Foreign Aid/Foreign Assistance
135 Articles

The Global Fragility Act Could Give US Assistance and Diplomacy a New Start for Countries in Conflict
The Biden administration should draw on lessons from previous successes in Central America, and Congress must provide sufficient funding.

Letting Diplomacy Lead US Counterterrorism: What Would That Look Like?
The goal should be to establish diplomacy and aid as co-equal tools, to make counterterrorism more comprehensive, sustainable and, eventually, less violent.

To Prevent Atrocities, Break Bureaucratic Silos, Don’t Build A New One
Attempts to reduce risks of mass atrocities will be stronger if they are integrated with policy efforts to prevent conflict, address fragility, and counter extremism.

Protecting Ethiopian Refugees — and Averting the Next Crisis
Refugee crises often seem to emerge out of nowhere. All of a sudden, people are streaming across borders, making the excruciating choice that is no choice at all: to flee home…

Militarized Counterterrorism in Africa: Moving Beyond a Failed Approach
Leading with a heavy military response, particularly when government partners are repressive, ultimately makes things worse. The need for a new approach is clear. It should focus…

Think Beyond the Beltway — Bring Mayors and Governors to the Foreign Policy Table
States, regions, and cities are already on the frontlines, as in the pandemic. The federal government should support these contacts for the global future.

Global Health Is National Security
The pervasive damage to the global system of commerce, profit, and labor wrought by the coronavirus has proven that we are, indeed, an interdependent world.

The Cost of Resilience: The Roots and Impacts of the Beirut Blast
The Aug. 4 explosion at the Beirut port is not the cause of catastrophe in Lebanon, it is the result. To understand its causes and impacts, we must look to what came before, including…

Lebanon’s Peace Cartel is Irredeemable – How Donors Choose to Help Can Tip the Scales
Who controls aid matters for the immediate disaster response and for the leverage of those who have suffered the disaster against those who enabled it.

Non-lethal Assistance and the Syrian Conflict: Lessons from the Netherlands
Whether one thinks of Syria, Libya, Yemen, or Ukraine, third-State involvement is undeniably a common feature of many – if not most – ongoing non-international armed conflicts.…

Make Democracy and Governance a Keystone of the US Global Fragility Strategy
The US too often views its work on fragile or failed states as "fixing" various sectors, without enough focus on the political dynamics underneath.

The International Security Echo-Chamber: Getting Civil Society Into the Room
It is time to make sure the public fully understands the harmful impacts of their governments’ interventions on the lives of others, and to reaffirm that security can be built…