The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World

by John Norris

"This comprehensive history of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. government’s official bilateral foreign aid agency, deserves to be read by all students of U.S. foreign policy." Foreign Affairs US Foreign aid is one of the most misunderstand functions of our federal government. Consuming less than 1% of the federal government budget, it has nonetheless played an outsized role in political debate. At the center of this controversy and misunderstanding has been the U.S. Agency for International Development, or AID, the government agency created during the Kennedy administration to administer America’s foreign assistance programs, an often-conflicted behemoth with a presence spanning the globe. In this book, journalist and foreign policy expert John Norris provides a compelling and rich story of AID, warts and all. There have been moments of enormous the eradication of smallpox, the Green Revolution, efforts to bring family planning to millions of women for the first time. There have also been florid, headline-grabbing failures in places like Vietnam and Iraq, missteps born out of ignorance and ethnocentrism, and money that flowed into the coffers of despots like President Mobutu in Zaire. In totality, the work of AID has touched millions and millions of lives in ways that have been truly profound, both good and bad. On the Eve of AID’s 60 th anniversary, Norris shares history on an almost epic scale that remains largely untold.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, International Development

338 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2021

About the author

The biography of Mary McGrory is John's third book. As his day job, John is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. where he works on international affairs. He has served in a number of senior roles in government, international institutions, and nonprofits, including with the United Nations, State Department, and the International Crisis Group. In addition to his books, John has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and numerous other publications.

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone working in international development. US assistance has punched far above its weight contributing to revolutionary improvements in child survival, family planning, girls' education, and agricultural productivity. When I began working in Mali in the late 1980s, under 5 mortality was 250 deaths per 1,000 live births; today's it's 94, thanks to immunization, oral rehydration, and better birth spacing as a result of family planning use. These truly revolutionary successes are too often eclipsed by foreign aid's spectacular failures. Bigger foreign assistance programs are often not better ones - think Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, and Afghanistan and Iraq post - 9-11.

Norris raises tough questions about USAID's future in moving beyond the humanitarian and health assistance where it has excelled. I'm eager to hear Biden appointee Ambassador Power's vision for the future and to see who names to the still-vacant Senate-confirmed leadership positions in the agency.

Balanced, fair, eminently readable, and painstakingly researched, The Enduring Struggle should be required reading for every civil and foreign service officer, foreign service national, and for the multitudes of staff implementing foreign assistance programs through large for-profit contractors, and international and local NGOs around the globe.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely clear, readable history of USAID that is a very useful primer for practitioners and scholars of U.S. foreign assistance.

[Eliza Doll · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman who sits on the Board of one of the funds we manage at Total was having people in the impact investing space over for a dinner party at her beautiful row home in NW DC and invited me and John (my boss, a legend in the development finance space) to join. The dinner party was on a Friday night (woah!), and it was an intimate crowd of some of the smartest minds in impact (except for me) all in one room together, eating cheese, drinking wine, and telling stories about their careers and ideas for the future. I was loving it. One of the women there, Jan Piercy, was the US Director of the World Bank Group board and later led ShoreBank in Chicago, a leading Community Development Finance Institution, from the 80s-2000s that expanded access to capital and credit for underserved communities in the US and abroad. It was a legendary CDFI that unfortunately went under following the financial crisis even though it was not involved in subprime lending (and of course the government didn't bail it out...smh). I had read about her, so sitting next to her eating steak and potatoes was wild. Another woman there, Carol Peasley, served in multiple positions at USAID from 1970-2005 in Nepal, Costa Rica, Thailand, Malawi, and Russia, and its safe to say that she's renowned among the AID community. Long story short, after some great discussions with Carol on her time at AID, she suggested a book that her former colleague had just written - this book! I asked for it for Christmas that year and my aunt got it for me. Thanks Liz :) It reads like a textbook, maybe it technically is a textbook? But I learned a ton, which was the goal. And sadly, given the recent dismantling of the agency, it was a very timely read. Maybe would have been more timely a year ago when I got the book and the agency still existed, but, guess it took a USAID shutdown to get me to start it after all. The book takes us from the Kennedy administration and his creation of USAID in the 60s, to the USAID success stories with Taiwan and South Korea, to the failures in Vietnam, to Nixon's creation of OPIC (now DFC), to the many near-shutdowns of the agency, all the way through Trump's first administration. There are countless takeaways I could go on about, but three main things I'll note here. First, there is no doubt that international development and humanitarian aid has saved lives, built up economies, and benefitted US citizens (security, economy, and integration in the world). Second, the inefficiencies in USAID have always been known, and even among those in the space today it has been no secret that reform was needed. Third, the agency had nearly been shut down by presidents or leaders countless times in the past, but there was always one person or a group of people who championed the resurgence of the agency. Without that resurgence, some of the most incredible development projects or lifesaving initiatives never would have existed. This is exactly what scares me most with this sudden dismantling of the agency under the Trump Admin happening right now. There will be (and already are) a tragic number of lives lost. The workforce (in-country USAID folks) best suited to solve these international issues, build diplomacy, and increase positive US presence around the world are being pulled from their posts. This will be bad for the US and the entire world, to which John Norris' work can attest, and Trump and his admin are no doubt on the wrong side of history.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a good job of documenting the history of USAID and how it has changed with each political shift, although I think it spends more time on the political side rather than looking at the good stuff that the organization does. And to be clear, the book does talk about these things. But it still feels largely anchored in Washington and political appointees.

It can be hard to separate USAID's impact on countries from other policies and other influences, and the book doesn't do a great job of making that separation. It's a history book, not a policy book, a public health book, or a book of data. So this is probably a good book that fills most of what I wanted to learn about the organization, but it just doesn't quite scratch the intellectual itch of the organization's full scope of activity.

[Tricia Iveson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was glad to read this book after having read Into the Wood Chipper, which I did not like. The author, John Norris, reveals the history of the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from its 1961 origins to the beginning of the first Trump administration in 2020. Norris--who worked at USAID--celebrates USAID's successes while revealing some of its failures and those of its leaders and staff. What most surprised me was how frequently USAID faced threats from within various presidential administrations to abolish the agency--reaching as far back as Nixon. With such longstanding erosion of political support, it's a wonder the agency "endured" (to borrow a theme from the title) as long as it did.

[Keenan Krause · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you work in or with USAID, this in-depth look at its evolution can prove remarkably valuable. Tells the history of the agency from its creation under Kennedy to its struggles under Trump. However, if not in this career space, the content may not be generally relevant enough to incentive you to read it. So the rating is specific to a niche audience.

[Lexi Sonsalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This provided a comprehensive, sometimes critical, full-scale analysis of US foreign aid, specifically the work done by or with the support of USAID. It is a timely and engaging read, especially for those interested in understanding this agency that Trump is bent on destroying.

[Erica Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read for my class which took down the ranking but it was an objectively good book, I learned a lot! It’s crazy how many presidents had the same policies but when the people consider the president as R or D they don’t support it anymore.