President’s Views

BY TOM YAZDGERDI

As members of the Foreign Service, we have devoted our lives to being America’s first line of defense and working for a more secure, more just, and more prosperous world.

As I write this column in late April, we are focused on the final Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations for the State Department and the other foreign affairs agencies. We are disappointed that the FY2024 International Affairs Budget (IAB) has been reduced by 6 percent, the first time in five years that there have been cuts. (See Advocacy Director Kim Greenplate’s full report.)

True, most cuts to the operational accounts for the foreign affairs agencies were below 3 percent, with the State Department’s cut coming in at less than a percent. But with inflation running at more than 3 percent, this is going to hurt our country’s ability to engage diplomatically—and even more so as these cuts must be absorbed in the last six months of FY2024 since it took so long for the appropriations bills to be passed.

For USAID and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), budget cuts are deeper, at 10 percent for foreign assistance and 4 percent for FAS. It is unfortunate and wrongheaded to cut resources for foreign assistance, agricultural, and commercial work, all of which are integrally tied to U.S. interests.

At State, we are hearing that Foreign Service hiring will have to be reduced by 15 to 30 percent for the remainder of the fiscal year. The cuts at the Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) are so deep that no new FSOs are expected to be onboarded this year.

What Can Be Done?

First, I encourage our members to reach out to their representatives and senators in support of funding for diplomacy and development. FS retirees, resident in nearly every state and territory of the union, can play a pivotal role here. We also have strong relationships with our diplomats in residence (DIR) who are engaged at the regional and state levels.

We all can and should use the centennial year as a hook for telling our stories and detailing why appropriately funding the foreign affairs agencies is crucial to U.S. national security and prosperity.

I have heard arguments for the creation of a single national security appropriations bill that would encompass all the defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs agencies. All these agencies deal with national security.

This would create a single place where national security funding in all its forms could be discussed and decided, where there would be no separate cutout for the military function. This would put these agencies on a more equal footing. I realize the difficulty in achieving this, but at the very least, the idea should be considered and debated.

Please, No More Doing More with Less

There is no question that the foreign affairs agencies will have belt-tightening to do over the next 12 to 18 months. One hopeful sign: a supplemental national security package recently passed the House and Senate to address crises overseas in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

This package includes an additional 26.8 billion for State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) appropriations. For operational accounts, State received more than $230 million and USAID received nearly $40 million. But even with this additional funding, the foreign affairs agencies have seen disproportionate cuts to their functions over decades.

I hope never again to hear the words “doing more with less.” That did not work back in 1992 when I first heard that phrase as a first-tour officer, and it will not work now. We must look for ways to put funding the international affairs function—which accounts for about 1 percent of the federal budget—on a sounder, more rational footing.

To do otherwise is to cede the field to our rivals, who are all too willing to fill the void in a world that has grown increasingly dangerous and unpredictable. Nothing short of American leadership, which has kept the global peace for so many years, is at stake.

Please share your thoughts by writing yazdgerdi@afsa.org or member@afsa.org.