The Day Development Died

[Music] Hello, I'm Professor Bob Hewish from the Department of International Development Studies at Dallhouse University. You're listening to GDP, the Global Development Primer, the podcast dedicated to all issues in international development studies. Follow me on Twitter @ProfessorHewish. [Music] God damn it, we're in a bad way. In season 14 of the Global Development Primer and we're broadcasting in an era of complete madness when it comes to some of the core foundations of global development. For this season, we're going to be working on figuring out how the world has found itself in its current state, the dangers that lie ahead and not what the future of development looks like, but if there will be a future of development. I'm Professor Bob Hewish. I'm coming to you from Dallhouse University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. For this season, we're hoping to have conversations with scholars, experts and activists about the future of global development. For this first episode of season 14, we're happy to be joined by three outstanding scholars in the area. We have Professor Adam Snade from the University of Guelph. We have Professor Mark Fros, who's a scholar of global political economy at the University of Toronto and York University. And then we have Blaine Haggart, who's an associate professor of political science at Brock University. These three characters will be joining me today and for the next two episodes to have conversations related to the future of global development. Rather than doing a one-on-one, we figured we'd get the band back together, as they say, and we will see what conversations lie ahead. Adam Snade, an associate professor of political science at University of Guelph, he's conducted research on trade and the prospects for sustainable development in Tanzania, Senegal, and Cameroon. And back when times were normal, the director general of the World Trade Organization invited him to moderate a high level plenary of trade ministers and heads of international organizations on U.S. trade policy in Africa. Now, Adam's the author of Hidden Politics in the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, Politics Rules, Power, Globalization, and Development, Cotton, and Governing Cotton, Globalization and Poverty in Africa. And Adam is, well, so we say, quite irritated at the current U.S. initiated trade war between the U.S. and everybody. Adam, welcome to season 14 at GDP. Thanks so much for having me, Bob. You got it. Now, next up, we have Professor Mark Froze, a scholar of political economy with degrees from University of Toronto and York University in Canada. And his work tracks a double movement by which the sinking trajectory of post-war internationalism facilitates the rise of a liberal political movements. He's written books on the politics of trade dispute settlement and the fragmentation of international economic law. And most recently, Dr. Froze co-authored Populism One, The War on Liberal Democracy. Now, he, Professor Drache identified the rhetorical tactics and electoral strategies deployed by 35 right-wing populist governments and oppositions around the world. And his current research traces the growth of American-led anti-liberal nationalisms. Mark, welcome to GDP. Bob, it's good to be here. Absolutely. And finally, we got Blaine Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation and the B.S.I.A. fellow at the Basil's School of International Affairs, both in Waterloo. He's the author most recently of the new knowledge information data and the remaking of global power, co-written with Natasha Tysikov and published in 2023 with Bloomsbury Press. And the co-editor of volumes on internet and knowledge governance. Now, his current work focuses on IP data and digital regulation, but most relevant to today's discussion, his early career work focused on North American governance, Canada US relations and trade policy, all of which remain the lens through which he engages the digital policy issues. Blaine, good to have you here. Thanks, I'm happy to be here. Good stuff. All right, gentlemen, I'm going to just lob this question out and let's see where it goes from there. If we think about what's happened in the last, are we even pushing 90 days yet of the Trump 2.0 presidency, January 20th was the day that some senior, the day the development died with the freezing of the entire USAID budget. Adam, I'm going to check this one to you. What is the big impact that's come of this and what can we expect down the road? Okay, this is something that I totally predicted in my latest book. It's actually the case that I think development was basically being reanimated. It probably wasn't quite alive, it wasn't quite dead yet, but there was a big debate that had shaped up over the last 10 years. If you go back to 2015, there was this global coming together. It was the Obama idealism. The sustainable development goals were the way to bolster the liberal international economic order. If we achieve these goals, no poverty, zero hunger, health and well-being for all, education for all, gender and parma go down the list, I can do it and we don't really have time to do it. Basically, these liberal ideals for how development should look were already on the back foot during Trump 1. Now, since January 20th, we've seen not only that Elon Musk put in the USAID in the wood shipper and the fallout from all of that and voice of America and other voices that are out there, the institute's a piece and all the rest of them that have fallen by the wayside. I think it's interesting to note that on March 4th, the one under the radar that the US mission to the United Nations showed up in New York on March 4th and stated, "A gender 2030, that's the sustainable development goals." The SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with US sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans. That was, quote, from Edward Hartney, the US minister counselor to the Ecosoc. The Ecosoc is currently under the presidency of Bob Rae. Remarks made at the 58th plenary of the General Assembly, 4 March 2025. This is the US basically walking back and killing the international development agenda period. This is after Secretary General Guterres in 2023 made his big speech in the summer of 2023 and said, "We're not going to make most of these goals. We're not going to meet many of the targets and basically all the indicators. We're not going to get there on the SDGs. We need a vast increase of support for this." When the SDGs were launched, they were put out there as universal aspirations. What I see in I don't mark has a lot more to say about the populism and the rise of economic nationalists, but basically, nationalists started to take issue with every single one of the 17 sustainable development goals and challenged them politically. Progressives and greens around the world said, "Wait a second. These SDGs aren't also delivering what they should be delivering. These nationalists seem to be throwing them under the bus." We're in a really weird way here right now. We have goals that are intended to bolster a liberal international economic order that the United States no longer supports and an order that is basically, "If it's not on life support, it's definitely dying." It's hemorrhaging with little hope of adequate care and we're looking at a development agenda that is really, really in trouble as a remilitarization and Germany signing off on a $500 billion reinvestment. It's military. This is a big moment for development in the last 80 years of development policy. Really, it's on the table over the next couple of months. Jeez. That's quite the picture painted there. I think some of your points here are saying that this was a strategic attack on the SDGs, and that traditional approach to development, development policy. Mark, I want to throw it over to you. Adam mentioned some issues about populism and about the nationalism in the U.S. coming to life on this. What's your read on that? Is this something that is just Trump's ego carrying this bombastic attack forward or do we have to be mindful that still to the day 46% of Americans still support his policy? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, if I was going to sort of jump in on a continue Adam's discussion, I would say one of the things that kind of struck me about your question or your theme for this podcast, the development died. I asked myself, "Well, A, is this the day that development died and B, when was development in the United States born? What is the life cycle of development in the United States?" If I were to trace the birth of development in the United States, be a little bit controversial. I'd probably say it was May 21st, 1881, with the birth of the American Red Cross. Over the next 30 years after that point, you have the growth of a very significant institution developed, oriented around humanitarian intervention, not only civil society interventionism, but also state intervention with two influential American presidents, Taft and Wilson, heavily supporting the Red Cross and the Red Cross going on to play a very big role in World War One. So the American Red Cross becomes a kind of, I would say, beginning point for a particular American understanding of development. which of course then as we all know from you know developments studies when a one moves through different stages and we look at sort of the technocratic development of you know development as expertise and you know modernization theory etc etc but really when I look at this and I see a birthday I ask well then what is the death day when did development die and was it killed by Trump and I would say I mean Trump certainly put the stake through its heart but I think that that if we're looking at the time when development had its fatal heart attack I would say it would be between September 11 2001 and December 11 2001 when you have both the the attacks on the World Trade Center and then China joining the World Trade Organization and these two things put development in the crosshairs for the American right and also fundamentally change the narrative about what development is doing right way back there in the 1880s through the 1970s it's just argument that development is for everybody it's humanitarian intervention for the purpose of improving humanity etc etc by the time you get to 2001 the question becomes who are the deserving poor who are the undeserving poor who are our friends who are our enemies and what can we do to use our power and our wealth to boost our friends and hurt our enemies and so development was no longer a universal it was now a question of friends and enemies now you could argue that there was an element of friends and enemies during the Cold War as well but I would say this really kind of eclipsed the universal humanitarian element of development in 2001 so then of course it's right for death right Trump Trump is able to make these arguments he's perhaps his populism is best suited for this kind of grievance politics we're being ripped off the true people are being robbed etc etc so I think Trump was able to swoop in and do what he did because development had been dying a slow death for almost 20 years by the time he came to power the first time and certainly for well more than 20 years by the time he came to power in January 2025 that's that's thank you Mark I mean I think everyone who's taught a intro to development studies course usually says ah do you want to begin with Harry truban's you know speech about science and technology but the 1881 you know origin story the Red Cross I like that and I think I think that we can all very much appreciate the long run way paved since 2001 for Trump to get into this era that we we seem to find ourselves in and a blame let's let's hear from you on this you know is there something about kind of new knowledge data has that influenced in crescendoing some of the the points that that marks identified here and has given you know trump this capacity to to really swing a destruction destructive acts through through us foreign policy more broadly yeah I was good to say that my background is definitely not in international development so so I started thinking what what I can bring to this conversation but I have to say whatever reminds me of it is just the I mean I take all the points about like you know that this thing a lot of these things have been kind of building for all these pressures but it's still absolutely remarkable at least to me and I'd be curious to see what the rest of you have to say about this but it's still remarkable because the thing is like USAID and also the international system in general you know it's it was breaking pretty well from the United States it was benefiting US companies and you know that they were very much at the center of all this and so it's kind of remarkable in a sense especially for me as someone who again doesn't study international development directly just to actually kind of watch what's this happening and I see a similar thing in kind of my own area that I'm mainly focused on right now you know on knowledge governance intellectual property and all that whereas the one of the things I see coming up next is you know that the United States has been working very very actively shall we say to undermine the international rule of law and one of the things that the international rule of law supports for the United States is in is global intellectual property rights that are very strongly enforced it's what allows them to have their global value chains and so they're basically kind of undercutting essentially they're kind of long run interest the way that things were set up in terms of these things by this whole you know changing will are basically under undermining international law by trying to pull manufacturing back to the United States when I'm teaching these courses to my students and they're just kind of not gonna explain how the system was set up and then we talk about like what the United States is doing now and they're just kind of baffled by the whole things like why would they do such a thing I think one of the big problems for for for my students and maybe maybe for others is just understanding how much the mentality has changed between you know over the past 10 or 20 years in the United States you know Susan Strange used to say that one of the reasons we have instability in in the global political economy is because the US is so focused on kind of pursuing its own porocular interests as opposed to providing stability for the international system and I think we're seeing kind of kind of a you know that perspective on steroids yeah no I these are great points guys and you know within this or that that influence that the US has had so many countries around the world and you know how many countries right now if you just type in the word it go into Google and type you know Trump attacks put it whatever country in there something's gonna come up right it could be Ethiopia it could be could be New Zealand it could be Fiji there there's been enough foreign policy traffic out there that almost every country is somehow impacted by this and the the the the cuts the way that you know that this total freeze is coming to effect we can we can talk about some of the numbers in a in a minute with countries like Ethiopia but you know I want to go back to to Mark's point about how this has sort of been stewing for a while and the last 25 years of development were were maybe on the way down towards this this this desk spiral and in many ways we can see how populism right wing politics can create these narratives ah we're giving aid to dictators what's the point all this money should be staying inside and totally ignoring things like reverse capital flow that like like we said blame does actually benefit the US economy is there also something to be said about how the political left has approach development last 25 years it's for us at this point yeah okay yeah so I do think there's something on on this question especially when you think about what has happened Mark mentions the the WTO session of China but I think also at the same time you've had you know big challenges internationally where the US has been pushed you know you need to seed some ground in the IMF and the World Bank for decades now developing countries have been pushing for greater share in just the collective management of you know the International Bank for Reconstruction Development the whole five arms of the World Bank there's been a big push within there it's similarly at the International Monetary but we need to have greater voice in the IMF with the rise of the emerging markets and and the bricks so there is a big pushback in the United States to basically you know not not not accommodate this and similarly at the World Trade Organization over that time that Mark mentioned from December 11th and in 2001 forward the doha round of trade negotiations there was a major push you know the United States you've got to accommodate what's going on and you know what you once upon a time thought Robert Zoolock was this you know arch evil character of the US trade representative just because he wasn't necessarily going to accommodate developing country interests he was very committed to most favored nation status and now we have a US government that's not committed to to MFN's and what's so ever so I think you know the left looked at this is like a key we need to change the international institutions we need to bring developing countries into those international institutions so in some ways the US in trans agents are not basically reforming the international order I mean this is something that was connected to Paul Martin's agenda around a leader's 20 you know 20 years ago there was a big push we need to include if that's for the G20 comes out of this whole idea of okay let's get get some more developing country voices involved in the collective management of human of you know human affairs and part of that relates to to buy into development you know if you just see it a little bit of ground maybe we don't get to this crisis so you know is the left somewhat responsible by you know focusing it you know global attention on on the need for global governance reform well this is this is a good question the US didn't accommodate it and now it's just throwing the liberal order out the window but your points on on all the country level work Bob and all the kind of impacts that this has had for you know bilateral development agencies and you know other countries now maybe thinking about taking you know taking the lead taking a page out of the United States in the in the case of Canada you know with a particular political party in Canada and now supporting maybe the the destruction of Canada's aid program as part of their political platform this is yes this could have some legs in in other countries and will be opposed obviously you know by progressives around the world so yeah it's a it's a it's a really political moment for development and it's a dangerous one too because I think a lot of the ideals that were built into building a you know a more inclusive socially connected sustainable world there are really in some ways under under threat in the current narrative context I think so and I think that if you go back to 20 years ago, just people who are graduating with international development studies degrees, there was expectation that there was work waiting for you in some level of foreign policy or direct boots on the groundwork or set up your own NGO. Even in the last call it 10 years, the way the curriculum is structured in many of these programs has been a critique of the development process itself. Fewer and fewer students have gone on to become developed in professionals. Many writing master's thesis and PhD thesis is that just harshly critique the whole experience. It's not left much in the way of resistance to what's come out with US foreign policy today. It's sort of staggering in that regard. Mark, over to you, this impact that Trump has made in the last couple of months, I think in one way has shown people just how extensive US involvement was in aid. It's profound the amount of dollars that we're going abroad. US government sources just to aid to Ethiopia in 2023 was one billion US dollars. A lot of that was coming from food and agriculture exports and directly from US farmers and whatnot. But this global, so we say, contact that the US had with so many coaches around the world, how are the populace perceiving that? Why do they see that relationship as being a threat? This is they're very excited. They're really happy because they see USAID as being the poster child for government waste. They believe that the groups that should be involved in development should be explicitly Christian groups, church groups, and groups that are using their own fund raising to create the pools of wealth that are needed to drive global development. And that government shouldn't be involved in this at all. But here is the crazy thing. So I teach in a private liberal arts college in Alberta that is affiliated with the 17th the Adventist Church in Canada and the 17th the Adventist Church is heavily involved in humanitarian intervention into assistance and development, especially at a global level and especially at its headquarters in the United States in Maryland. So the 17th the Adventist Church runs this big organization called the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. Now the way I understand it, about two thirds of its budget is funded by USAID. So if one of these major actors as a church in development was to actually, if we're actually to look at where its money comes from, a big chunk of it comes from USAID. USAID provides a lot of church groups with a lot of the money that they use for this kind of soft power activity that is development. And so the Christian nationalists and the populist and United States are kind of, you know, shooting themselves in the foot in a way. But I would actually argue if you wanted to go, but if you wanted to kind of look at it a bit more deeply, you would say they're not at all. They actually expect this to happen. They don't want to help the rest of the world. They want to create a world that is smaller and meaner and much more exclusive a world in which United States is seen as, you know, as Steve Bannon called it, those golden doors. If you can get inside the golden doors, if you can get inside with the true people, your life will be good and outside your life will not be so good. So I guess what you could say is it's a kind of lack of lack of awareness and at the same time a kind of terrible awareness of exactly what the populists are doing. But I would say that perhaps if we go back, it was a step further and ask, you know, what would all this happen? You'd have to say it's because, and this is going to go, you know, directly opposed to what a lot of, a lot of sort of the young grad students coming out of the development studies are saying, but I would say development kind of worked, you know, this kind of connection of development with scientific expertise with trade trade liberalization, all of this in many ways had a lot of great successes. And in fact, you could argue the death of development has come about because the American right has been so angry about the relative success of development. China is now a larger economy than United States by a significant margin. And a big part of that is down to development. I think I follow that loop quite well there, Mark. And you know, you're right. You're, you're right on the money. I, you know, there's, there's a lot of post-colonial critique against development writ large. And as someone who does research in the global health side of development, sometimes you have to sort of push back with the statistics and say, look, here's where maternal mortality has made improvements. Here's where infant mortality has made improvements. Here's where hunger statistics, like the quality of life has improved for, you know, hundreds of millions of people. It's just even in the last 20 years. And certainly if you go, you know, back to the 1960s, the whole, you know, the human condition has changed. And so many parts of the world is a result of it. And you see just how quickly, if that assistance stops, how quickly pestilence can return, right? With if it's measles, if it's, if it's going to be HIV/AIDS cases, if it's, if it's malaria, the dismantling and total destruction of such programs really can unwind potential health emergencies into pandemics quite quickly. And I think, you know, if there are those who are saying, well, we needed that kind of cleaning and it's morally okay to have entire populations who are going to be set up for suffering and pestilence. That's a, that's a wild, wild way to rationalize this. And let's let the sort of blame here for a minute. On that idea that play, I know that one of the things that you've, you've worked on is looking at governance about, you know, North American governance and Canada, US relations. Here's, here's a, a wild claim to make, you know, it was said in the 1960s that many countries started to focus in development on areas that they were good at, right? That Russians were making fertilizer and they were happily sending that over to their, their partners in Kami Kami and you, you, you, you send out broad and develop what you do good at home. The US is not very good at, healthcare equity, educational equity or any of these sorts of things. Is it also part of the conversation to say that because these things fail at home, it only amplifies the interest to dismantle them going abroad? How do you mean? I'm not quite sure I follow. Well, I guess to the point that if you've got one of every two bankruptcies in the US is related to healthcare costs. And if you look at some of the major global health milestones, if mortality, maternal mortality, under five mortality, most countries in the world are making progress on that except for one. And that one is the US, right? All of those statistics have gotten worse, more broadly in the last eight years. So, is that a reason why there's, there's a lack of ability or interest to try to keep those, those programs alive? Yeah, I don't know. Like I said, I am still in a sense that a little, still a little bit baffling. I mean, I kind of, like I said, I kind of understand why this is happening. But you know, when you look at it from just kind of a period of kind of soft power or even a hard power perspective, what's what's going on doesn't make a lot of sense except for as a kind of complete like ultra right wing kind of, you know, cultural revolution style action in the United States. So, I think also it might, you know, in these issues pretty much anything the United States is doing right now. We should probably, I would argue we should probably resist the temptation to impose the kind of logic and reason on it because quite honestly, this is the people who are running things right now or out of their minds. They are not sane rational people. And their, their goal, I think, is basically it's, it's like Mark said, it's kind of like create this kind of like America itself, not necessarily America alone, but it's completely focused on creating this kind of hard right, almost American Taliban-esque society in the United States. And I think it might be just as simple as that. I don't know if we can bring it out of the way we need to bring in comparative advantage or those kinds of things into it. It might just be as simple as they want to break things. Yeah, and the method it means of doing so is really of consequences. Adam, thoughts? Yeah, this is, it's so interesting to think that, you know, what has come before and it goes out the window and Bob, you know, you're for years you've been looking at these health indicators and I'm looking at what, you know, governments agreed in 2015 around the world and the ways that they were working in so many different areas to advance these objectives and so many US-based researchers and scholars, scientists who've been working on different aspects of the development agenda. And that would be like, you know, the bread and butter of so much of the students that we train. And here we are, the US walking back from things that have actually helped to raise the bar around the world. And a good example would be, you know, in the midst of the USAID getting put in the wood chip or there. also release this little memo by the way we're not going to enforce the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was this amazing instrument for US companies abroad to ratchet up standards in developing countries. In the same countries where USAID was working, you could pick any country in the Central African, the Congo Basin, for example. Pick any country that you want there. Look at what the USAID was doing and look at the fact that there were American firms that were operating in that economy and those American firms were held to a standard at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And now at the same time as you're putting it in the woodchipper, you're also saying, by the way, it's all bets are off. We're going to not be raising the standards of anti-corruption around the world. We're actually going to be actively getting in on the corruption. So I agree with what Blaine's saying. I mean, we have this kind of strange moment where people are not, it's not rational. It's tear it all down. The liberal international economic order doesn't advance our interests. You've got to pay to play. You've got to pay to get into our economy. You're going to get a golden shower visa if you want to work here. This is the kind of stuff that they're actually putting out there into the global public. Cheezing off allies, wrecking things that work and development is first thing in the crosshairs and wait until they get to the IMF and World Bank reform over the next couple of months. That's all, that's my big fear is that we're actually going to see the dismantling of an IMF or the World Bank in the next couple of months based on this super speed path to destruction that Blaine was accurately putting out there. So there's this question of, is this, I mean, Blaine is right and Adam are both right. There's a kind of tear it down mentality. But where I would kind of add a little, it's maybe a different perspective on it as I would say. I've been studying Christian nationalism for the past two years, which is sort of the social, political and cultural movement beneath American populism, the thing that kind of gives American populism its energy. And those guys are really really scary. They would view this not as a simply a tear it all down breaking the system because breaking is what we do and we don't want to have to give all this money and, you know, global liberalism was bad. They would say no, no, no, no. It's a logic here. We are destroying the American country in order to preserve it by purifying it. This is really hardcore ultra nationalist stuff that says just like what Elon Musk did to Twitter, we have to do that to the United States. We have to break everything and rebuild it as a pure society that is Christian, that is oriented towards American interests only and that moves, not only development, but also social relations back at least 100 years. I mean, these are people who are skeptical about women's right to vote, let alone civil rights movement. So there's a really terrible logic at play here and that logic will at least in the short term create a lot of chaos as a lot of things are smashed, but that smashing has a goal and it has a terrible logic. Thank you, Mark. That's completely terrifying. Blaine, just a couple of last thoughts and we'll wrap this episode up. Yeah, I mean, I really like what Mark said there and I hear exactly what you're saying. I mean, and I think that's been the hardest thing for I think people trying to understand what's actually going on because really the idea that like not just economic development, but economic growth should be the thing that a country should always aim for or that's what they're all about has been kind of the dominant idea. So going back at least to the 1980s and then from the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumph of US capitalism onward. And so it's been, like I said, it's baffling to a lot of people and also, even to myself, why would you basically shoot the goose that lays the golden egg, which is kind of what's happening in the United States? But I think what I take from what Mark is saying and Christian nationalism is, for me, at least, a reminder that there are different ways to order a society and it doesn't always have to be focused on economic growth. Something like basically like white supremacy or the subjugation of women is like, like you said, there's some scary stuff and some scary people out there who want that. And so the economic things that we're looking at, you can say, yeah, there's been great economic development. But if you don't care about what kind of white supremacy more, then you're not really going to care about any of the rest of the stuff. And that's kind of, I think, the terrifying moment that we live in right now. Thank you guys for showing your thoughts on this. The topic of the day the development died. I think from this conversation, we can open up a homicide case on development. This is clearly a strategic murder one of development rather than just a natural accident. And with that, we'll wind up this episode here of Global Development Primer and we will welcome you guys back on the next episode where we'll be talking more specifically about the dynamics of US politics, the tariff mentality, sanctions, trade, and a whole bunch of other everyday horrors that we will be getting into. So thanks guys, once again. [Music]