Jim Dehart, left, an advisor from the U.S. State Department, Jim Hoffman, right, an agricultural adviser from the U.S. Agriculture Department, and Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team members meet with Afghans on a hilltop in the Anaba district of Panjshir province, Afghanistan, Jan. 2, 2010. Team members surveyed a possible location for a water reservoir. One of the province’s problems is the lack of potable water. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Teddy Wade

Pentagon Wins Turf war With State Over Military Aid — Foreign Policy

The Pentagon has won a major internal battle over control of foreign assistance funding, delaying the Obama administration’s pledge to demilitarize foreign policy, multiple sources tell The Cable.

DOD and State have been fighting vigorously over who would be in charge of large swaths of the foreign assistance budget, billions of dollars in total that are used to aid and work with governments all over the world. Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have emphasized the need to rebalance national security spending away from the military and toward the diplomatic core, but behind the scenes their offices have struggled to determine where the lines should be drawn.

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My Comment: I am sure that most US politicians and senior policy advisers would prefer having State run these programs. Unfortunately, their track record and lack of resources makes such an undertaking difficult to impossible in some cases.

For example, I always remember the difficulty that the State Department had in having the necessary personnel in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein …. no one in State wanted to go to the country. As a result, it was the Pentagon that assumed many of the roles that should have been under the purview of the State Department.

Will this Pentagon-State department turf war change in the next few years …. I hope so. Soldiers are trained to do many things but being primarily involved in development and nation building is at the bottom of their list (until now).

For the moment the Pentagon is the only institution with the resources and manpower to undertake many of these aid projects, and it is only natural that they have assumed the role of influencing and guiding US foreign policy. But this cannot continue, many countries in the world do not have a positive view towards the American military machine, and their placement in these countries may only create more problems and animosities than good..

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