Picard, Louis A. and Terry F. Buss. A Fragile Balance: Re-Examining the History of Foreign Aid, Security, and Diplomacy.

Chen, Kai

Picard, Louis A. and Terry F. Buss. A Fragile Balance: Re-Examining the History of Foreign Aid, Security, and Diplomacy. Sterling. VA: Kumarian Press, 2009. 317 pp.

In the twenty-first century, foreign aid is still an essential approach of implementing foreign policies. Foreign aid has achieved successes to some degree. For understanding the weak points of foreign aid offered by the United States and the "potential contradictions between foreign aid and the other components of foreign and security policy"(p.10), A Fragile Balance: Re-Examining the History of Foreign Aid, Security, and Diplomacy discusses the United States foreign aid in Africa, Asia, Latin America, including Cuba, Haiti, and Liberia, Turkey, Persia, Thailand, Philippine and China. In the context of historical patterns of international relations, Louis A. Picard and Terry F. Buss analyze U.S. foreign aid through the approach of public policy, examine the corresponding impacts on international security, and consider the evolutions of state-sponsored foreign aid as "a product of the two World Wars and the Cold War sequel" (p.60).

Humanitarian and development assistance had its origins in the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment (p. 17). The universal implications drawn from one country would not be applicable to other countries or regions. As Picard and Buss conclude, "history makes it clear that institutions and institutional relationships cannot realistically be transplanted from on society to another"(p.290). Through the historical methodologies, such as what Robert Cowley calls "Counterfactual" history, this book analyzes "failures and successes as lessons for future foreign assistance approaches"(p.4) in the context of diplomacy and security policy.

As Picard and Buss note, the motives of foreign aid are varied: "technical specialists were sometimes missionaries, sometimes had commercial ties, and often defined their roles in moral or even ethical terms"(p.59), which challenge the narrow calculations of cost-benefit analysis in the literature. For the United States, interagency framework of foreign aid has been made up of the USAID, private sector and NGOs. In the views of the authors, there are three motivations of foreign aid: "self-interest", "a concern for national security", and "a sense of obligation and charity as some form of humanitarian reasonabilities" (p.284).

There are three challenges in the application of this approach: "sufficient skilled staff", "flexible politics" and "absence of incentives"(p. 176, 183). For example, NGOs have limited budgets to hire "sufficient skilled staff", and personnel of many NGOs are not direct hires. Donors also increasingly rely on personnel services contractors, who often have no administrative training in aid procedures. At the same time, if foreign aid is inappropriately utilized, this can make situation much worse.

This book highlights two unusual developments in the foreign aid hosting of the United States: first, "the co-option of foreign aid by the military"(p.9-10), such as in the Vietnam War, an important case of foreign aid's militarization by the United States. Since the Cold War, military intervention and foreign aid have always been intermingled, which tainted foreign aid policies into the future. Secondly, the foreign aid of the United States has been supported by private sector for a long time. Since the 1980s, "privatization and contracting out each became an increasing part of foreign aid"(p.129). At present, private foundations and NGOs, which work more efficiently, are regarded as alternatives to implementing foreign aid policies. After the Cold War, the United States left much of foreign aid in the hands of INGOs and NGOs. Moreover, for-profit contractors employ a separate nonprofit-affiliated group or form a permanent alliance with a nonprofit to compete for grants (p.206).

During the past decade, United States foreign aid policy has shifted toward dealing with asymmetrical conflicts. Picard and Buss analyze the motives and individual dilemmas of the United States' foreign aid in a cautiously optimistic way. In the words of Picard and Buss, foreign aid still faces considerable challenges, for example, corruption within the international administration service system supported by the United States. In addition, "leaders in recipient states sometimes have private ambitions and interests on their agendas"(p.289). In the concluding section, the authors suggest the whole-of-government approach, which was popularized by the Pentagon after the 2003 Iraq war, and "view implementation as an effort of the entire administration without fiscal, personnel, or organizational boundaries (p.176), in which the civilian-military relationship plays a essential role. Though militarization of foreign aid and for-profit contractors have been discussed in this book, more attention should have been given to the impact of private security companies or private military companies on foreign aid, which is largely abseat in the literature of foreign aid.

As a commentary on historical development and influences of foreign aid in the United States, A Fragile Balance: Re-Examining the History of Foreign Aid, Security, and Diplomacy explains the influences of foreign aid at the critical points in history, and discusses the decision-making and implementation of foreign aid policies. This book is not only clearly intended to be a must-read for undergraduate-level courses in foreign aid and foreign policy, but is also valuable to specialists in international relations.

Kai Chen

Zhejiang University, China