OECD’s peer review of US development aid

The OECD has an interesting peer review programme for assessing member states development policies and activities. This unique programme will be the subject of an ASEAN/OECD meeting later this month.
Under the peer review programme each country is reviewed every four years, resulting in 5-6 reviews each year. The latest review is of the United States, published shortly before last Christmas. Given the perceived leadership role of the US in international affairs and the global economy, it’s quite a revealing report. Briefly, the conclusions reveal that:
– Development aid as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI) is among the lowest in OECD countries (nevertheless, since the US has the largest GNI in the world, the total amount of their contribution is higher than that of any other country)
– The bulk of recent assistance has been for debt cancellation in Iraq and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, i.e. cleaning up their own mess!
– There is a lack of coherence in policy
– Policy is not oriented toward poverty reduction, i.e. the Millennium Development Goals
– Policy tends to reflect specific US policy priorities, i.e. development assistance seems oriented toward benefiting the US, not necessarily developing countries
– There is no coherent tracking system, i.e. vague ideas about what is being achieved, therefore little to build on
All of this is very reminiscent of Niall Ferguson’s portrayal of the US in Colossus: the Rise and Fall of the American Empire, as a global force with imperialistic tendencies, although always in denial, but a lack of the committment required to make some actual good come out of it. The US report is in stark contrast to the UK report and the Netherlands report (one of very few countries that actually exceeds the United Nations ODA/GNI target of 0.7%), also from last year. There we see evidence of a concerted effort to make development aid work to the benefit of the recipients of aid. And this from two countries that were in the past blatantly imperialistic.