Bureaucratic Smokescreens

Aid-Diplomacy Mergers and the Politics of Foreign Policy Reform

Bloomsbury Academic
November 2026
ISBN
978-1-6669-6007-5
 

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For much of the postwar era, development agencies operated as largely autonomous institutions, justified as complements to national security and diplomacy. That settlement is now unraveling. Humanitarian aid and development assistance have become increasingly entangled with security politics, amid growing skepticism about aid's purpose and effectiveness.

This shift crystallized in July 2025, when the United States, under the second Trump administration, shuttered USAID and folded its remaining functions into the Department of State — echoing earlier efforts to integrate aid and foreign policy in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, and New Zealand.

Bureaucratic Smokescreens examines this global trend toward integrating aid and diplomacy and asks a central question: do these mergers actually advance states' foreign policy and security goals? Drawing on a comparative study of five countries over two decades, the book uses interviews with senior officials, civil servants, and activists to trace how institutional restructuring reshapes priorities, incentives, and everyday practice on the ground.

Against a backdrop of rising Chinese development finance, the emergence of alternative aid donors, and a contracting foreign aid landscape, Bureaucratic Smokescreens interrogates whether development and diplomacy can be meaningfully integrated, or whether their effectiveness depends on institutional distinction. It offers timely lessons for U.S. reform efforts and the future of foreign affairs practice.

Commentary​

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“Bureaucratic Smokescreens offers a timely and trenchant analysis of the place of development aid in foreign policy. Rachel George cuts through the contemporary political assertion in many Western donor nations of the gains to be had from merging development and diplomacy bureaucracies. Her first of its kind comparative study highlights that realizing gains in practice requires a strategic clarity that is sorely lacking in a discourse focused on bureaucratic design.” ―Naazneen Barma, University of Denver, USA

“What is aid's rightful place in foreign policy? That is the key question asked in Bureaucratic Smokescreens. The demolition of the US Agency for Development has prompted much debate on whether and in what form its resurrection might take under an aid-friendly administration. Practitioners would be well advised to read Rachel's George book, which analyzes how other countries have grappled with aid reform and confronted organizational dilemmas that defy easy answers.” ―Stephen John Stedman, Stanford University, USA

“Scholars have paid far too little attention to the practical impacts of Aid-Diplomacy mergers. Fortunately for scholars and practitioners alike, Rachel George has stepped into the breach with this important book. It will serve as an invaluable guide to why aid-diplomacy mergers so often disappoint, and what reformers should do differently to avoid repeating the same mistakes.” ―Ian Klaus, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA

Related publications

The Washington Quarterly

"Merging Development and Diplomacy: What Might the U.S. Learn?"
Peer-reviewed article on the institutional logic behind aid-diplomacy integration across Anglo-American democracies.

Foreign Policy

"Merging USAID and State Could Make the U.S. Less Secure"
Policy analysis of the Trump administration's absorption of USAID into the State Department.

Global Studies Quarterly

"From Altruism to Instrumentalism? Aid-Diplomacy Mergers and the Future of Foreign Policy"
Empirical study of how mergers reshape institutional incentives and development outcomes​
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Media & presentations

Stanford CISAC Recorded presentation on book project research

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