This summer, the world has watched as an al Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State group, launched a militant offensive into Iraq, seizing large swaths of land. This Center for Middle East Policy’s Middle East Memo, Kurdistan Rising: To Acknowledge or Ignore the Unraveling of Iraq, examines how the fall of Iraq’s key city of Mosul has changed matters for Kurds in Iraq, and the necessity for American policymakers to take stock of the reality of the Kurdistan Region in this “post-Mosul” world.

Highlights: 

• A look at the Kurds of Iraq, their history and how the United States has largely spurned a partnership with them. Having been autonomous in Iraq since 1991, the Kurds heeded the aspirations of the United States in 2003 to assist in the removal of the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein, and played by the rules of the game established in the post-2003 period, albeit unwillingly at times. However, they have consistently refused to follow a path that would result in relinquishing the powers they enjoy. They have even taken steps to extend their autonomy to the point of having economic sovereignty within a federal Iraq, thus bringing them into serious dispute with Baghdad and the government of Nouri al-Maliki and earning the rebuke of the United States.

• An examination of how, since 2011, failed U.S. and European policies aimed at healing Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic fissures have contributed to the current situation. By so strongly embracing the concept of Iraq’s integrity as crucial to American interests in the region, key allies and partners have been marginalized along the way.

• Policy recommendations for the United States and its western allies, given that the Kurdistan region now stands on the threshold of restructuring Iraq according to its federal or confederal design, or exercising its full right to self-determination and seceding from Iraq. By ignoring the realities of Kurdish strength in Iraq, U.S. and European powers run the risk of losing influence in the only part of Iraq that can be called a success story, and antagonizing what could be a key ally in an increasingly unpredictable Middle East.

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• Kurdistan Rising: To Acknowledge or Ignore the Unraveling of Iraq

Last October, 200 students from Colombia's Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) worked the floor of the campus coliseum at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla. They were among 900 youth volunteer leaders from nearly 40 nations who had traveled the globe to join the second World Summit for Youth Volunteering, convened by Partners of the Americas and the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) on the 10th anniversary of the United Nations International Year of Volunteers.

As a developing country, Colombia’s increased civil society participation through volunteering is focused on extending poverty-reduction efforts to levels that the government cannot achieve on its own. Volunteers represent a powerful demographic for a new "service generation" by providing a dual benefit. First, volunteering provides critical services in areas such as education and asset development, which are needed to reduce extreme poverty; second, it connects a new generation with like-minded individuals across the world, which provides young people the professional and leadership skills needed to further access to employment opportunities including entrepreneurship.

For SENA, one of the world's largest educational institutions with more than four million students across Colombia, the opportunity was clear: engage talented and often under resourced youth in Colombia — one of the most economically unequal countries in the world– with innovative global volunteer leaders. According to research from Brookings and the Center for Social Development at Washington University, these types of global volunteering connections have the potential to enhance skills development while increasing social capital networks.

Extreme poverty, along with armed conflict, is one of the highest priorities of the Colombian government. Coincidentally, during the same week as the World Summit, the Colombian armed forces eliminated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Alfonso Cano while President Santos created a new national superagency to combat extreme poverty. The strategic focus on poverty reduction includes a strong role for civil society as a partner with the government in meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and other development commitments. Civil society plays an essential role in overcoming internal conflict. And the youth services generation is among some of the most effective in civil society in working to help their country tackle poverty.

Colombia is certainly not the only country where youth have taken the lead through service to combat poverty. Attendees at the summit heard from Australian humanitarian Hugh Evans, who at 14 began his work to create the Global Poverty Project. In 2006, Evans became one of the pivotal leaders behind the successful Make Poverty History campaign, leading a team across Australia to lobby the country’s government to increase its foreign aid commitment to 0.7 percent of gross national income.

Whether or not SENA’s youth will be able to capitalize on their new connections with global service leaders to combat extreme poverty in Colombia is left to be seen. But the SENA volunteers and their international counterparts are more motivated to do so after gaining access to resources and social capital networks with other inspiring young leaders. That is a cause for celebration as the United Nations releases its State of the World Volunteering report in New York in December at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Bernie Sanders may have had no foreign policy advisers until this week, but he can justly claim to have proposed one of the boldest and radical foreign policy ideas of the 2016 presidential campaign. In what he describes as the most important speech of his campaign—on Democratic Socialism at Georgetown University in November 2015—Sanders called on the United States to fight terrorism in the same way it waged the Cold War. He said: “We must create an organization like NATO to confront the security threats of the 21st century” and we must “expand our coalition to include Russia and members of the Arab League.”

NATO was created in 1949 to give the United States a way to forward-deploy its forces so they would immediately be entangled in a war if the Soviets attacked Western Europe. The most important feature of NATO was the mutual defense clause, whereby an attack on one would be treated as an attack on all. In a new NATO to fight terrorism, the United States could find itself having to deploy tens of thousands of troops throughout the Middle East to fight ISIS. The United States may even be treaty-bound to use its troops to fight alongside Russia in Chechnya. 

If that sounds very unlike Bernie Sanders, it's because it is. It is clear from the speech that Sanders had very little idea what NATO actually is or why it was founded. He was looking for a way to pass the burden of fighting terrorism on to other nations, particularly Muslim nations. Lacking any clear idea as to how to do this, a formal treaty must have seemed as good a way as any. Sanders would surely say that he meant an alliance without a mutual defense pact and without the United States taking the lead. But such an organization currently exists—it is called the counter-ISIS coalition. Presidents Bush and Obama also both sought ways to deepen cooperation with Russia and Arab countries on terrorism without a formal NATO-style alliance, which led to the situation Sanders decries. In any event, the new NATO served its purpose. Sanders could later claim to have given a speech on foreign policy. The specifics of the idea went un-scrutinized. 

Mind the gap

Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy remains a mystery because he has said so little about it. Unlike Donald Trump, who has been vocal about his foreign policy views for many decades, Sanders has focused his message on inequality and the nefarious influence of big money in politics. Recently though, he has begun to come out of his shell. He regularly invokes his opposition to the Iraq War in an effort to negate Hillary Clinton’s superior experience in foreign policy. Sanders clearly hopes that this vote will enable him to win over many Barack Obama supporters who remain suspicious of Clinton. In recent weeks, some foreign policy experts have sketched out how Sanders could build on Obama’s foreign policy legacy and distinguish himself from Clinton. 

Sanders-Obama is the real foreign policy fault-line in the Democratic Party.

The conventional wisdom of the foreign policy debate in the Democratic Party sees an Obama wing that is skeptical of military intervention and a Clinton wing that is more willing to use American power overseas. This is a paradigm that Sanders would certainly endorse and hope to capitalize on but it is not an apt description of the 2016 divide. There is a reason why Obama has come close to endorsing Clinton and has left no doubt that he sees her as his true heir. The gap between Sanders and Obama is much greater than between Clinton and Obama. Obama is an avowed globalist who looked outward, even as he was campaigning in Iowa in 2007. Sanders is a liberal nationalist who looks inward, not just in his rhetoric but in his policy. 

A Sanders nomination would be a striking repudiation not just of Clinton but of Obama’s worldview and message. Sanders-Obama is the real foreign policy fault-line in the Democratic Party. 

Obama 2008: Looking outward

Obama’s 2008 campaign is now shrouded in mythology. He is often described as unlikely a candidate as Sanders. Forgotten is the fact that weeks after he started, he secured the support of major donors and dozens of foreign policy experts. He was always the favorite of a particular part of the establishment. He was young but he had thought about the world and America’s role in it. In 2005, he hired Samantha Power to be his foreign policy adviser in the Senate. His 2006 book "The Audacity of Hope" had a chapter on foreign policy that culled ideas from think tank row. 

In April 2007, a full 18 months before the election, Obama gave a revealing interview to The New York Times' David Brooks in which he spoke about the influence that American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr had on his foreign policy. Niebuhr was a seminal figure in U.S. diplomatic thinking during the Cold War and is credited with developing the most sophisticated critique of American idealism. Obama said that Niebuhr provided:

“the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away...the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”

Some of these themes would reappear in his extraordinary speech in Oslo in 2010 on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Obama spoke about reviving American leadership and presenting a new face to the world. In his announcement speech in Springfield in 2007, Obama said “ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.” In his acceptance speech in Chicago, he spoke to “those watching tonight from beyond our shores”. “Our stories are singular,” he said, “but our destiny is shared and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.” 

Obama’s challenge in office, and the challenge of progressives after the Iraq War, was to develop a foreign policy that remained faithful to his internationalist ideals while resisting calls for large-scale military interventions. In this, his record was mixed. The Middle East stands out as a major failure but he had successes elsewhere. He helped rescue the international financial system, he deepened U.S. engagement in Asia, he negotiated several trade deals, and he secured a controversial nuclear deal with Iran. Throughout, he articulated a case for a liberal brand of American exceptionalism and for continued U.S. global leadership. 

Sanders 2016: Drawing inward

That is now at risk, not just by the prospect of a Trump presidency but also from within the Democratic primary. Sanders has had remarkable success with a campaign message that is entirely inwardly focused. Read his speeches, whether at Georgetown or on the stump, and you will see a sharp change of tone from Obama of 2008. Gone are the passages on a new era of American global leadership. Gone are the messages for people beyond these shores. Gone is the optimism about America’s global role. Gone too is the sense that the United States, flawed as it is, has a positive and indispensable role to play in upholding the international order. 

Rhetorically, Sanders is deeply pessimistic about the United States and its role in the world. For Sanders, America is not getting better—it’s getting worse, including on Obama’s watch. And, woe betide those who think that America can be any more successful abroad. In his Georgetown speech, he said that the first element of his foreign policy would be an acknowledgement of how America gets it wrong so frequently. In addition to the Iraq War, he mentioned the toppling of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, of Goulart in Brazil in 1964, and of Allende in Chile in 1973. 

[Sanders] offered no examples of how the United States has made the world a better place.

Apart from the ham-fisted description of NATO, he offered no examples of how the United States has made the world a better place. The toppling of foreign leaders is not, for him, even partially balanced out by successes in promoting democracy in Chile in 1987 or in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, or in Indonesia in 1998. He did not mention the Kosovo intervention in 1999, which he actually supported at the time. The speech was not without irony however. Sanders organized the domestic section, on democratic socialism, around Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union speech but made no mention of FDR’s heroic—and frequently risky—efforts to win the war and the post-war world.

As the campaign has progressed, Sanders has been pressed on what he would do if he were to be elected president. He said in a February Democratic debate that the “key doctrine of the Sanders administration would be no, we cannot continue to do it alone, we need to work in coalition.” The very idea that a Democratic candidate could make the unilateralist charge against Obama, one of the most multilateral presidents in modern American history, is itself remarkable and rather implausible. 

The very idea that a Democratic candidate could make the unilateralist charge against Obama, one of the most multilateral presidents in modern American history, is itself remarkable and rather implausible.

But this has not deterred Sanders. He has repeatedly argued that the Obama administration has not done enough to get Muslim nations to fight ISIS. At Georgetown he declared, “We need a commitment from these [Muslim] countries that the fight against ISIS takes precedence over the religious and ideological differences that hamper the kind of cooperation we desperately need.” Quite how Sanders would accomplish this was left unsaid. The reason ISIS is difficult to defeat is because Muslim nations see other challenges, particularly the sectarian struggle with Iran, as a much greater threat to their vital interests. 

Simply saying that the president can will other countries to act contrary to what they see as their vital interests is about as plausible as Trump persuading Mexico to pay for his wall. Clinton has repeatedly recognized the challenges associated with persuading Muslim countries to take on more of the anti-ISIS fight, but Sanders has just doubled down on his charge against Obama. “I’ll be dammed,” he told CNN, “if the kids of Vermont have to defend the Royal Saudi family” and take the lead in the fight against ISIS, even if is just with air power. 

On economic policy, Sanders offers an even more radical departure from Obama’s legacy. Sanders has opposed all U.S. trade agreements throughout his political career, including General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In 2005, he sponsored a bill calling on the United States to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. He has called for tariffs to prevent American industry from investing in China, Vietnam, and Mexico. He was the only Democrat to vote against the Import-Export Bank and he opposed the expansion of the H1-B visa program for high-skilled workers. 

He has offered no positive vision for the world economy and sees it as a zero sum game—either American workers’ win or other nations do. Obama indulged in anti-trade rhetoric, as has Clinton, in the heat of a primary campaign, but Sanders is different. He has consistently sought to disengage from the global economy—the same one that Obama did so much to save in 2009. This is no small matter. As the global economy flirts with recession and a new crisis, this time originating in China, the rest of the world is asking if America can continue to lead or if it is all tapped out. 

He has consistently sought to disengage from the global economy.

A President Sanders would not try to destroy America’s alliances like Donald Trump or leave the Middle East entirely like Rand Paul. But, he would surely try to hide from the world and tend to matters at home. He will be immediately tested by allies and adversaries alike as they try to find the limits of his commitments. All presidents are tested of course—especially those, including Obama and Clinton, who promise to focus on the home front— but they usually try to respond in a resolute way to dispel the concerns. Obama sent additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009, for example. Sanders will probably resist the pressure and focus on his domestic agenda, thus exacerbating foreign crises. He would surely feel a sense of betrayal as America’s allies failed to take up what he considered to be a fair share of the burden. 

America in the world?

2016 is a very different world than 2008. Then, Obama and Democrats saw a world that was full of opportunity, despite the financial crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They believed the United States could offer a new face, and a new form of leadership, to the world. When we look back on 2016, it will surely be the year when the United States and much of the rest of the world faced a choice about whether to look outward or turn inward. It is not just the Republican and Democratic primary. Britain will vote on June 23 whether to leave the European Union. Germany and much of the rest of Europe will decide whether to close its borders to refugees.

When we look back on 2016, it will surely be the year when the United States and much of the rest of the world faced a choice about whether to look outward or turn inward.

Of all these tests, the biggest by far is in the United States. Republican and Democratic foreign policy populism is different, of course. Trump and his supporters are both terrified by threats from overseas and determined to lash out as viciously as possible against anything and everything associated with them. To his great credit, Sanders has not peddled fear of the other. His supporters are not frightened by the world. But they are disappointed in it and largely agnostic about what happens outside the United States. The left used to be inherently internationalist, but today Sanders sees no opportunity to lead, only risks of becoming embroiled in someone else’s problems. Sanders will not tear down the liberal international order but he does want to avoid doing much to uphold it. 

Sanders, his aspiring advisers, and much of the media have an interest in situating his foreign policy worldview within the Obama-Clinton paradigm but it is simply not consistent with what he is saying or with what he has done in the very recent past (never mind decades ago). Obama and Clinton obviously differ on some elements on U.S. foreign policy. It is not about large-scale invasions, as is commonly thought. Clinton is not about to send tens of thousands of ground troops to Syria. Rather, she tends to favor small-scale action early on in a conflict to tip the balance while Obama is extremely cautious about a slippery slope. Clinton also tends to see world politics more in terms of power politics while Obama often speaks as if we are headed toward a post-national, more global system. But this all pales in comparison to fundamental questions about whether the United States ought to be engaged in the world, not just militarily but also economically. Obama was elected on a platform of renewing American leadership in the world. He will soon find out if Democrats want to stay on the broad path he set.

The GOP presidential primary process has taken us to places we couldn’t have dreamed mere months ago. Donald Trump’s apparently ever-growing lead—and the foundering of more mainstream candidates like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich—carries serious implications for America’s role in the world. As top Republican strategists and political pundits alike toss around ideas for slowing Trump’s momentum—in part due to major concerns about how he’s staked out his foreign policy—I’ll add one more idea into the mix: convince Rubio and Kasich to agree, now and in public, to share a Republican ticket.

It would go like this: John Kasich would drop out of the presidential race before Tuesday, March 15—when winner-take-all votes occur in both Florida and Ohio—and encourage his supporters to vote for Marco Rubio (who performed better than Kasich on Super Tuesday). Rubio, appearing with Kasich at that press conference, would accept Kasich’s endorsement and then promise him the vice presidential spot on the ticket if he (Rubio) were chosen to be the Republican presidential nominee. This Rubio-Kasich team would be promised to the voters even as the primary process marched on. A vote for Rubio would henceforth be viewed (by the candidates and their allies at least) as a vote for Rubio-Kasich together.

The March 15 votes constitute perhaps the last best chance to stop Trump’s march to the nomination. More to the point here, they’re a chance of ensuring that a Republican candidate with a traditional internationalist worldview remains in the race until the convention. Even Hillary Clinton supporters should arguably welcome such a voice on the GOP side, as it could keep the national political discourse more constructive and less demeaning as November approaches.

To be somewhat more specific: Trump is known for his views critical of Mexico, many Muslims, immigration, refugees, trade, and U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea (in light of their purported unwillingness to share the burden of the common defense). He is also known for cozying up to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and for vague but emphatic talk of getting America back in the habit of winning again. In addition, he advocates more extreme and ruthless measures in the war on terror. 

Whatever the risks, it certainly seems more promising than the path either one of them is on now.

While Rubio is no dove, he has wrestled with the intricacies and complexities of foreign policy during his time in the Senate, and much more than has Trump. He has serious views on the use of force and defense policy, seasoned by reality. Most centrally, he has a Reagan-like view of America’s place in the world—as a country that is stern and unyielding towards its enemies, but open and welcoming to the vast majority of foreigners and foreign nations. This positive, internationalist outlook is in marked contrast to Trump’s worldview. Kasich’s views are much closer to Rubio than to Trump, of course, though he may be more measured and moderate in some of his pro-defense views than Rubio. 

In many foreign policy issues and beyond, Rubio seems more conservative than Kasich. But of course, some divergence of views is inevitable for any eventual presidential ticket—it is even healthy, to an extent. And the kinds of expertise the two men bring to the national debate are largely complimentary, since Kasich has focused more on domestic policy in recent years and Rubio more on national security matters. In other ways, like their strong religious faiths, they seem natural teammates.

Shake it up

Of course, the goal of this Rubio-Kasich ticket would be to win both Florida and Ohio in March. These are not only delegate-rich, winner-take-all states in the nominating process, but key swing states in general elections. Whether or not the Democratic nominee could ultimately best that ticket come November, the Rubio-Kasich team would have a powerful call on super-delegates at any brokered Republican convention if it already had wins in the nation’s two most important swing states under its belt. It would have demonstrated strength in two states that the GOP nominee will badly want to win in the November election.

Polls show that Kasich is stronger than Rubio in Ohio and Rubio is stronger than Kasich in Florida; both trail Trump in both places. However, their combined tallies match up reasonably well with Trump. Beyond that, the shock effect of this kind of partnership—between an accomplished sitting governor and a bright young senator—could change the race’s dynamics enough to bring them even more votes. It will raise eyebrows and cause many to take a second look at the race. Whatever the risks, it certainly seems more promising than the path either one of them is on now.

The preemptive formation of a Rubio-Kasich presidential team in early March would be a highly unusual step. But it’s already a highly unusual year. Put differently, desperate circumstances call for desperate—or at least dramatic—measures. This kind of a true structural change in the primary process promises a greater likelihood of shaking GOP voters up than big speeches by Mitt Romney or warnings from other parts of the GOP establishment. Kasich and Rubio should consider it.

A recent article in The Guardian caught my eye: “Report accuses government of increasing inequalities in developing countries by financing academies at the expense of state schools.” The report, conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, was an attack on U.K. aid money being linked to private education providers since the rapid increase in such schools may be contributing to sub-standard education. In particular, they cited the U.K. government’s investments in the Nairobi-based and for-profit Bridge International Academies.

I’ve worked on private education extensively throughout my career and do not believe there is anything wrong with private schools, but in this particular case I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, it’s the funding strategy that’s the problem.

Private schooling is on the rise in a number of poor countries, and Pakistan—where my education research is focused—is no exception. The majority of these schools are no longer the elite institutions of yore, but low-cost alternatives fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. These schools have mushroomed in response to increased parental demand and poor public alternatives, but also to the greater availability of teachers in the local labor market.

More importantly, research increasingly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing wrong with private schools. There's a summary of this research available here; specific examples on India (more here) and Pakistan are also available.

Some key are takeaways from this research are:

• Private schools charge low fees (about $1 to$2 a month in Pakistan).
• The quality is almost certainly higher compared to government schools in the vicinity.
• At least in Pakistan, there is no significant segregation between public and private schools in terms of parental wealth, education, or caste.
• The most significant barrier to attendance in low-cost private schools is not cost—it’s distance. Put simply, there just aren’t enough of them around.

If there is a cheaper and better alternative to public schooling, shouldn’t we encourage children to shift and thus improve the quality of education for all?

Perhaps. But when the rubber from these well-intentioned aid policies hits the road of rural Pakistan, Kenya, or Ethiopia, a very different sort of model emerges. Instead of supporting private schooling, donors end up supporting private schools (or at best private school chains), which is an entirely different action with little theoretical backing. In fact, economic theory screams that governments and donors should almost never do that.

Donors say the problem is that the low-cost private school market is fragmented with no central authority that can be “contracted with.” No one has a good model on how to work with a competitive schooling sector with multiple small players—ironically, the precise market structure that, according to economics, leads to efficiency.

In reality, I suspect the problem goes deeper. Most low-cost private school owners don’t do well at donor conferences. They don’t know how to tell compelling human-interest stories about the good they do. But what they are excellent at is using local resources to ensure that their schools meet the expectations of demanding parents.

The first is a problem of accountability. Public schools are accountable, through a democratic system, to citizens of the country. Private schools are accountable to the parents. And donor-funded private school chains are account to the donors. While both citizen-led accountability and direct accountability to parents have problems, they are grounded in centuries of experience. It’s unlikely that donors in a foreign land, some of whom can’t visit the schools they fund for security reasons, can do better than either citizens or parents.

The second is a problem of market structure. When one private school or private school chain receives preferential treatment and funding, without allowing other private schools to apply for the same funds, the donor is picking winners (remember Solyndra?). The need for private schools as an alternative to government schools is insufficient justification for donors to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the balance of power towards a pre-identified entity.

In a recent experiment, my colleagues and I gathered direct proof for this assertion. We gave untied grants to low-cost private schools with a twist. In certain villages, we randomly selected a single private school for the grant. In others, we gave the grant to every private school in the village. Our preliminary results show that in villages where we gave the grant to a single school, the school benefitted enormously from an increase in enrollment. Where we gave the grant to multiple private schools, the enrollment increase was split among schools. But only in the villages where we gave the grant to every school did test-scores for children increase.

What happened? When a single private school receives the grant, knowing that the other schools cannot react due to a lack of funds, they engage in “customer poaching” to increase their profits at the expense of others. Some have argued that Uber’s recent fundraising is precisely such an effort to starve competitors of funding.

When you equally support all private schools, customer poaching does not work, and the only way to increase profits and generate returns is to increase the size of the market, either through higher overall enrollments or through new quality offerings.

The first strategy supports pre-identified private schools and concentrates market power. The second, by providing opportunities for all private schools, improves education for children.

Sure, some private school chains and schools are making positive impact and deserve the support they can get. But funding such schools creates the wrong institutional structures and are more likely to lead to disasters than successes (Greg Mortensen and 3 cups of tea, anyone?).

In general, the Government’s responsibility towards the education of children is two-fold:

• Alleviate the market constraints that hold back private schooling without favoring one school over the other—letting parents decide who succeeds and who does not.
• Support and improve public schools to provide an alternative because there will always be children who cannot enroll in private schools, either because they are too expensive or because they are too far away, or because they don’t offer the instruction “basket” that some parents want.

In short, foreign aid should play no part in supporting private schools rather than private schooling.

On February 9, President Obama submitted his FY 2017 budget request to Congress. The proposed international affairs budget is down 1 percent from current funding levels and 12 percent (in constant dollars) since 2010, better than many domestic accounts. In addition, outside the regular budget, the administration is proposing $1.8 billion ($376 million from the international affairs budget account) to meet the latest pandemic—the Zika virus. Given the budget environment, the proposed amounts for the international affairs budget seem reasonable.

But from a long-term perspective, the budget is alarming. It seems unable to take account of global trends, it relies on fractured and ad hoc processes, and it is excessively siloed into pre-determined sectors.

Being satisfied with relatively small budget cuts does not face the reality of far greater and more pressing challenges today than in 2010. Today, Iraq and Afghanistan are still demanding sizable budget resources. We need to respond to Russia’s muscle-flexing by demonstrating our commitment to its independent neighbors. The effort to move HIV/AIDS to a more sustainable model is commendable but showing minimal success, so U.S. funding cannot slip. The Ebola crisis has been succeeded by the Zika virus. The Middle East is unstable and violent, with half the population of Syria killed or displaced. Sixty million displaced persons is the highest level ever reached. The world is addressing four Level 3 humanitarian crises, an unprecedented number. The fear of terrorism is spreading and disrupting rational political dialogue. Domestic violence and civil strife is increasing in Central America. Free expression is under siege in many countries and civil societies are in need of reinforcement.

Many of these challenges reflect an underinvestment in development in the past. We are using a Rube Goldberg budget system that cobbles together funding from multiple sources for a single objective and locks in funding several years before a penny flows, making it difficult to adjust to changing circumstances.

The budgeting system problem

The 2017 budget uses a gimmick that may not be sustainable. To fund the Iraq war, the Bush administration invented an off-budget account (Overseas Contingent Operations, or OCO, a successor to earlier emergency funding) that does not count against the annual budget caps. The State Department and USAID got part of their budgets starting in 2012 from this account. OCO for FY 2017 is proposed at one-quarter of the international affairs budget. The problem is that OCO cannot be counted on in the long-term, and the sustainable base budget for FY 2017 is down 30 percent from FY 2010 in constant dollars.

The budget process is also absurdly long. The Obama administration began planning the FY 2016 budget in the spring of 2014, roughly 18 months before Congressional appropriations. Typically, it could take another six months for agency officials and appropriation committees to agree on country and program allocations. Only then, 30 months later, can U.S. development professionals working overseas get on with the business of putting those resources to work.  

This budget process, with its long timeframes and pre-determined earmarks and presidential initiatives, means that despite best efforts by USAID, it is difficult to respect “local ownership” of development—something that development experience demonstrates is fundamental to successful and sustainable development.

Presidential initiatives have their place as a way to bring along political allies and the American populace. It is also appropriate and constructive for Congress to weigh in on funding priorities. But it can be counterproductive to effective development when presidential initiatives and congressional earmarks dictate at the micro level and restrict flexibility in implementation, especially in a rapidly changing world with frequent crises. 

Another problem with the current budget system is that most but not all sectors are protected by budget accounts or earmarks. Health is protected and the funding divided into various sub-accounts. Education and agriculture get earmarks. New in the FY 2016 appropriations bill is a separate line item for democracy.

Another structural issue is the crisis-reactive nature of our assistance programs. Health, which garners the lion’s share of U.S. economic assistance, has been dominated for nearly two decades by responses to global crises — first massive funding for combatting HIV/AIDS, followed by significant funding to tackle malaria, Ebola, and now the Zika virus. It is funding by individual disease. Crisis galvanizes political and popular support for the here and now. But what if we had focused on building up national health systems for the last 20 years rather than fighting one-off diseases? If we moved to more preventive approaches now, maybe in 10 or 20 years the pandemic of the day could be met less by the U.S. ramping up in a crisis mode and more by the health systems in those countries affected, with the U.S. playing a supportive and technical role rather than the core funding role. 

These issues are examples of why it is imperative for the next administration and congress to engage in a strategic dialogue on the objectives and priorities of foreign assistance programs, both in funding levels and how the funds are used. It is time to move away from the current structure that resembles building a Cadillac from parts of models stretching from 1949 to 1973, as in the Johnny Cash song "One Piece at A Time.”

Figure 1: How we build our budget

Source: Abernathyautoparts, CC BY-SA 2.5

It is not unrealistic to envisage a more strategic approach. One option is to return to the approach in the 1970s, when all development funding was put into one of just five or six functional accounts, and provide some flexibility in moving funds between accounts.

Policymakers who believe that America is an exceptional or indispensable nation and that world problems do not get solved without American involvement need to take a hard look at whether they are providing the U.S. government with the required diplomatic and development tools. It is high time for U.S. policymakers to take a more strategic approach to the level of funding of international affairs and how the U.S. uses its foreign assistance. The inauguration of a new president and Congress in 2017 offers the opportunity to seize this challenge.

Event Information

A conversation with USAID Administrator Gayle Smith

On March 30, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) hosted Gayle Smith, administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for an address on the fifth anniversary of the USAID policy on evaluation.

A principal recommendation of the Presidential Policy Determination on Global Development, signed by President Obama in 2010, was greater accountability for U.S. foreign assistance funds, including evaluation of development programs. In 2011, USAID adopted a formal policy on evaluation and since has average some 200 evaluations a year.

Among the issues that will be addressed during the event are the success and challenges in implementing the evaluation policy, the use of alternative evaluation methods, and building a system and process for turning evaluations into learning. Administrator Smith was introduced by Brookings Senior Fellow George Ingram. Following her address, he moderated a panel discussion of Ruth Levine, Wade Warren, and Jodi Nelson.

 Join the conversation on Twitter using #AIDeval

Video

• Assessing the impact of foreign assistance: The role of evaluation

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160330_usaid_evaluation_transcript

A recent article in The Guardian caught my eye: “Report accuses government of increasing inequalities in developing countries by financing academies at the expense of state schools.” The report, conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, was an attack on U.K. aid money being linked to private education providers since the rapid increase in such schools may be contributing to sub-standard education. In particular, they cited the U.K. government’s investments in the Nairobi-based and for-profit Bridge International Academies.

I’ve worked on private education extensively throughout my career and do not believe there is anything wrong with private schools, but in this particular case I couldn’t agree more. But to be clear, it’s the funding strategy that’s the problem.

Private schooling is on the rise in a number of poor countries, and Pakistan—where my education research is focused—is no exception. The majority of these schools are no longer the elite institutions of yore, but low-cost alternatives fighting for survival in a highly competitive environment. These schools have mushroomed in response to increased parental demand and poor public alternatives, but also to the greater availability of teachers in the local labor market.

More importantly, research increasingly demonstrates that there is absolutely nothing wrong with private schools. There's a summary of this research available here; specific examples on India (more here) and Pakistan are also available.

Some key are takeaways from this research are:

• Private schools charge low fees (about $1 to$2 a month in Pakistan).
• The quality is almost certainly higher compared to government schools in the vicinity.
• At least in Pakistan, there is no significant segregation between public and private schools in terms of parental wealth, education, or caste.
• The most significant barrier to attendance in low-cost private schools is not cost—it’s distance. Put simply, there just aren’t enough of them around.

If there is a cheaper and better alternative to public schooling, shouldn’t we encourage children to shift and thus improve the quality of education for all?

Perhaps. But when the rubber from these well-intentioned aid policies hits the road of rural Pakistan, Kenya, or Ethiopia, a very different sort of model emerges. Instead of supporting private schooling, donors end up supporting private schools (or at best private school chains), which is an entirely different action with little theoretical backing. In fact, economic theory screams that governments and donors should almost never do that.

Donors say the problem is that the low-cost private school market is fragmented with no central authority that can be “contracted with.” No one has a good model on how to work with a competitive schooling sector with multiple small players—ironically, the precise market structure that, according to economics, leads to efficiency.

In reality, I suspect the problem goes deeper. Most low-cost private school owners don’t do well at donor conferences. They don’t know how to tell compelling human-interest stories about the good they do. But what they are excellent at is using local resources to ensure that their schools meet the expectations of demanding parents.

The first is a problem of accountability. Public schools are accountable, through a democratic system, to citizens of the country. Private schools are accountable to the parents. And donor-funded private school chains are account to the donors. While both citizen-led accountability and direct accountability to parents have problems, they are grounded in centuries of experience. It’s unlikely that donors in a foreign land, some of whom can’t visit the schools they fund for security reasons, can do better than either citizens or parents.

The second is a problem of market structure. When one private school or private school chain receives preferential treatment and funding, without allowing other private schools to apply for the same funds, the donor is picking winners (remember Solyndra?). The need for private schools as an alternative to government schools is insufficient justification for donors to put their thumbs on the scale and tilt the balance of power towards a pre-identified entity.

In a recent experiment, my colleagues and I gathered direct proof for this assertion. We gave untied grants to low-cost private schools with a twist. In certain villages, we randomly selected a single private school for the grant. In others, we gave the grant to every private school in the village. Our preliminary results show that in villages where we gave the grant to a single school, the school benefitted enormously from an increase in enrollment. Where we gave the grant to multiple private schools, the enrollment increase was split among schools. But only in the villages where we gave the grant to every school did test-scores for children increase.

What happened? When a single private school receives the grant, knowing that the other schools cannot react due to a lack of funds, they engage in “customer poaching” to increase their profits at the expense of others. Some have argued that Uber’s recent fundraising is precisely such an effort to starve competitors of funding.

When you equally support all private schools, customer poaching does not work, and the only way to increase profits and generate returns is to increase the size of the market, either through higher overall enrollments or through new quality offerings.

The first strategy supports pre-identified private schools and concentrates market power. The second, by providing opportunities for all private schools, improves education for children.

Sure, some private school chains and schools are making positive impact and deserve the support they can get. But funding such schools creates the wrong institutional structures and are more likely to lead to disasters than successes (Greg Mortensen and 3 cups of tea, anyone?).

In general, the Government’s responsibility towards the education of children is two-fold:

• Alleviate the market constraints that hold back private schooling without favoring one school over the other—letting parents decide who succeeds and who does not.
• Support and improve public schools to provide an alternative because there will always be children who cannot enroll in private schools, either because they are too expensive or because they are too far away, or because they don’t offer the instruction “basket” that some parents want.

In short, foreign aid should play no part in supporting private schools rather than private schooling.