Over the past few weeks there have been a trickle of stories coming out about a reorganization of U.S. foreign aid policies.

For example, there's Caroline Daniel and Guy Dinmore's Financial Times piece from December 11th:

President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that the State Department would lead all US post-conflict reconstruction, a move that supersedes the controversial decision to give that task to the Pentagon in Iraq following the 2003 invasion....

The presidential directive, issued this month but announced yesterday, will also reinforce the political power of the State Department’s office of reconstruction and stabilisation, with a mission to anticipate state failures, prevent conflict and lead the co-ordination of post-war efforts.

Carlos Pascual, the senior State Department official heading that office, said it was “important to get on paper” that the secretary of state would be in charge of future post-war reconstruction policies and planning.

The 2003 decision to hand control of the reconstruction to the Pentagon has been widely criticised and led to a degree of inter-agency friction. State Department experts who had planned for the post-war period were pushed aside by Pentagon officials, including defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who strongly resisted the notion of nation-building.

A former senior official involved in what he called the “chaos” of post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq said yesterday’s announcement also affirmed the growing power and influence of Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state.

The US Agency for International Development will unveil early next year a comprehensive strategy for improving democracy and governance in developing countries.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Andrew Natsios, the USAID administrator who steps down at the beginning of next year, said the democracy strategy was a key milestone in the re-orientation of US aid programmes to focus on issues of effective governance alongside traditional development projects

Mr Natsios also confirmed that the administration was drawing up proposals for a broader overhaul of the organisation of US foreign aid, but would not discuss details, saying some of the final decisions had yet to be made.

He said there were structural issues that needed to be addressed, in particular the fragmentation of responsibility for development programmes across different departments and agencies in the US government. “There are problems that need to be addressed for the protection of the president’s legacy on foreign aid.”

With the Bush administration’s commitment to spreading democracy and repairing failed states that might harbour terrorists, foreign aid has become an increasingly critical part of the overall US national security strategy. Since 2000, the US aid budget has doubled from $10bn to more than $20bn this year.

Whenever you have a chicken-egg problem like achieving multiple development goals, it strikes me as wrong-headed to put all of your resources in one half of the equation. If the administration's proposal is to create such a balance, fine with me. If the idea is to make reconstruction and democratization the sole aim of foreign aid, though, then I'm not sure it's such a hot idea.

One final bureaucratic thought. The attempt to create logistical capabilities for aid and reconstruction within the State Department would have a significant effect on the traditional rivalry between State and Defense. The latter has always had an edge in terms of capabilities and resources. If State develops its own parallel means to deliver man and material somewhere, one of DoD's unspoken advantages in bureaucratic politics will be dented just a little bit.