Key Takeaways There is an increased political push across the board for international development institutions to operate in low-income countries and, in particular, fragile and conflict-affected states. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is also mandated to focus its investments in these difficult contexts and is now equipped with a better set of development …
Continue reading The DFC: Delivering Technical Assistance in High-risk Contexts
In 1961, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) replaced the Marshall Plan’s Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). Its 20 original European and North American members endorsed the founding principle of the prior organization that declared “their economic systems are interrelated and that the prosperity of each of them depends on the prosperity …
Historically, the United States has provided foreign assistance for reasons of enlightened self-interest—in other words, by helping developing countries fulfill their goals, the United States has also furthered its own foreign policy objectives. Since the onset of the Cold War, U.S. foreign assistance has helped many countries prosper and build freer political and economic systems. …
Continue reading U.S. Foreign Assistance in the Age of Strategic Competition
THE ISSUE The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates the challenges to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and highlights the need for a shared framework for tackling global challenges. No country in the world is on track to meet all the goals by 2030, and collective action is needed to make real progress.1 Even before the …
Continue reading Covid-19 Demands Innovative Ideas for Financing the SDGs
The United Nations is a way for countries, including the United States, to burden-share global challenges—be they related to diplomacy, development, or security—that are too big for a single country to handle alone. As a leading world power, the United States must contribute a significant financial share, but it also receives benefits from distributing the …
The United States is undergoing an unprecedented domestic crisis in confronting and controlling the spread of the coronavirus. Faced with both a public health crisis and significant economic disruptions, Congress has now passed three supplemental spending bills meant to provide emergency support. The last supplemental contained nearly $2 trillion worth of support; Congress has indicated …
Continue reading Covid-19 Has Consequences for U.S. Foreign Aid and Global Leadership
One year ago this month, CSIS released The Higher Road: Forging a U.S. Strategy for the Global Infrastructure Challenge, the product of a bipartisan taskforce co-chaired by Charlene Barshefsky and Stephen Hadley. Major developments since then, including the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s acceleration of its digital infrastructure push, have heightened the stakes of the global infrastructure challenge …
Continue reading Taking the Higher Road: U.S. Global Infrastructure Strategy One Year Later
THE ISSUE The “global spoils system,” or the way in which top posts at multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), regional development banks, and UN agencies are divvied up among countries, has played a crucial role in maintaining an international liberal order that promotes the rule of law, individual liberty, …
Corruption plagues governments, economies, and societies around the world. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the amount of money lost to corruption globally is $2 trillion a year. This money could go a long way toward filling the financing gap for the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and preparing countries for global pandemics …
Continue reading Fighting Corruption for U.S. Economic and National Security Interests
Introduction On October 5, 2018, the United States passed an important piece of foreign policy legislation—the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development ( BUILD) Act. The BUILD Act modernizes the United States’ development finance institution—the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)—and transforms it into a new agency called the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The …
Daniel Runde 