing over and over again, even if there is occasional variation.

It is a good and interesting article, however, especially when it talks about the allocation of funds and focus on issues such as HIV/AIDS, education, and etc rather than anticorruption, agricultural development and management, and other, often core problems that if alleviated, might snowball into other positive benefits.

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