THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2025 9 LETTERS Appreciation for the Appreciation Ambassador Tom Boyatt’s article in the September 2024 Journal, “A Soft-Spoken Institution Builder,” expressing his appreciation of Lars Hydle does them both credit. Much of the character of the present-day Foreign Service dates from the far-sighted interaction they engaged in as colleagues with somewhat differing views. I hope it is widely read by current— and maybe even future—generations in the Foreign Service so they will know there were giants in those days. Edward Marks Ambassador, retired Washington, D.C. The Case for Red Teaming Prior to joining the State Department as a Foreign Service officer, I worked for four years at the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) helping set up its Lessons Learned Program. I was glad to see my former colleague David Young’s piece, “Foreign Assistance Lessons from Afghanistan: How to Balance Accountability and Learning,” in the October 2024 FSJ and wholeheartedly agree with the suggestions he put forward. However, State needs to go a step further and not just rely on external oversight organizations to critically assess our strategies, plans, evidence, and data analysis. The department’s March 2022 After Action Review on Afghanistan recommended that State establish a “red team” capability, i.e., the ability to organize teams that can critically assess strategies and plans to identify weaknesses, assumptions, and alternatives to help strengthen these plans and prepare for unexpected contingencies. The review, however, focused on creating this capability only within the Policy Planning Staff (S/P) rather than more generally encouraging red teaming as a concept to be adopted across the department, for strategies big and small. Red teams can add value to State efforts. I know this because I worked with others to establish red teams at Embassy Jakarta in 2021 and in the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau in 2023. Unfortunately, even though the concept of red teaming has been around for decades, and its effectiveness validated many times over, the practice is still not widely adopted at State. I have seen colleagues selflessly volunteer to rush off to deal with the myriad crises State faces at any given moment, but I have not seen the same gusto for long-term strategic planning aimed at preventing those crises in the first place (regrettably, incentive systems at State seem to reinforce this dynamic). I encourage all my colleagues at State to embrace the lessons from our long and costly involvement in Afghanistan and find ways to apply principles of red teaming into your work, no matter how small or large. Greg Bauer FSO, Bureau of Intelligence and Research Arlington, Virginia Foreign Assistance Needs to Be Streamlined The importance of foreign economic and financial assistance in U.S. foreign policy is well highlighted by Steven Hendrix in the October 2024 Foreign Service Journal (“USAID: A Critical National Security Tool”). In fact, it is the major diplomatic tool we wield in numerous countries of the world. Hendrix stresses the central role of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), our preeminent and lead implementing organization, with field missions around the world and an annual budget of about $40 billion. However, there are several other organizations also implementing segments of our foreign assistance program. These include the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC); the Development Finance Corporation (DFC); the Trade and Development Agency (TDA), which I once briefly headed; the Peace Corps; the African Development Foundation; and aid units within various departments of our government, including State, Treasury, Agriculture, and others. Having so many foreign assistance spigots creates confusion, overlap, inefficiencies, and high administrative costs. To my mind, it would be more effective to combine them into fewer entities. In fact, our friends on the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have urged this from time to time. But we all know how difficult it is to eliminate an agency of government once established. Raymond Malley Senior FSO, retired Hanover, New Hampshire Reconsidering the Political Appointee Ambassador Like many Foreign Service members, I have long argued that we need to align with most other countries and reserve our ambassador positions for career diplomats.
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