For some time, the American approach to development has been misaligned with how most of the world conceives of development. Since 2016, the framework of sustainable development has reflected the fact that “development” happens everywhere, no matter the income level of a country. Societal issues such as poverty, health, and well-being are deeply interconnected rather than existing in policy silos.
To talk about “foreign assistance” or international development as disconnected from what happens inside countries, including this one, is to leave the United States (and millions of Americans) behind, out of step with best practices. Indeed, the implicit impetus driving the “America First” approach to the world is the not unreasonable recognition that global engagement ought to deliver positive impacts at home. While this administration’s approach has been largely transactional, eroding trust, causing damage diplomatically, and undermining U.S. national interests, there is a way in which the pursuit of development both here and abroad can lead to more sustainable and equitable partnerships that benefit Americans as well as citizens in other countries.
The United States should re-engage as a leader in development overseas, while also applying the discipline of sustainable development at home. Simply put, our ability to be credible champions of global development needs to involve getting our own house in order. As detailed daily in press accounts and academic research, our democracy is not delivering for large swaths of Americans on numerous issues, including significant gaps in life expectancy, increasing numbers of families who are food insecure, and growing wealth inequality. These are urgent harms to the health of our democracy. As Columbia University historian Kim Phillips-Fein recently noted, “Societies in which there is an extreme division between the wealthiest and the rest tend to be politically unstable ones as well.” Making progress on domestic priorities, such as expanding economic opportunity and mobility, addressing persistent poverty, and strengthening democratic practices, will offer stronger ground and credibility to pursue a modern global development agenda.
A new Development Officer Corps
What does this look like practically? When the 120th Congress takes office in January 2027, members ought to consider creating a Development Officer Corps, where experts would embed in communities in the United States as well as serve on tours overseas. This idea is not entirely new; there was a long-standing program placing a limited number of USAID and State Department officials inside the United States. Brookings Senior Fellow Anthony F. Pipa wrote about this concept as it relates to diplomacy in 2021, and more recently, Matt Perit, a former Foreign Service officer, similarly wrote about the idea in Just Security. Yet development and diplomacy are distinct disciplines. Therefore, yes, American diplomats ought to have expanded tours in the United States, and so should American development experts.
Development officers can play an important role in the United States, listening to local communities, sharing trends in urgent needs with local, regional, and federal government agencies, and recommending policy changes that impact communities in positive ways. These officers would also serve as local ambassadors explaining to Americans why global development is important to U.S. national security and prosperity, ideally generating awareness and public support for this work, growing the resilience that failed to emerge during the rapid dismantling of USAID.
Development officers serving internationally can also help American communities by bringing advances from elsewhere—“reverse innovation”—to the United States as well as highlighting innovations emerging in towns and cities across the country. Particularly in an era of rapid technological change, Americans can benefit from lessons and adaptations occurring in many places on a range of issues, such as reducing maternal mortality or advancing innovations in agriculture.
In the 21st century, the gold standard advanced by the United States should be data-driven. Such efforts will likely involve bespoke, open-source AI models and could also involve cultivating a younger workforce composed of digital natives to surface, in real time, social and economic issues that need to be addressed rather than waiting months or even years for data. These digital natives could then look forward to productive careers working both domestically and internationally. Congress should create a program to grow this Development Officer Corps with a dedicated digital cone, or career track.
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Doing development differently
For years, experts have recognized that development should ideally be locally led and demand-driven, involving communities in the design of programs. Instead, it was commonplace at USAID to talk about ramping up locally led efforts, only to be stymied by Congress. What will strike some as controversial may emerge as common sense to others: A commitment to locally led, demand-driven development would entail reining in the power that a handful of Senate Appropriations staffers have had over who gets to do what, and where. Congress should end the earmarks that previously shaped “foreign assistance.” This system has been a good business model for the U.S.-based NGOs and contractors receiving the funds. It has not been a good model for local organizations and may even have helped fuel the global trend of “closing space” for civil society, in which governments label NGOs receiving U.S. funds as “foreign agents.”
Perhaps nowhere is the evidence stronger that the supply-side (earmarked) approach was problematic than in democracy assistance, amid a 20-year worldwide decline in democracy. A 2021 CSIS study found that 95% of “Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance” (DRG) funds were earmarked. While it is unlikely that the relatively small amount of DRG funding (between $2 billion and $3 billion a year) could alone have stemmed the tide of global decline, the heavily earmarked sector of DRG work could not meet the needs of local communities while simultaneously being subjected to the demands of appropriators.
Moreover, the Cold War hangover across multiple administrations of refusing to acknowledge socioeconomic rights—such as access to food and health—as rights, and instead focusing exclusively on political and civil rights, has contributed to the disconnect between foreign funding and local needs. It has left the United States trailing peer countries on numerous socioeconomic indices—particularly health outcomes. It has helped marginalize the United States in multilateral settings, opening the door for others, such as China, to lead. The United States should finally acknowledge the importance of the full scope of rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because, when realized, they can be instrumental in helping democracies deliver for their populations, including this one.
Finally, one of the most important efforts to emerge in the last two years has been archiving the knowledge and lessons from USAID’s decades of work, known as “the Development Knowledge Commons.” Congress should consider supporting a consortium of universities to mine this work and study the discipline of sustainable development that has emerged in the last 10 years. Since 2016, the world (except Haiti, Myanmar, and the United States) has communicated about sustainable development through hundreds of voluntary reports on national and local-level progress. These reports and the Knowledge Commons are repositories of under-told stories of impact. As many experts reimagine development, how the United States supports this work at home and overseas is an opportunity to drive a paradigm shift for the 21st century that none can afford to waste.
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Commentary
Reimagining how the United States advances development in the 21st century: At home and overseas
November 6, 2026