National Security and Humanitarianism: An Analysis of the Operation's of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1992 to 2002

This paper examines the tension between raison d'etat and morality that exists in US government humanitarian initiatives. It asks whether US humanitarian assistance overseas is truly based on needs alone through a detailed examination of one US government unit dedicated to providing lifesaving emergency relief in situations of natural or man-made disaster - the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). The paper concludes that the majority of OFDA interventions are indeed driven by basic humanitarian need, though humanitarian interventions in conflict situations may serve as a replacement for a broader political engagement that addresses the conflict giving rise to the need for the humanitarian operation. However, in a small but significant number of instances, humanitarian aid, including assistance disbursed through OFDA, is strongly associated with US military intervention, with additional fiscal resources being mobilized through OFDA to respond to humanitarian needs during US military operations. In these situations (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq) US humanitarian aid has been mobilized to respond to the humanitarian consequences of conflicts where the U.S. itself is a belligerent. This trend has been accelerated in US military interventions post 9/11. Finally, difficulties in the operationalization of the 'needs alone' concept mean that measuring the extent to which US humanitarian assistance, even in countries where the US military is not deployed, is genuinely targeted based on comparative needs remains a difficult challenge, and is an area requiring further research.