The United States has the opportunity to weave compassion into its foreign aid policy at the same time that the administration works to improve burden-sharing and accountability by global partners.
Foreign aid has come under significant scrutiny, particularly to ensure that it’s outcome-based, efficient, and closely tied to our foreign policy. As policymakers and thought leaders debate the role of international assistance, compassion should remain an important priority.
The United States is increasingly using “compacts” for international aid, a comprehensive longer-term partnership model for assistance. The United States has the opportunity, using a “compassionate compact” model, to build with a focus on moral leadership that is both principled and pragmatic.
The United States’ Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an excellent example of a straightforward compact model. MCC compacts are focused on reducing poverty through economic growth. Through multiyear agreements, MCC works with country partners to identify and address key constraints, creating an enabling environment for private investment and sustainable, locally led economic development.
However, some countries around the world face overwhelming humanitarian crises, such as famine, extreme poverty or health pandemics. For these countries, we should consider a compassionate approach which provides them with the lifesaving support they need while also working toward the standards that are part of our traditional compacts, such as government effectiveness and anti-corruption measures.
This compassionate approach not only addresses the dire needs of these populations but also shows that American leadership is consistent with our national values of compassion, accountability, and opportunity. Values would serve as the driver, with a compact model – long-term, predictable, integrated, performance-based – as the method.
America can prioritize lifesaving support, food provision, and health services as the foundation for stability in countries that need U.S. leadership the most, while also helping countries advance economic reforms and professionalize their justice systems and security sectors through other compact mechanisms like the MCC.
The MCC, launched under President George W. Bush in 2004 with strong bipartisan congressional support, uses a model based on country ownership, competitive eligibility criteria, progress against concrete milestones, and accountability. President Bush described it as “a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations.”
Crucially, MCC’s board of directors can suspend and/or terminate assistance if partners fail to deliver on their commitments or backslide on eligibility criteria under a compact.
Similarly, the new America First Global Health Strategy uses multiyear memorandums of understanding to allocate aid for HIV, malaria, and other global diseases. The America First Global Health strategy also seeks to incorporate U.S. priorities in trade agreements or U.S. access to critical minerals in negotiations.
Compacts make sense: Plan foreign assistance out concretely over multiple years, coordinate different avenues for efficient support, create broad-scale systems for stability, and leverage a partner nation’s strengths while helping correct any gaps. For the United States, targeted, effective U.S. support builds markets for trade, bolstering democratic governance; reduces the rise of autocratic regimes and the proliferation of violent nonstate actors; and advances U.S. national security.
For some countries, a straightforward compact model like this allows the United States to work comprehensively with a partner to achieve concrete outcomes, in contrast with traditional foreign assistance programs that awarded one-off dollars to a scattering of programs. The compact model is intentionally designed to be nonbureaucratic, providing funds up front for a specific period rather than relying on annual, uncertain allocations.
Americans value compassion. In 2002, President Bush said, “We believe that everyone deserves a chance, that everyone has value, that no insignificant person was ever born. We believe that all are diminished when any are hopeless.” He added later in those remarks, “The measure of true compassion is results.”
U.S. programs should reflect that call: America has the know-how, the tools, and the resources to provide foreign assistance, via the compact model, in a way that is not just nuanced and strategic, but also compassionate and reflective of who we are as Americans.
