Kremlin cracks down on journalists, dissidents and minorities in Crimea

Since taking over, the "anti-fascist" Russian government in Crimea has proven it is the truly fascist regime, by jailing and intimidating journalists, allowing pro-Putin brownshirts ("self-defense militias") to act freely without legal accountability, persecuting minorities such as Crimean Tatars and Jews, and discouraging the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages.

Indeed, the non-existent "threat" from Praviy Sektor in Crimea has passed without incident, Putin has seized his Crimean pearl... and yet these pro-Russian thugs still strut around, enjoying carte blanche. Obviously they serve a useful purpose for Putin; they do the dirty work that law enforcement or regular troops shouldn't do -- like bullying journalists and kidnapping and torturing troublemakers.  

In Russian-ruled Crimea, a crackdown on journalists and activists who don't toe Kremlin line

May 30, 2014 | Kyiv Post

The entrance to the Simferopol Trade Union building, which stands opposite the Cabinet of Ministers on Lenin Square, has been obstructed daily by members of so-called Crimean self-defense militias since March.

These men, dressed in camouflage and armed with police batons and sometimes guns, wander into the building freely, where their frequent destination is the office of the Center for Investigative Journalism. “We’ve all come across them,” says journalist Tatiana Kurmanova wearily. “They make no concrete demands. They just have the effect of scaring us – imagine the first time when they came in here with pistols, looking at everything.”

The center, financed through grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign donors, was one of the first media organizations to receive such unwanted attention in Russia-controlled Crimea. If Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in control of Ukraine's peninsula and follows the same policy for Crimea that he does with the rest of the Russian Federation, then foreign-funded projects -- in particular those with USAID funding - will be targets for shutdown. 

The Crimean self-defense members marched into the journalism center's office on March 1, two days after soldiers without insignia appeared throughout the peninsula and set in motion the Russian invasion and occupation or – as Russian law would have it - annexation of Crimea. The self-defense militias, ungoverned by any law, have since become a permanent fixture of daily life in Crimea, patrolling streets, guarding transport hubs and government buildings, demanding to see the documents of passersby – and harassing journalists.     

While attacks on media have abated somewhat since March, when the Center for Investigative Journalism recorded 85 incidents, Crimea has by no means become a safe place for journalists. 

In the last six weeks, Andrey Krisko, who heads the Crimean Human Rights Field Mission, has registered nine serious incidents of harassment of journalists, involving personal harm, damage to equipment and illegal detention for more than three hours. He experienced one such incident himself, when he was physically prevented from taking pictures of a journalist arguing with self-defense forces on May 17. Later, he found out the journalist had been followed and detained. 

Most cases, Krisko said, concern not single but groups of journalists, and all cases involve the self-defense militias. Some cases have been widely publicized, like that of journalist Osman Pashayev on May 18. Pashayev was filming the Crimean Tatar meeting commemorating 70 years of their deportation, and the hundreds of riot police guarding Simferopol city center, when self-defense forces detained both him and his Turkish cameraman. They were held for 10 hours, had all their equipment taken away, and were denied access to lawyers until a threatened appeal to the prosecutors office. 

Kurmanova thinks there are probably many more such incidents involving the self-defense and Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB under its Russian acronym, but journalists working for Crimean government media do not want to publicize them. Most of the journalists who have spoken publicly, like Pashayev, left Crimea afterwards as soon as they could.

Meanwhile several Crimean civil activists who supported the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22 and protested against Russian occupation are currently detained by the FSB. 

The FSB said on May 30 that film director Oleg Sentsov, Alexandr Kolchenko, Oleksiy Chyrniy and Hennadiy Afanasyev are under arrest charged with being members of Ukraine's ultra-nationalistic Right Sector and suspected of plotting to stage acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks in several cities of the peninsula. 

Kateryna Serhatskova, a journalist and coordinator of an initiative group to help Sentsov, says Sentsov, Kolchenko, Chyrniy and Afanasyev have never been members of Right Sector.

"For those who have doubts: these guys have never been members of the Right Sector and prepared no terrorist attacks, these are absolutely peaceful people, who maintained the integrity of Ukraine. Now confessions are being forced out of them, and probably one of them will admit his guilt all in all. It's outrageous nonsense. No comment," Serhatskova wrote on her Facebook page on May 30, according to Interfax-Ukraine news service. 

The whereabouts of two more activists, Timur Shaimardanov and Leonid Korzh, reported missing by the Ukrainian organisation Ukrainian House on May 28, are unknown. 

The effect of this intimidation has been to effectively silence critical or opposition media to the Russian annexation within Crimea. TV channel ATR and the website 15 Minutes, both owned by Crimean Tatar businessman Lenur Islyamov, have greatly cut down on their live programming and news coverage since March.

The only other independent agencies left, the Center for Investigative Journalism and the Radio Liberty-supported project Crimean Reality, both have regular problems with the self-defense militias.

“This situation when there are these groups that don’t answer to anyone, that aren’t controlled by any law, means it’s impossible to say journalists can work professionally here,” says Krisko. “The risk of damage to equipment or personal attacks, as well as fear of censorship, means that those who want to give objective information simply can’t.”

In methods reminiscent of Soviet tactics, smear campaigns, censorship and simple exclusion by news sources are also silencing journalists who might want to show a less one-sided, pro-Russian view of current affairs in Crimea. Kurmanova and her colleagues regularly receive online threats and hate mail since the beginning of March. 

Meanwhile two journalists from the Yevpatoria council-funded newspaper Yevpatoria Health Resort, who had been less than enthusiastic about Russian occupation, became subject to an attempted witch hunt in May when rival journalists sent a letter accusing them of being spies and provocateurs to the city council.

"We don’t demand the exile of these people from their town and their profession," according to the letter. "But we Yevpatorians do not need these masked ‘fifth columnists’ in our hometown, and paid from the town budget!"

It concludes by saying that if the town council does not remove them from the paper, "we will appeal to the FSB demanding they protect us Russian citizens from journalists openly conducting subversive activities." 

[ People writing donos on their enemies and professional rivals -- this is behavior straight out of the USSR!  Alas, how quickly, under Russian rule, some Crimeans have fallen back into their bad old Soviet ways!.... -- J ]

The two journalists have so far held on to their jobs, and did not want to comment further on the incident. Since the end of February, when a new Crimean parliament was announced, journalists from the Center for Investigative Journalism have not been able to get parliamentary accreditation. Lawmakers refuse to speak to them, or call them "American spies." The Crimean Cabinet of Ministers’ press service does not answer their calls. They are not informed of meetings and press conferences, or are denied entry.

“There’s a very clear difference between journalists from Russian media who can get into the offices of officials and anywhere else with no problem, and journalists from Ukrainian media who might ask awkward questions,” says Kurmanova. “We’re like white crows; no one wants to talk to us. Before it was all organised, we could write a request for information, or set up filming. Now we get our information in bits and pieces, grabbing officials outside buildings, if they agree to speak.”

Shevket Ganiyev, editor-in-chief of Crimean Tatar programming at the Crimean state broadcasting company TRK, was excluded from news coverage through a different method: He and his director were simply sent home for a month’s holiday. 

Ganiyev’s small amount of allotted live broadcasting had already been taken off air with no warning in March, before a hastily-organised referendum on joining Crimea to Russia. Ganiyev and his colleagues, who like most Crimean Tatars openly opposed the referendum, then agreed with TRK management (which openly supported it) that his department would boycott working at TRK until after the referendum.  When his team came back on air, they were subject to much closer control. 

On April 24, they were told they could not make any mention at all of Crimean Tatar governing body the Mejlis, or of Crimean Tatar leaders Mustafa Jemilev and Refat Chubarov in their programming. This has meant the editorial has had to ignore events widely covered in the international media – including Russian.

“If there’s news in Russian media and we are not allowed to talk about it, how can any journalist accept this as normal?” asks Ganiyev. “We’re not just banned from talking about the Mejlis as good or bad. We are not even allowed to cover facts.” 

The same day as the ban, Ganiyev and the editorial director were asked by TRK management to take a month’s leave.

“Of course they didn’t say so, but I think they had to send us on holiday because then our collective would be easier to control,” says Ganiyev. “May was a worrying time for them [the Russian authorities - J] because of the 70th anniversary of the [Crimean Tatar] deportation and events connected with that. I think they were scared and tried to protect themselves.” 

Ganiyev was back at work from May 28, but he and his team have no idea what the future will bring amid the general upheaval at TRK, which was formerly funded by the Ukrainian government but is now is a state of stasis. For the Crimean Tatar editorial, this is yet another set-back in their fight for more airtime in their own language. Their live airtime was reduced over a year ago to 13 minutes news a day, and their recorded programming is exclusively about cultural and social matters.

We’re hostages in this situation,” says Ganiyev. “For us, the most important things are to preserve our work places and editorial so that we can broadcast in Crimean Tatar language. If tomorrow they kick us out and bring in new journalists who are convenient for them and who speak in incorrect Crimean Tatar they’ll be pleased, because it will start the assimilation of our language.” 

Under the Ukrainian license still being used at TRK, Crimean Tatar language is allotted seven percent of overall airtime. Ukrainian language programming before March was even more limited. Since March, one of just three weekly Ukrainian language programmes has switched to Russian. Svetlana Datsenko, editor of one of the two remaining Ukrainian programmes, said she had also been asked to switch to Russian. “If there are three equal state languages in Crimea then there should be proportional coverage, 33 percent for each language,” Ganiyev points out. But neither he nor Datsenko have much expectation of that happening. 

The new head of TRK, Boris Nemets, is from Crimean government head Sergei Aksyonov’s Russian Unity party, as is the new Crimean minister for information. The party’s key campaigning platform is Russian language rights.

As Crimea moves rapidly towards adopting Russian legislation, the situation for a free media is only set to get worse.

On top of harassment and exclusion, staff of the Center for Investigative Journalism have a whole array of logistical problems to deal with. Their salaries, paid from foreign donors, are frozen as the Crimean banking system has collapsed. 

They have been told to vacate their rented offices by the end of July. Russian legislation, which comes into force in Crimea in January, requires that their organisation register as a foreign agent, and completely bans their main donor, USAID. Increasingly repressive Russian laws can shut down opposition websites, and impose prison sentences on anyone questioning Russian territorial integrity (which would include Crimea) in the media.

Meanwhile a law legalizing the self-defense militias has already passed its first reading in the Crimean parliament. According to Kurmanova, it grants the militias a wide range of powers to stop, search, confiscate and detain, with minimum responsibilities. As state media in Crimea produces a soothing stream of information about a bright Russian future, ignoring the economic and social problems since annexation and downplaying or disregarding non-Russian ethnic groups, it is little surprise that Kurmanova and Datsenko from TRK both plan to leave Crimea for mainland Ukraine by the end of the summer.

“We had strict editorial standards and I suppose that’s why it's hardest of all for us, because now no one here needs such editorial standards,’ says Kurmanova. “It’s easier just not to ask questions and to keep quiet.”

Forgotten history: Twice the U.S. rescued Russia

This one's worth posting in full.  [HT: Sasha.]  I've had several Russians tell me I don't know history, especially World War II history, (true enough), but I never once heard any of them mention these two examples.  It's understandable why their Soviet schools never told them.  Of course most Americans know nothing about it either.  So all y'all git yerselfs edumacated!

Making the Kremlin Queasy: Massive American Aid Has Helped Russians Three Times in the Last Century

By James Brooke

September 25, 2012 | VOA Blogs

As American officials struggle to meet an Oct. 1 deadline for closing the 20-year-old USAID office in Moscow, it is worth looking at America’s other great 20th century aid program to Russians.

In a corner of Public School 1262 in Moscow, there is a one-room, privately run museum, the Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease. It celebrates a crucial act of American generosity largely unknown to Russians.

Under the bland title of the Lend-Lease Act, American taxpayers sent to the Soviet people, from 1941 to 1945, $11.3 billion worth of war supplies. That is $146 billion in contemporary dollars.

This steel river of jeeps, trucks and bombers was neither a loan nor a lease. Franklin Roosevelt chose that title in the hopes of deluding American isolationists who opposed what they saw (correctly) as an outright gift to Moscow.

What did this money buy for the USSR? 3,770 bombers, 11,594 fighter planes, 5,980 anti-aircraft guns, 2,000 railroad locomotives, 51,000 jeeps, 361,000 trucks, 56,445 field telephones, 600,000 kilometers of telephone wire, 22 million artillery shells, almost one billion rifle cartridges, and 15 million pairs of army boots.

Shipped through the North Atlantic, driven up through Persia, or flown in from Alaska, this ready-made war material also freed up 600,000 Soviet factory workers to directly fight the Nazi invaders.

What was the impact of this generosity?

Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference in 1943, said publicly of the American Lend-Lease program: “Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war.”  After the war, the aid became a taboo topic. 

Without it, Adolf Hitler might have enjoyed his planned victory banquet at the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg. Then, he might have proceeded with his plan to raze Moscow and turn Russia’s capital into a lake. As a rump Soviet government retreated to the Urals, Hitler might have pursued his grand plan to reduce “excess” Slav populations and convert the Black Soil belt into agricultural plantations devoted to feeding the Third Reich. (Note to Russian neo-Nazis: Sorry to break the news, but the real Nazis wanted your grandfathers dead).

Russian cynics will say the United States needed the Soviet Union to bolster the American war effort.

Au contraire.

Even after Dec. 7, 1941, one current of thought in the United States said, in effect: trade Britain for the Bolsheviks. In other words: Adolf, lay off London. Focus your energies on Moscow. An Anglo-American alliance could learn to live with a Nazi dominated Europe. Our fight is with the Japanese, who attacked Hawaii, and were killing and interning Americans in the Philippines and the Marianas.

Instead, a more generous and liberal American worldview prevailed: free the world from fascism.

It was toward this goal, that my mother worked at a factory building bomb sites outside of New York City, and my father drove a military ambulance in the North African campaign against the Nazis. They were just two of the millions of Americans who volunteered — were not drafted — in the war effort.

Today, American Lend-Lease aid is largely ignored in Russian history books.

It did not fit with Stalin’s self-aggrandizing victory narrative.

After the fall of communism, the Lend-Lease never recovered its place in Russian history books.

There was an earlier precedent.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

In 1921-22, the United States Congress-funded American Relief Administration helped feed about 10 million starving Russians. Initially, Lenin had refused Western aid. But as the death toll mounted, he relented. American food aid continued through 1923. But American popular support dwindled when it became clear that the Soviet government was exporting its own grain to earn foreign currency, and then asking foreigners to feed Russian peasants.

Soviet textbooks ignored the American aid and glossed over the famine. Largely manmade, this hunger killed about five million people – 10 times higher than any late Czarist era famine.

I bring this up because a similar Kremlin official revisionism is now underway about American taxpayers’ third great aid project to Russia in the last century: the USAID project.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has given $2.7 billion in aid to post-communist Russia. Initially, the aid was designed to stave off severe food shortages. But the bulk was to ease Russia’s transition from a closed society and economy to an open one.

Much of the money went to such building block projects as drawing up a land code, a tax code, promoting small business and judicial reforms.

Over the last two decades, I have known many AID workers in Russia. They came in all shapes and sizes, but seemed to be motivated by a common goal: to see Russia progress from a state-controlled economy and society to an open one.

The program had American support. Year after year, it was approved by the U.S. Congress. Congress answers to the 138 million Americans who pay income tax. If aid to Russia was unpopular, it would have been thrown out years ago.

As Russia’s economy stabilized and grew, the aid shrank. This year, it is $49 million – less than 20 percent of the mid-1990s peak. It increasingly went into health issues – fighting tuberculosis, AIDS prevention, and reducing the abandonment of children.

On one level, the Putin Administration feels Russia has outgrown foreign aid. But, just as Russia seeks foreign investment in factories, foreign aid in health care brings in new techniques and experience. There is no point in reinventing the wheel in either sector. Should Russia throw out foreign car companies and go back to making its own world-beating cars?

On another level, Vladimir Putin feels that Washington is interfering in Russian politics by granting a total of $29 million this year to such civil society groups as Golos, a clean elections group, Memorial, a human rights group, and Transparency International, a corruption fighting group.

Hmm, what does that say about the Kremlin’s attitudes toward clean elections, human rights, and corruption fighting?

The USAID Russia civil society promotion budget is barely 1 percent of USAID’s total $23.8 billion budget this year.

And what does it say, when the Kremlin elephant stands on a stool, and cries ‘eek, eek’ at the sight of a $29 million American mouse?

Today, Russia’s finance minister, Andrei Belousov, announced that Russia’s net capital outflow for the first eight months of 2012 was $52 billion. At that rate, it took three hours to clock $29 million out the door. Presumably, private Russian donors can be found to pick up the slack. Of course that assumes that the Kremlin will allow non-governmental groups to take non-governmental donations.

Kremlin apologists try to persuade the public that Western money is the reason for the protest movement in Russia. But, in a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, 58 percent of Russians believe the opposition protests were home-grown. Only 25 percent believe that foreign powers are behind the protests.

All the same, 20 years of USAID assistance to Russia is being sacrificed on the current altar of anti-Americanism.

In a sign of the times, an American, Marc Schneider, was chosen earlier this month to play the role of Napoleon in the Sept. 2 reenactment of the Battle of Borodino. This 1812 epic confrontation pitted the French dictator’s Grande Armee against the forces of Czar Alexander I.

So while, President Putin and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing met at the battlefield and talked to reporters about the eternal friendship between France and Russia, a pint-sized American Napoleon swaggered up and down the French lines, urging his troops to kill Russians.

An American Napoleon.

Now, THAT fits the Kremlin’s historical narrative.

On Romney's big foreign aid speech

Romney: "If you teach a man to catch a fish this big..."

Mitt Romney's "big foreign aid speech" in New York yesterday took a lot of U.S. rightwing ideological claptrap and imposed it on nations, and a group of aid professionals, that he obviously doesn't understand.

Take, for example, Romney's work requirement to receive U.S. foreign aid, as if developing countries were filled with lazy welfare recipients sitting on their couches, (or their dirt floors as they case may be), waiting for the U.S. to feed them:

Work. That must be at the heart of our effort to help people build economies that can create jobs for people, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work will not long tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women.

How insulting and stupid!  We're talking about nations where "Work or Starve" isn't the Tea Party's campaign slogan, it's their everyday reality. These people need Romney's lectures on the importance of hard work like they need to learn the importance of food.  Neither do they need his hollow injunctions to overthrow their corrupt leaders: easy for you to say from New York, Mitt!  

(UPDATE: A friend of mine said I was taking Romney's words out of context; he was just emphasizing job creation. Maybe so. But the context of his speech in the campaign was what mattered. Development professionals know that the U.S. Government's economic growth programs have emphasized job creation -- often with hard-number job targets -- for decades now.  But average U.S. voters may not.  Hence, Romney's speech gave the false impression that foreign assistance is broken and needs a "new Sheriff in town" to fix it. Thus my criticism of his stating the obvious as if it was something novel is entirely valid.)

In fact, Romney openly regrets the Arab Spring, when people in the Middle East and North Africa proved they would no longer "tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government."  So, oppressed people of the world, you should realize that Romney's injunction to throw off your yoke of tyranny comes with an asterisk, if you're Muslim.

Next, Romney repeated the commonly-held but wrong view that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the answer to every nation's economic prayers:

We will focus our efforts on small and medium-size businesses. Microfinance has been an effective tool at promoting enterprise and prosperity, but we must expand support to small and medium-size businesses that are too large for microfinance, but too small for traditional banks.

Indeed, in the U.S. and abroad, more and better jobs are created by larger companies, not small (and especially informal) businesses.  And microfinance has a mixed record of success at best, placing many in the developing world in a cycle of dependency on usurious short-term loans to survive and operate their micro-enterprises.  Yet it is a matter of faith on the Left and Right that small business creates all the jobs and wealth.  What the developing world could really use is Big Corporations, er, Big People, investing their big money and offering locals high-paying jobs and innovative technologies. It's too bad that Romney didn't offer any bright ideas from his big business experience on how to accomplish that. (His plans would probably involve massive U.S. layoffs and offshore banks.)

Next, Romney offered us this epiphany: free enterprise is good.  And he said it in such a way to imply that U.S. foreign aid to-date has been about throwing free food and stacks cash off the back of trucks:

A temporary aid package can jolt an economy.  It can fund some projects.  It can pay some bills.  It can employ some people some of the time.  But it can’t sustain an economy—not for long.  It can’t pull the whole cart—because at some point, the money runs out.  But an assistance program that helps unleash free enterprise creates enduring prosperity. 

Gee, really?  This is a variation on the "teach a man to fish" bromide.  First, most aid projects aren't nearly big enough to "jolt" an economy, much less "sustain" it, not for any period of time!  Second, we got Mitt's memo about 40 years ago. Seriously. The foreign aid straw man he is knocking down doesn't exist. Absolutely nobody in the foreign aid world thinks the opposite of what Romney said. Third, this is so silly and condescending to people who have been working on institutional, legislative and regulatory reform in developing nations to "unleash free enterprise" and "enduring prosperity."  Romney should shut up and listen to them!

Finally, we should admit that a lot of foreign aid is just a roundabout payout to U.S. industries.  For instance, U.S. military aid to Egypt (which is 5x greater than all other forms of aid) goes into the pockets of U.S. defense contractors, while it's arguable whether Egypt needs such a well-equipped army.  And food aid is purchased from U.S. farmers, whether or not it's the best way to fight hunger. Meanwhile, as a result of U.S. lobbying, since 1986 the Bumpers Amendment has forbidden U.S. foreign assistance from helping developing nations to increase agricultural commodities that might compete with U.S. crop exports, free enterprise be damned. This is not to mention long-standing "Buy America" clauses in U.S. foreign assistance contracts that make U.S. aid much more expensive to deliver. As a result of this and more, a certain degree of ineffectiveness is built into our foreign aid architecture by Congress.

Overall, Romney's tone was just wrong, and his content was either obvious or needlessly inflammatory. It is now apparent that, similar to Dubya, Romney sees a world of friendly vs. unfriendly nations; free vs. unfree markets; and corrupt vs. non-corrupt.  And based on those categorizations, Romney wants to decide who gets foreign aid assistance.  (N.B.: Dubya already tried this.)

Yes, there is a strong connection between those things and poverty.  That's why the U.S. has supported democracy, human rights and good governance for years now. The trouble is, in unfriendly, unfree and corrupt nations, everyday people aren't allowed to write the laws and make the rules.  Thus, by withholding our development assistance, including technical assistance (i.e. teaching them to fish), which is mostly what we provide nowadays, we would punish average citizens for their leaders' avarice and myopia.  That would not only be unfair to them, it'd be counter-productive to Romney's stated aims. 

Moreover, foreign assistance is often the only direct contact the U.S. Government has with people living in corrupt, unfree, and/or oppressive countries. If we revoke it then we have only finger-wagging and threats to communicate with them, which average people overseas probably won't even hear. Foreign assistance is not just about "effectiveness" in alleviating poverty; it is soft-power diplomacy to demonstrate our commitment to our cherished values.  

To his credit, Romney did note that the U.S. contributes about 25 percent of global foreign aid, and spends twice as much on foreign assistance as any other country. But he didn't mention that America also accounts for 41 percent of the world's military spending, or about 5 times as much as our nearest rival, China.  In budget terms, 1 percent goes to foreign aid vs. 20 percent to the U.S. military.  Is a 20:1 ratio of "guns to butter" in achieving U.S. foreign policy aims indeed out of whack, and in which direction?  Romney has gone on record to increase U.S. military spending; and it looks like foreign aid is under threat.  So clearly, Romney thinks that ratio should be even more disbalanced.    

Romney has made the choice pretty stark.  Now it's up to informed Americans to decide.

Senate: Little to show for $19 billion in Afghan aid

It's extremely hard and expensive to get out and do development work in an active conflict zone, much less ensure proper oversight to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse by grantees, contractors and recipients. The State Dept. and USAID certainly have their work cut out for them there.

USAID has already issued two replies to this critical Senate report. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah noted that in the past 18 months USAID has tripled its staff on the ground to manage assistance. And as an example of USAID's new focus on contract oversight and compliance, Shah mentioned AED, a 50-year-old NGO that is now laying dead and on the auction block after USAID smacked it down for corruption in Pakistan, (RIP).

UPDATE: "Sold! To the gentlemen from North Carolina!" I missed the announcement June 8 that FHI bought AED.

Afghan Nation-Building Programs Criticized In Senate Report

By Donna Cassata

June 7, 2011 | AP

Afghanistan is at risk of a deep financial crisis when foreign troops leave in 2014 if the United States is unable to overhaul its multibillion-dollar package of nation-building assistance, according to a congressional report that comes as President Barack Obama weighs the size and scope of the initial phase of a U.S. troop drawdown.

The report, completed over two years by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. stabilization programs in Afghanistan have had limited success despite about $18.8 billion in U.S. foreign aid over 10 years – more than any other country, including Iraq.

Misspent foreign aid can result in corruption, alter markets and undercut the ability of the Kabul government to control its resources, said the report, which was posted Tuesday night on the Senate committee's website. The World Bank found that a whopping 97 percent of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan is linked to spending by the international military and donor community.

"Afghanistan could suffer a severe economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now," the report said.

The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are spending about $320 million a month on foreign aid there, relying on the money to "win hearts and minds." Among the successes has been a sevenfold increase in the number of children attending school and gains in health care.

But the report said the United States must take a closer look at how it spends the money, relying heavily on contractors. The U.S. must do a better job of oversight, especially as it funds more aid through the Afghan government. One recommendation was to standardize Afghan salaries and work with the government on staff limitations.

[Translation: Find another employer for Afghans besides the U.S.-funded Afghan government.]

The panel's Democrats also suggested that Congress implement multiyear aid programs and closer scrutiny of stabilization programs

"Transition planning should find the right balance between avoiding a sudden drop-off in aid, which could trigger a major economic recession, and a long-term phase-out from current levels of donor spending," the report said.

The report came a day before the Foreign Relations Committee's confirmation hearing for Ryan Crocker, Obama's choice to serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Crocker is certain to face several skeptical and war-weary lawmakers wondering about the U.S. investment in Afghanistan in the 10th year of the war and after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Republicans and Democrats are pressing for a robust drawdown of the 100,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan, expected to begin in July, especially in a time of serious U.S. financial woes. The administration is seeking about $3.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan in next year's budget, an amount likely to be closely reviewed.

Obama plans to elevate USAID?

The rebirth of USAID

By Patrick Cronin

May 4, 2010 | The Daily Caller

The new White House plan to "elevate development as a pillar of national security strategy, equal to diplomacy and defense" may spark the biggest political fight over development since Jesse Helms made the head of development report to the Secretary of State. The impending brawl may not be immediately obvious. After all, the Obama administration's goal of boosting development resembles the '3-D' triad of defense, diplomacy, and development crafted by the George W. Bush administration. But whereas the Bush administration sought to tightly circumscribe the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Obama administration seeks to restore USAID to its glory days of the 1960s.

The restoration of USAID will take herculean reform and uncommon patience, if it is even possible at all. No doubt leaking the Presidential Study Directive this week, in advance of the National Security Strategy and months before the completion of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, was deliberate. The Obama administration (or at least a portion of it) figures it can stake out its agenda (and perhaps claim on resources) before the rest of the interagency consumes all of the policy and budget oxygen inside the Beltway. As with development itself, however, this directive will only be as good or bad as its implementation, and on that score there are many questions that will need to be addressed.

The directive's opening paragraph provides the best short mission statement for development, which it notes "is essential to our security, prosperity and values." Moreover, it is keenly attuned to the global security environment, which is marked by economic integration and political fragmentation; emerging powers and fragile states; globalization opportunities and transnational threats. Consistent with other keystone documents of the Obama administration, the directive emphasizes the need for proactive development engagement in order to build capable partners.

All of this is exemplary. The hard bits are its agenda are embedded in the rest of the directive, which calls for a deliberate development policy, a new business model, a new architecture, and a new compact with Congress.

A deliberate development policy is prevented, as the document observes, by the nation's 1,000 extant development goals. Those goals represent myriad different interests and political bargains, as the United States abandoned a straightforward model of half a century ago, back when USAID mission directors largely determined how to spend tax dollars in less developed countries. Some of the results were spectacular, including paving the way for economic growth and reform in the Asian tigers but also elsewhere like Chile [and India! - J]. This most laudable of goals in the directive will face the toughest of battles, because it will require many centers of power in Washington to cede authority back to USAID. The problem is not so much USAID as the proliferation of goals and authorities and earmarks that have often satisfied Washington's powerbrokers at the expense of promoting development around the world.

Similar problems will attend the call for a new business model. The directive focuses on the need for greater collaboration with the private sector and civil society, leveraging multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, a better division of labor among major donors, and more disciplined analysis to determine what programs work. In a time of financial and economic crisis in the United States, the effort to spur a better business model within USAID should receive plaudits from both sides of the political aisle. But here's the rub: will USAID, even in exchange for renewed authority over the nation's development programs, and policy, agree with Congress on the governance and transparency necessary to birddog long-term development spending?

The directive assumes the acquiescence of the State Department, which hitherto has made clear that development programs must be conducted within the context of policy made at Foggy Bottom. Will State loosen its reins over policy, including development policy, in order to give USAID the autonomy to work effectively and make America a global leader in development? There are sound reasons for letting development work free from much of the short-term thinking of foreign policy. At the same time, will the State Department and the White House, for that matter, really have confidence that USAID will be there when it is needed to stabilize conflict and post-conflict states or when development is a useful part of a whole-of-government response? The directive includes paragraphs on each of these two points. The forthcoming QDDR report in September will be telling, as least with respect to how far President Obama will go in making USAID more independent once again.

The White House directive's push for fostering "the next generation of emerging markets by enhancing our focus on broad-based growth and democratic governance" has an appealing sound to it, and surely it is consistent with supporting a liberal international order consistent with U.S. values. But the same directive later focuses on the need to "hold long-time recipients of U.S. assistance accountable for achieving development results." The emphasis on economic growth is excellent and the over-parching logic is internally consistent. But 2010 is not 1960, and the Western development model is increasingly under assault by "the Beijing consensus." That consensus refers to the current situation in which an authoritarian and mercantilist China free rides on our international order and cherry picks resource-rich countries, which in exchange for supplying resources to feed the voracious Chinese market appetite, China provides major infrastructure projects without other conditionality.

But the fourth and final hurdle will be money. The brief call for a new engagement with Congress only hints at the battle royal to be fought over scarce resources. In addition to clashing over a new Foreign Assistance Act, the nation's budgetary realities—including a $12 trillion national deficit, an anemic economy with high unemployment, and the retirement of Baby Boom retirement—raise questions about where new development dollars will be found.

None of these monumental challenges detract from an excellent capstone document about where the administration would like to steer development. But in glossing over some of the major obstacles along the path, it begs for a new national debate on development.

Patrick Cronin is a Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).