The Folly of Merging State Department and USAID: Lessons from USIA by Shannon N. Green, Center for Strategic and International Studies
The 2018 budget introduced by the Trump administration calls for a greater focus on U.S. security and economic growth; in practice, it will undermine those very goals by slashing programs that are vital to America’s interests. As part of its plan to cut $3.6 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, the administration proposed a 30 percent decrease in diplomacy and development expenditures, eliminating essential programs and gutting humanitarian relief and multilateral support. The potential spending cuts elicited vocal pushback from diplomatic, development, and national security experts , who are rightly concerned that such sweeping reductions in funding would irreparably erode U.S. influence around the world.
Yet, while policymakers and pundits debate the merits of the budget proposal—which several Republican leaders have proclaimed is “dead on arrival”—bigger and potentially more lasting changes are being contemplated by the administration. In response to President Trump’s request for reorganization proposals, the Department of State’s leadership is quietly reviewing various options to streamline the United States’ diplomatic and development operations. One of the proposals under consideration is a merger of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Proponents of such a merger argue that it would save taxpayer dollars, reduce duplication of effort, and improve coordination on diplomatic and development objectives. While there are certainly changes that can be made at both organizations, a State Department/USAID merger—where personnel, procurement, programmatic, and budgeting functions are combined—would be a huge mistake.
To understand the risks and downsides of such a move, we can look to the experience of the merger of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) into the State Department in 1999…