Speaking Out

BY BRENDAN M . WHEELER

Speaking Out is the Journal’s opinion forum, a place for lively discussion of issues affecting the U.S. Foreign Service and American diplomacy. The views expressed are those of the author; their publication here does not imply endorsement by the American Foreign Service Association. Responses are welcome; send them to journal@afsa.org.

A year ago, my 17-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service ended when the United States closed USAID. Since then, many former colleagues have penned poignant memorials to the agency and their careers.

Others have made serious attempts to imagine what comes next for U.S. foreign assistance, including a thoughtful “Open Letter on the Future of Foreign Assistance” signed by 72 former senior development diplomats and humanitarians.

That letter brought me to my keyboard. Instead of eulogizing my career, I want to mark this unfortunate anniversary by sharing my thoughts on how the United States can make foreign assistance even more powerful—if we are thoughtful and patient enough to see it through.

What Went Wrong

The Open Letter’s 10 recommendations endeavor to answer the question of how we should rebuild. What emerges is an approach to the next generation of development that is indistinguishable from USAID’s approach. But reaching that conclusion now, as comforting as it may be, overlooks an important question: Why was USAID so easy to dismantle?

We all watched in disbelief as USAID was closed with striking speed and almost no resistance. At posts around the world, consoling words were offered as careers and commitments were shattered, and the United States became less capable in the world right before our eyes.

When it mattered most, the agency had too thin a constituency among Americans and in Congress to defend itself effectively. Would it be wise to recreate such a vulnerable entity?

Carl von Clausewitz described strategic strength as a trinity: government support, popular will, and institutional capability. USAID had the third element—a talented corps of professionals who did inspiring work tackling the world’s hardest problems. At some point during its more than 60 years, it lost the other two. An institution in that condition is not ready to be rebuilt. It is ready to be examined.

Understanding why USAID’s trinity was so out of balance should be the point of departure for any effort to rethink the agency and U.S. foreign assistance more broadly.

Tell the Story—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What would an examination look like? We saw one in 1975.

Launched in response to blockbuster reports of abuses at agencies including the CIA and FBI, the Church Committee conducted a sustained, sweeping public investigation into U.S. intelligence operations—the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was a painful process, but the work laid the foundation for reforms and oversight that made those agencies more effective and better understood by Americans.

Understanding why USAID’s trinity was so out of balance should be the point of departure for any effort to rethink the agency and U.S. foreign assistance more broadly.

In its final weeks, USAID faced a sustained campaign of misrepresentation that provided the rhetorical cover for what came next. The agency, now prostrate, is ripe for the Church Committee treatment. Not a memorial. Not a defense. An honest, clinical reckoning that exposes weaknesses and strengths by telling Americans the full story.

Do that, and two things will happen: First, Americans will come away immensely proud of the generations of good they financed across the world since President John F. Kennedy founded USAID in 1961, and second, they will agree that the United States must continue to invest in the stability of its partner countries—and support the reforms needed to do it even more effectively. The Open Letter assumes that conclusion. A Church Committee–style reckoning would earn it.

The reckoning should not stop at USAID’s door. The Church Committee did not limit itself to one agency—it examined the CIA, FBI, NSA, and others—because the problems cut across the whole enterprise. USAID may have been the most visible instrument of U.S. foreign assistance but was never the only one. Any serious review should be as sweeping as U.S. foreign assistance itself.

Then Reform. Seriously.

Sustained congressional investigations. Sweeping reforms of complex bureaucracies. Too difficult? History suggests otherwise.

In 1986, after operational failures in Iran and Grenada became too obvious to ignore, Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, fundamentally reforming the Defense Department and its approach to warfighting. Congress willed those reforms into existence following bruising, divisive, but ultimately clarifying hearings that leveled clear-eyed scrutiny on the entire military enterprise.

Goldwater-Nichols forced genuine interoperability across the armed services through structural changes and incentives, not sloganeering. The U.S. foreign assistance community would benefit from the same unsentimental congressional scrutiny toward the same result: real integration with diplomacy and defense to maximize effectiveness in support of U.S. foreign and national security policy—not a re-creation of the “three legs of the stool” formulation that became a substitute for genuine integration.

The Open Letter points in the right direction by calling to “eliminate barriers to a whole-of-government approach.” Goldwater-Nichols shows us how to get there.

Limits of Leaders’ Wisdom

If the United States chooses to subject USAID to similar scrutiny and explore reorganizing the broader foreign assistance enterprise, careful thought must be given to how and whose experiences inform those processes.

The former USAID leaders who signed the Open Letter are not wrong about what U.S. foreign assistance can do. Their service should be honored. Their recommendations contain real wisdom that should be expanded on and studied. But any wisdom earned within a system has its limits when that system collapses and needs to be reimagined.

For decades, USAID leaders directed thousands of USAID employees across dozens of countries. They programmed tens of billions of dollars annually through hundreds of U.S. and international organizations whose reach extended deeply into the U.S. economy—into the health care, research, and agriculture sectors, among others.

Collectively, this work effectively advanced U.S. interests against the world’s most complex challenges: war, disease, famine, poverty, genocide, and others. That was a winning hand. But playing a winning hand to a losing outcome demands an honest accounting of what went wrong.

Despite all of USAID’s accumulated achievements, agency leaders failed to build a durable constituency that could defend the work. There may be other development thinkers with valuable perspectives to consider and other business models that would do the work better—and in a way that brings Americans along and keeps members of Congress invested. A process styled after the Church Committee or Goldwater-Nichols would find them.

We’ve Been Here Before

The United States has always been—and will continue to be—an activist power that seeks to shape the international environment in ways that serve its interests. Gunboats and bombs have their limits when a country’s support is better and more economically achieved through sustained U.S. investment in its health, education, governance, and economic development.

USAID had a model for doing this, and the United States invested in this model for decades. Despite the results delivered, too few Americans and members of Congress ever understood the work well enough to defend it.

If the United States wants to reimagine USAID, it must first resist comforting assumptions and thoughtfully challenge every orthodoxy about the agency. It must choose a patient, rigorous examination of USAID’s record, and tell the whole story of what the United States has supported through USAID.

True public understanding of that record—the good, the bad, and the ugly—must be the foundation of what comes next. Without it, whatever the United States builds next will be just as vulnerable as what we lost.

Brendan M. Wheeler

Brendan Wheeler served 17 years as a USAID Foreign Service officer in Washington, D.C., Addis Ababa, Cairo, Amman, Tunis (Libya), and Kigali. Before joining the Foreign Service, he worked on Capitol Hill and served with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and the U.S. Embassy Regional Embassy Office in Kirkuk.

 

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