During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week, Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) questioned witnesses about the failures of “cash diplomacy” around the world.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Fully hash out Nepal as an issue, we argued it plenty for several hours here before, but
00:05I would say that if the paper, the document that State Department literally puts forward
00:11on this grant for Nepal says expanding atheism, I would say expanding is promoting.
00:19And I would further make the point that the folks on the ground said that atheism was
00:24not one of the marginalized groups, atheists were not one of the marginalized groups in
00:27Nepal.
00:29This was absolutely an instance, Mr. Malinowski, I think you used an appropriate word, experimentation.
00:35I don't think the American people want their dollars used for experimenting on whether
00:40atheism should be expanded in some country abroad.
00:45And I appreciate the comments on it, I appreciate the thought on it, but I entirely disagree
00:49regardless of where the policy came from.
00:51I believe it is now back to Mr. Mills for five minutes.
00:56Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
00:57Look, I want to talk about this whole grant and localization thing, but I also want to
01:01talk about how these grants has not seen any national security strategic success and goals.
01:09Let's go back to Afghanistan and Iraq.
01:11I spent seven years in Iraq, almost three years in Afghanistan.
01:14I've worked with the State Department, I've worked with the government, I've worked with
01:16the agencies, I've worked in uniform, and I've watched the gross abuse of programs like
01:22Black & Veatch's Kandahar Helmand Power Project, the idea of being able to spend billions and
01:26billions of dollars that we're going to do hydro turbine electricity into Kandahar Helmand
01:30and that's somehow going to work.
01:32Are you aware of what happened with that project, Mr. Malinowski?
01:35No, and again, what we've been focused on here is we do need to distinguish between
01:40big economic development projects.
01:42But this didn't start out as a big economic development program.
01:46Originally they were saying that we're going to give small grants to the people that are
01:48there to do construction areas just to try and refurbish what was existing.
01:53Then that failed.
01:54Then it was okay, now we need to grow this a little bit bigger.
01:56Okay, now that failed.
01:58Now we need to go ahead and bring in all new equipment.
01:59Now that failed.
02:00And then it starts to get to the tunes of billions and billions of dollars.
02:03And you said something that USA doesn't do small grants.
02:05Well, I know for a fact that in Libya you had organizations like DAI and also Creative
02:10Associates and also Comonix who's doing $1,000 to $5,000 grants.
02:15They were giving grants.
02:16Do you want to know what one of those was for?
02:17It was to buy speaker equipment for a local rapper because they thought that if he made
02:22music about governance that that was going to stabilize the nation.
02:26Does that seem like that's what American taxpayers want to see?
02:30Is there money being spent to buy rap equipment for people in a nation which has nothing to
02:35do with stabilization, never had any actual impact whatsoever?
02:39These are the things that, my point in bringing up these failed programs is that we've tried
02:43the monitoring evaluation.
02:45We contract one company.
02:47We then contract a company like Management Systems International, MSI, who's supposed
02:51to be the M&E gurus and experts who then spend even more money and then they can't
02:55even track the money that they're spending for M&E while trying to also track the money
02:58that's being done to the implementing partner.
03:00And then we talk about this grand scheme of we're going to do localization.
03:03Let's talk about localization.
03:04The only difference is instead of the Thursday night debauchery that goes on by most of the
03:08expats that are over there celebrating drinking on a Thursday night like they did in Iraq,
03:13Afghanistan, and all the rest, you then just have them refilling boots and positions here
03:18in D.C. and calling themselves deputy chiefs of party, chiefs of party, you know, program
03:23assembly manager, all this.
03:25You're not saving any money by trying to do this localization route.
03:28And in fact, I would argue that we saw actually a lot more corruption in Iraq as a result
03:32of that whenever we were building bridges that were $750 million and then all of a sudden
03:38come to find out half the bridges when we investigated hadn't even been built.
03:42My issue is that I don't see where cash diplomacy has been successful.
03:48I don't see where that's stabilized nations.
03:51Where's Iraq right now?
03:53Where's Afghanistan right now?
03:55Where's Libya right now?
03:58We spent trillions of dollars in these nations, and then we throw it out when we do things
04:03like the 2005 Iraq Constitution under Article 76 that establishes sectarianism, which hasn't
04:09existed since pre-apartheid eras in North Ireland.
04:13My point is that we can talk about enmity and all this.
04:17I disagree with your assertion that, you know, the U.N. enforces all these grand sanctions.
04:23What about the sanctions on Iran right now?
04:25How's that working with regards to ensuring that they don't export more oil than they've
04:29ever done in their history under this administration?
04:32Is that, you think they're imposing sanctions?
04:34You think they're actually upholding things?
04:36No.
04:37The U.S. military and Ban Ki-moon, under Resolution 2231, knew there was mid-range ballistic missile
04:42violations, and yet they did nothing to actually prevent it.
04:48So tell me again how cash diplomacy makes national security a priority.
04:54Well, we heard about Iran sanctions, people getting drunk, and projects in Afghanistan.
05:01There's a lot to respond to.
05:03Do you dispute any of those, though?
05:06I mean, I've seen it for myself firsthand.
05:07I don't even know how to make sense of what you just said, but, you know, you asked me,
05:10let me take...
05:11Making sense of it is simply this, that cash diplomacy doesn't work, I'm going to ask you.
05:14That's what I'm saying.
05:16You asked about how does helping a rapper who might be spreading a message about democracy
05:21help us.
05:22Well, you know, I recall that in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, we helped defeat the Soviet
05:29Union in part by supporting artists and writers and cultural people and radio programmers
05:35and musicians and people who were spreading the culture of democracy through art in Europe.
05:40You talk to any dissident in Eastern Europe who went through that, they would say that's
05:44one of the most effective things that we did.
05:46Where's Libya now?
05:47What's that?
05:48Are they a failed state?
05:49What's that?
05:50Would you consider Libya a failed state?
05:51I'm talking about Eastern Europe.
05:52But I didn't mention Eastern Europe.
05:54I mentioned that specific program just to show that this is not being effective, and
05:58I asked how national security has improved.
06:00Much of the things we try to do are not going to be successful.
06:04When I was at DRL, I used to make an analogy, a baseball analogy to my team.
06:09I said that if you're batting 300 in a world where you're going after, you're going up
06:14against dictators, sociopaths, mass murderers, if you're successful...
06:17Well, at $35.6 trillion in debt, I don't think that we can be batting a 300 for the American
06:21people.
06:22Well, it's better than batting zero.
06:23Well, I can tell you right now, we are batting zero.
06:24We stopped trying, you know, who's going to cheer?
06:26It's going to be the Russian government, the Chinese Communist Party would love us to stop
06:32doing this.
06:34If you think it's unsuccessful...
06:35But they're already expanding, sir.
06:36You're seeing the Russia, China, Iran, North Korea geopolitical alignment already expanding.
06:40You've watched the Silk Road initiative expand.
06:43You've watched China continuing to go into developing nations all across Africa and being
06:47very successful in this.
06:48You're watching Wegner Group down in Chad and CAR, who's continued to expand.
06:52And now they're in our own Western hemisphere with economic coercion of Honduras and Panama
06:57taking over the canals for treaties, going into Cuba, and actually helping with the fentanyl
07:01pill press of Dairy and Gap.
07:02So we're not winning the war against China-Russia by going out and doing what you're saying,
07:07which is these small funding grants.
07:10So why are they passing laws and all of their allies to try to forbid us from doing these
07:13grants?
07:15Why are we continuing to go ahead and give money but not account for where it's going?
07:20Why are we still giving money into the Taliban by paying certain electric bills and housing
07:25rental bills that we know falls into the hands of those very people we fought for 20 plus
07:29years?
07:31My point is that I don't believe in what you're doing is successful.
07:34I don't believe in the USAID cash diplomacy model.
07:37And I've seen it fail time and time again firsthand as I sat on these things like Ramp
07:41Up North.
07:42And you can continue to do your little eyebrow roll or whatever you'd like to do right now,
07:45but you know for a fact that if we go and look at the monitoring evaluation books, we
07:48look at CIGAR reports, we look at OIGI for John Sopko, that you can't dispute the fact
07:53that a lot of money was waste, fraud, and abuse at the taxpayer's expenses.
07:57Well, maybe I'll put you...