Introduction: In May 2023, Kevin Quigley and I started drafting an essay to explain why the U.S. Peace Corps is operating far below its potential and what might be done to fix it to contribute meaningfully to US relations with the rest of the world. In January 2024, we had a 3,000-word version worthy of publication in Foreign Affairs, the leading foreign relations journal. Alas, it was rejected there and in two other leading outlets. We boiled the essay down to op-ed length and were pleased to see this version published on 3 April 2024 in The Hill, a newspaper targeting the US Congress. The short version was posted on my website on 6 April 2024. Our essay examines three ways of reinventing the Peace Corps: merging it into AmeriCorps, moving it to the State Department, or transforming it from a Federal Agency to an NGO like Save The Children.
Topic: International Volunteer Service
[the essay begins here]
The Peace Corps is more than 60 years old. Like the Baby Boomer generation, the Peace Corps is well past middle age and losing its vigor. If it were a person, it would be eligible for Social Security.
The Peace Corps has been experiencing a slow decline. There were 15,000 volunteers serving in more than 40 countries in 1966, but the numbers fell steadily to an all-time low of 5,000 volunteers in 1989. For the past twenty-five years, the number of volunteers has been stuck in the 7-8,000 range despite campaign pledges by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama to double the number.
There were barely 7,000 volunteers in the field in 2020 when they all had to be brought home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. A trickle of volunteers began returning to host countries in 2022, reaching a total of around 2,500 in March 2024.
Even more significantly, the service model of the Peace Corps is outmoded; it has hardly changed in a world that is vastly different from the Cold War world of the 1960s.
US taxpayers should be asking whether the Peace Corps is delivering value for the $400-430 million annual appropriation it has received since FY2016. We see three fundamentally different ways of making the Peace Corps more relevant and impactful: (1) merge it into AmeriCorps; (2) move it into the State Department; and (3) transform it from a Federal agency to an NGO like the Red Cross. Here we sketch out the pros and cons for each option.
Of course, there is always the option of doing more of the same while adding some improvements to make it more effective. This is the most likely result of the debate given political sentiment in the USA in 2024. We suggest several potential improvements at the end of our essay.
The Global Context
Launched by Executive Order within forty days of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, the Peace Corps is one of the boldest, most innovative foreign policy initiatives of the post-World War II period. It captured the imagination of Americans, as wonderfully illustrated in Norman Rockwell’s cover for the Saturday Evening Post headlined “JFK’s Bold Legacy”. Furthermore, the Peace Corps idea was well received in the rest of the world. Before long, half a dozen other advanced countries had established copycat international volunteer programs.
The Peace Corps adopted three goals when it was founded sixty years ago: (1) to help people in other countries to help themselves; (2) to help these people understand America better, and (3) to bring the world discovered by volunteers during their service back to the United States in ways that could improve America’s relations with the rest of the world.
The countries that needed help in the 1960s were the developing countries in what was called then “The Third World” and is now called “The Global South”. The Peace Corps agency’s goals have not changed but the world has changed, dramatically.
Back when the Peace Corps was launched, Third World countries were emerging from colonial rule. This was the coldest period of the Cold War. Many of these countries preferred to be aligned with the USA rather than the Communist Bloc. They lacked the institutional and physical infrastructure of the industrial countries. Their populations were overwhelmingly rural and poorly educated. The Peace Corps was a welcome form of aid, having none of the strings associated with agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank.
At the same time, Americans had limited opportunities to live overseas without having to bear most of the expense. Men were being drafted into the military and Peace Corps service was viewed by some draft boards as an alternative. Most importantly, Americans were welcome in most of the world and living in a foreign country appealed to many of America’s youth in the 1960s.
What a difference a few decades can make. Today, even the poorest countries in the world have graduates from the top universities in the USA. They all have mobile phone networks, sometimes with better coverage than is found in rural areas in the USA.
Furthermore, a host of global challenges exist today that were low-priority concerns in the 1960s. Global warming is an existential threat for humankind. Technology is erasing borders while nationalist sentiment is building walls between nations. There will be more pandemics from viruses like Covid-19. Conflict seems to be growing on every continent, producing waves of migrants in a world with increasingly fewer welcoming shores.
There are aspects of the Peace Corps that remain valuable and worth preserving. Ask former volunteers what they think about the Peace Corps, and most will say that the experience was “transformative”. They returned to the USA as better persons: more motivated, better directed, possessing valuable workplace skills, with deep understanding of other cultures and a better sense of America’s role in a world where its population accounts for less than four percent of the globe’s 8 billion. The Peace Corps model of a 2-year service commitment following three months of language learning, cultural training, and adapting skill to local circumstances has not been improved upon anywhere.
Moreover, the Peace Corps program is not completely frozen. Peace Corps management has been introducing changes to make service abroad more attractive, such as allowing applicants to choose their country of service, experimenting with virtual volunteering, and establishing Peace Corps Response that supports short-term assignments by volunteers with specific skills. Efforts are underway to make service assignments more relevant to host countries, such as working to strengthen domestic volunteer programs in these countries.
The Challenge
In the dark and stormy world our children are growing up in, where is the glue that will bind Americans to people in other countries so that together we can build a more peaceful and sustainable world? Isn’t the best solution some kind of program that brings American women and men out of their comfort zones, helps them become more civic-minded, and gets them to interact 24/7 with “the other”? We did this domestically with the military draft between 1965 and 1972 when more than 2 million men were called to service. We are doing this now with AmeriCorps on a voluntary basis, but at a much smaller scale than military service but ten times bigger than the Peace Corps. We could do so much more internationally.
In an outstanding example of bipartisanship in 2017, the US Congress created a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service to review the military draft and “consider methods to increase participation in military, national, and public service in order to address national security and other public service needs of the Nation.” The Commission had the misfortune of issuing its final report in March 2020, when the Covid pandemic was declared. The Commission’s bold recommendations never got the attention they deserved.
The Commission’s core recommendation was to create a culture of service in which “a service year will become a new rite of passage to adulthood.” The Commission set a goal for 2031 of having five million Americans engaged in a year or more of volunteer service. The Commission envisioned that the Peace Corps would play a role in achieving this goal, but missed the opportunity to explain how a much larger international service program could contribute materially to national security in the difficult decades to come.
There has been some progress toward the Commission’s ambitious goal. In particular, the various domestic programs managed by AmeriCorps are getting more funding from the Federal budget. In our search for ways of scaling up the Peace Corps to meet the challenges of the future, we began by looking at the possibility of merging the Peace Corps into AmeriCorps. We found more benefits than we expected.
Merging the Peace Corps into AmeriCorps
The place to start when considering this alternative is to look at where AmeriCorps has been and where it is headed.
AmeriCorps arrived on the scene 32 years ago, a whole generation after the Peace Corps. Launched in 1993 as the Corporation for National and Community Service, CNCS immediately began operating in close partnership with state and local governments, managing the family of volunteer programs established independently in the past, including Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC). During its first 30 years, CNCS expanded to include a broad Senior Corps program, and the number of volunteers directly and indirectly funded grew from around 70,000 in FY2014 to more than 200,000 in 2022.
Merging the Peace Corps into AmeriCorps could enable it to break out of its 20-year ceiling of 8,000 volunteers and even move beyond its previous peak of 15,000 volunteers. The menu of Peace Corps service options could be dramatically expanded through AmeriCorps-type cost-sharing partnerships with universities and NGOs like Habitat for Humanity and Partners of the Americas. There could be substantial economies of scale in recruitment, reporting, and other management costs. There could be a stronger partnership with the UN Volunteer Program that places volunteers from member countries into UN agencies operating in countries where Peace Corps has been reluctant to place volunteers for political and/or security reasons.
The most radical benefit of moving the Peace Corps into AmeriCorps would be the ability to make it a two-way program by bringing foreign volunteers to the USA. Education is just one sector where this would work well. Consider the benefits of having at least one foreign volunteer teacher in every high school in the United States. These foreign volunteers could fill serious teacher shortages in subjects like math and science. They could be music teachers and gym teachers as well as geography and language teachers. In addition to teaching, young men and women from foreign countries could work alongside AmeriCorps volunteers on disaster relief and climate mitigation.
Two-way volunteer service is a policy initiative that has the potential of being a big and relatively inexpensive win for American communities and for US foreign policy. Doing this within the broad AmeriCorps program should make it politically palatable.
Finally, the governance structure of AmeriCorps is more capable of creating an effective international volunteer program because it is governed by a non-partisan Board of Directors appointed by the President, making it less vulnerable to the whims of the Congress. Another advantage is that the AmeriCorps CEO is selected by the Board, making it possible to hire a more distinguished person than the Peace Corps has been able to attract. Unfortunately, however, the compensation of the CEO and its staff is limited to the Government Service scale, which precludes hiring a CEO with a national reputation who would give volunteer service a lot more visibility.
Merging the Peace Corps into the State Department
Few Americans seem to realize the breadth and depth of our government’s commitment to people-to-people relations with other countries. This engagement took a quantum leap after World War II with the creation of an Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs in the State Department and the founding of the Fulbright Program in 1946. The product of 80 years of two-way exchanges is an alumni population (living and deceased) of close to half a million, including 75 Nobel Prize winners and 450 heads of government in foreign countries. Today, there are 43 distinct State Department programs that bring foreigners to the USA for education, training, speaking, performing, etc. There are 50 distinct programs that send American citizens to foreign countries for a comparable range of activities.
Historically, a core value of the Peace Corps community was being independent from the State Department. This separation was also an important attraction for host countries that have had problems with US foreign policies at various points in time. It also helped volunteers in the field to persuade people in the communities where they served that they were not spies or carpetbaggers.
The importance of this separation has largely evaporated in a world increasingly skeptical of US actions and motives. The strongest argument for moving the Peace Corps into the State Department is that this move is probably more politically feasible domestically than moving it into AmeriCorps, therefore making it easier for the Peace Corps to break out of its ceiling of 8,000 volunteers. In particular, the move should make it possible to cut through the obstacles to bringing foreign volunteers to the United States for limited terms of service, because this limited flow would be lost in the much larger flow through the State Department’s many existing exchange programs.
From Federal Agency to Nongovernmental Organization
As a Federal agency, the Peace Corps is hamstrung by its authorizing legislation, its annual budget appropriations, and inertia resulting from six decades of doing the same thing while repressing its founders’ expansive vision. Moving it out of the government would enable the Peace Corps to come closer to the original vision of having 100,000 Americans engaged in volunteer work in foreign countries.
While appearing to be a radical alternative, transforming the Peace Corps into an NGO would be repeating what other countries have done after initially creating international volunteer programs modeled on the Peace Corps. The great advantages of being an NGO are flexibility and independence. As the US Government does for the Asia Foundation and the Inter-American Foundation, the Federal budget could include core funding for an independent Peace Corps. Once outside the Federal government bureaucracy, however, it would be free to obtain funding from other sources, especially grants from leading philanthropists, charitable organizations, and corporations.
One great advantage of being an NGO would be having a Board of Directors composed of eminent Americans who can hire an entrepreneurial, dynamic, visionary individual to be the CEO, with a compensation package not bound by Federal limits and with the ability to innovate without the need for hard-to-acquire Congressional approval.
Most importantly, as an NGO the Peace Corps would escape the rancor of partisan politics. It would stop being a political football. In a world increasingly skeptical about the foreign policies of successive Republican and Democratic administrations, moving the Peace Corps into the private sector could give it the kind of credibility possessed by globally admired NGOs like Save the Children, and Doctors Without Borders.
A Peace Corps outside of the Federal government could more easily introduce different service options beyond the traditional model of a 2-year service commitment. For example, more short-term and hybrid programs for mid-career or post-retirement Americans could not only attract more applicants but also applicants with skills more in demand in foreign countries. In addition, one of the boldest actions a nongovernment Peace Corps could undertake is bringing volunteers from other countries to the USA.
The Points of Light Foundation (POLF) could be a model for the Peace Corps operating as an NGO. POLF was founded in May 1990 to promote volunteer work in the USA. By 2022, it had 145 affiliates in 36 states and 39 countries. Its operating budget was around $22 million, with no government funding. As an NGO, working in collaboration with POLF, the Peace Corps could massively scale up people-to-people relations between the USA and the rest of the world, making the world a better place for our children and the generations to come.
More of the Same
Forget about any improvements in the Peace Corps if Donald Trump or another Republican wins the election in November. A second-term President Joe Biden will certainly keep the Peace Corps alive, but there is no visible force within the Administration or within the Congress poised to push for a bigger and better Peace Corps. The best one can expect is that the Peace Corps budget will remain above the $400 million level, the number of volunteers in the field will slowly grow past the previous all-time low of 5,000, and a few modest improvements will be implemented.
Three improvements could be well received domestically and abroad. One improvement is to grow the Peace Corps Response program that exists alongside the standard 2-year service commitment. It offers assignments of 3-12 months to Americans with “advanced degrees and specialized certifications” and “cross-cultural competence”. Because these assignments fit narrowly defined needs in the host countries and the skills of the volunteers, their impact tends to be greater.
A second improvement is to substantially expand the Virtual Service Pilot (VSP) program that was launched after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the evacuation of all 7,000-plus Peace Corps volunteers overseas. In February 2024, the Peace Corps announced it is planning to do this. VSP volunteers commit to spending 5-15 hours per week over 3-6 months supporting counterparts in countries actively hosting Peace Corps volunteers. By making virtual service a permanent program and making it financially more attractive, participation in virtual Peace Corps service could grow exponentially, even exceeding the number of full-term volunteers in the field.
The most substantial improvement might be to broaden the classic 2-year service commitment through partnerships with colleges and universities, existing international service programs like Corps Africa and Partners of the Americas, and even the United Nations Volunteer program. The demand from host countries seems to exist and this could be a smart way of addressing the diminished supply of Americans applying to be full-time Peace Corps volunteers.
Conclusion
Teresa Heinz, wife of Senator John Kerry, famously said in 2004 “one of the best faces America has ever projected is the face of a Peace Corps volunteer.” This may be even more true today. There is a huge difference between having military “boots on the ground” and having civilian “sneakers on the ground”. Does it make sense today to have a Peace Corps with fewer than 8,000 volunteers while we have more than 170,000 military deployed overseas? In a world of 8 billion people, 8,000 volunteers are not even a drop in the bucket.
The United States provided inspired leadership for the world after World War II, although that leadership has been called into question, especially over the past 20 years. Climate change, infectious disease, and technological advances have combined to create exceptional turmoil and uncertainty everywhere.
Relations with the rest of the world should be a top issue in this year’s presidential election campaign. The US has had much more success with its soft power than its military power in being the first country most of the world still looks to for leadership. It should be obvious to all voters that our national security in the decades to come will be at risk if we are unable to maintain strong connections around the world at the grassroots, people-to-people, level.
Some version of the Peace Corps is probably the best way to build these connections. All three of the alternative transformations we have described are consistent with the bold recommendations of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. The presidential and congressional candidates in the 2024 election should be challenged to propose actions that will improve relations between America and the rest of the world. A revitalized Peace Corps program is the kind of glue that America needs—and the world needs—to help meet the challenges ahead of us.
© Kevin Quigley and Lex Rieffel, Washington, DC, 15 July 2024
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