Foreign assistance is as American as apple pie

By Phyllis & Dan Craun-Selka

Op-ed contributors

As young international development workers in Africa in the 1980s-1990s, we wondered why people often displayed a photo of President John F. Kennedy in their homes. Here’s why.

The United States emerged from World War II as a superpower. With great power comes great responsibility. Our first foreign aid was the Marshall Plan that helped Germany and other countries rebuild after the destruction of the war.

In 1961, President Kennedy proposed the establishment of USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) the same year he called for the creation of the Peace Corps. The story goes that while he was speaking in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, a student asked him for more U.S. leadership in the world. That same year Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act that authorized USAID. We could argue that U.S. foreign assistance was born in Michigan — even though it was also a strategic policy in the Cold War. From the beginning, foreign assistance has been and continues to be linked to U.S. security interests.

President Reagan increased the USAID budget linked to a national policy to promote democracy and business around the world.

During the George W. Bush administration, which also increased foreign assistance, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice advised President Bush that too many people were dying from HIV and AIDS around the world. President Bush’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief), authorized by Congress, became the most successful aid program ever, so far, saving more than 26 million people. PEPFAR has made America safer and more secure with the AIDS pandemic under better control.

USAID is not partisan. Our foreign policy depends on the 3 Ds- Defense, Diplomacy, and Development working together to keep America safe. Department of Defense leaders will tell you that USAID prevents wars. It demonstrates with very few funds (less than 1% of the United States budget) the goodwill and values of the American people, develops markets for trade, and increases global security, to name a few benefits.

Every new presidential administration brings particular national security and development policies that USAID and other agencies adapt to. That does not mean that we stop, causing untold suffering, to do so.

After more than 60 years of USAID’s work to help developing nations feed, educate, and employ their citizens, today, because of the current ‘pause,’ thousands of people in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti, and more countries are now blocked from obtaining humanitarian assistance such as food grown by American farmers (including Michigan farmers) and sold to USAID for food aid around the world. Families cannot access vital health and other services for parents and their children.

Like thousands of fellow Americans serving our country overseas with USAID, the Departments of Defense and State, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and other government and non-governmental organizations, we have worked together with these organizations for some 35 years in 30 countries across Africa and Asia, and in Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. In response to misinformation about USAID, we are proud to share firsthand what our USAID colleagues and we do and explain how it makes the U.S. stronger, safer, and more prosperous — to quote the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s objectives. Here are just a few examples:

1. Strengthening developing country governments, civil society organizations, and communities makes them less dependent and better able to take care of their people. India, Brazil, Botswana, South Korea, and other countries need less support as a result of USAID, but we’re not done. COVID impacts (corroded health systems and decline in life expectancy), conflict, corruption, and authoritarianism are current challenges in the world that we must tackle to keep America and the world safer, more secure, and more prosperous.
2. USAID works to prevent outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola and Mpox and when they do happen, we respond quickly to keep the U.S. safer. Right now we are prevented from doing that.
3. USAID has been critical in providing humanitarian assistance in Colombia, conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon, and coca eradication in Peru. With this work on pause, the U.S. is now less safe and secure.
4. USAID’s programs to promote democracy, free speech and capitalism in Eastern Europe helped bring down the Soviet Union.  
5. USAID supports projects to counter misinformation and provide economic opportunities in countries where Russia exerts a large influence, such as Georgia and Armenia.

We are residents of Lake Ann, Michigan, who worked with USAID for some 35 years in 30 countries. Two of our children graduated from the Leelanau School in Glen Arbor.

Dan, born in Detroit and an Alma graduate, led a program in Poland as a USAID contractor that helped establish rural telephone cooperatives as the country moved towards democracy and open markets. He recruited U.S. telephone cooperative leaders from West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois to train Polish cooperatives. This project helped to make rural Poland more connected to the world, economically successful, and an ally of the United States.

Phyllis provided management training to USAID-funded women leaders from all over the world who had demonstrated leadership in their communities. Educated women have fewer children, ensure better education and health for their children and communities, and have more economic security. That capacity reduces their need to emigrate to the U.S.

In Tanzania, Dan managed a USAID program to help Tanzanian civil society leaders hold their government accountable. Journalists they trained exposed corruption that resulted in the resignation of the vice president in the 2000s, and one of the advocacy participants became the current president of Tanzania. She is a strong ally of the U.S.

Dan also managed the largest PEPFAR orphan program of the 2000s for 2 million Tanzanian children whose parents were lost to HIV and AIDS.

Phyllis joined USAID/Malawi where she led the communications team and worked with the Education, Economic Growth, and Health teams to plan programs in collaboration with Washington bureaus, the Government of Malawi, and other stakeholders. She has also worked with USAID missions in Zambia, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Botswana, and South Africa to help agencies and teams plan and work together more effectively.

Dan led the PEPFAR teams in Malawi and Botswana that coordinated HIV prevention and treatment programs with USAID, Department of State, Department of Defense, CDC, and Peace Corps. Both countries have reached epidemic control and need less support from the U.S.

Phyllis worked virtually with USAID/Haiti for the past three years to maintain communications about USAID’s vital humanitarian assistance and development support to keep health services, education, and agricultural activity going, while Haitian staff and the people of Haiti struggle to survive gang terror.

Phyllis currently teaches virtually the USAID program cycle to new staff in more than 100 USAID missions around the world. With our colleagues in Washington and missions around the world and with the people we serve, we hope that USAID’s work will continue again soon.

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