About Aid Watch
The Aid Watch blog is a project of New York University's Development Research Institute (DRI). This blog is principally written by William Easterly, author of "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" and "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," and Professor of Economics at NYU. It is co-written by Laura Freschi and by occasional guest bloggers. Our work is based on the idea that more aid will reach the poor the more people are watching aid.
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking." - H.L. Mencken
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Jeffrey K. Silverman on Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request: I hope that OIG is reading some of these postings, especially about...
- Jeffrey K. Silverman on NGO Transparency: Counterpart International to release budget: That might be giving AEI too much credit, and it...
- AA on IAD on A-i-d: @ Tulip: Your comment about rich taxpayers driving aid policy may be true for Europeans, but I see some trouble with...
- Jim on Africans do not want or need Britain’s development aid: The statistics posted by Terence are fascinating. If Bill Easterly...
- Katrina on Be Careful What You Export: Brendon, I think the NHS is a good boiler plate model that can be tinkered. I’m in Uganda...
- edinburgh photograph on Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request: Great favorite is usually most definitely the idea is usually these...
Archives
Bill Easterly tweets
- Dear Aid Watchers, Laura and I are gone for a week, Adam Martin is Guest Editor, starting with today's great post http://bit.ly/ces1l3 02:12:45 PM August 30, 2010 from bitly
- Have a happy Last Week of the Summer 01:52:50 PM August 30, 2010 from web
- Beloved tweeps: I am going off line for a week in a last-ditch effort to regain my sanity, no more tweets from me till after Labor Day. 01:52:30 PM August 30, 2010 from web
- What to learn from those wacky animal-shaped Sudanese urban plans: rich country urban planners are just as wacky http://bit.ly/ces1l3 01:50:42 PM August 30, 2010 from bitly
Aid Watch tweets
- IAD on A-i-d http://bit.ly/9Yqk1H. Claudia Williamson discusses Elinor Ostrom's work on development. 12:29:51 PM September 03, 2010 from web
- Be Careful What you Export: http://bit.ly/cE3e1v 11:11:33 AM September 02, 2010 from web
- TransparencyBrawl 2010 continues: http://bit.ly/aG1ytu 08:18:35 PM September 01, 2010 from web
- Hayek vs. the Intellectuals, in technicolor! http://bit.ly/cSnS8m 11:25:39 AM September 01, 2010 from web
Category Archives: Military aid
David Rieff takes on Hillary’s “new approach” to Global Health
In a blog post for The New Republic, author David Rieff calls Hillary Clinton’s approach to development naïve, contradictory, and muddled. His post is a response to Clinton’s speech, delivered last week at SAIS, about the administration’s six-year, $63 billion Global Health Initiative.
Rieff’s critique rests on three main arguments, all of which will be familiar to Aid Watch readers.
1) Insisting that development is going to be “elevated” to the level…
Also posted in Global health, International organizational behavior
Tagged David Rieff, Hillary Clinton
7 Comments
Wishful thinking on Pakistan
From last weekend’s New York Times:
As the Obama administration continues to add to the aid package for flood-stricken Pakistan — already the largest humanitarian response from any single country — officials acknowledge that they are seeking to use the efforts to burnish the United States’ dismal image there.…
American officials say they are trying to rekindle the same good will generated five years ago when the United States military played a major role
…
Can aid win hearts and minds?
A recent Christian Science Monitor article reported that USAID is “losing hearts and minds” in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakshan province because of failed and shoddy projects, corruption, secrecy and waste.
Given how much of the US aid budget is spent trying to make the world a safer and more secure place for Americans, you might think there would be plenty of studies testing the hypothesis that aid funds can reduce terrorism or shift hostile public…
Holy Bureaucratic Gibberish, Batman!
This post is by Adam Martin, a post-doctoral fellow at DRI.
On July 1 the Department of Defense rolled out two notable new projects that will undoubtedly inaugurate a new era of peace and safety for the streets of Gotham international community. Even the world’s greatest detective could not have seen this coming.
Like their caped crusader namesakes, the DoD versions of BaTMAN and RoBIN are shrouded in mystery, their real identities…
Also posted in International organizational behavior
Tagged Adam Martin, Department of Defense
10 Comments
We have met the enemy and he is powerpoint: NYT on the military
The New York Times had a front pager today on a story that this blog (twice: Dec 22, 2009 and Dec 12, 2009 ) and other blogs has been all over for months – the use of nonsensical Powerpoint slides to guide the US military in Afghanistan. The NYT reproduced the infamous Afghan nation-building spaghetti chart over most of the front page:
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of
…
Never-before-seen video of a peacekeeping intervention to end war
Short clip:
From Twitter:
@undispatch:
@bill_easterly instead of trying to be funny, can you actually explain your beef with peacekeeping?
Well, @undispatch, if you click on the category, “aid goes military” at the bottom of this post, you will get more than you probably want to hear from this blog on this topic. You are also welcome to check out my New York Review of Books article Aid goes military!…
Also posted in Aid policies and approaches, Grand plans/ aid targets
Tagged Jules Verne, Master of the World
3 Comments
The “smart power” military-industrial complex takes off
What do Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp, and L-3 Communications Inc. have in common?
Yes, all are top 10 Pentagon contractors. But they are also increasingly winning lucrative government contracts to implement “smart power” or “nation-building” programs—like educating peacekeeping troops in human-rights law, sending anthropologists to Afghanistan to understand local culture, mentoring Liberian prosecutors to combat corruption and crime, and rebuilding airports and government ministries.
Hillary Clinton and others in the administration have helped…
Also posted in Aid policies and approaches, In the news
Tagged 3Ds, Africa, smart power, Wall Street Journal
9 Comments
Worst in Aid: The Grand Prize
Hillary Clinton recently declared: “We are working to elevate development and integrate it more closely with defense and diplomacy in the field…The three Ds must be mutually reinforcing.”
Clinton says that the 3D approach will elevate development to the level of diplomacy and defense. Unfortunately, it could instead lower development further to an instrument employed to achieve military or political priorities. Clinton foresaw these objections: “There is a concern that integrating development means diluting it or politicizing…
Also posted in Trade
Tagged 3Ds, Africa, AGOA, best and worst, military intervention, USAID
34 Comments
Top 5 reasons why “failed state” is a failed concept
1) “State failure” is leading to confused policy making.
For example, it is causing the military to attempt overly ambitious nation-building and development to approach counter-terrorism, under the unproven assumption that “failed states” produce terrorism.
2) “State failure” has failed to produce any useful academic research in economics.
You would expect a major concept to be the subject of research by economists (as well as by other fields, but I am using economics research…
Also posted in Aid policies and approaches
Tagged failed states, military intervention, nation building
18 Comments