The Foreign Service Journal, January 2010

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17 said last January. In keeping with that commitment, President Barack Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget called for a doubling of foreign assistance funding by 2015, along with a doubling of USAID’s Foreign Service work force. Congress duly approved enough funds for USAID to hire 300 Foreign Service officers in FY 09, and the agency plans to add an- other 350 this year. USAID obligated more than $16 bil- lion in program funds in FY 09, compared with $13 billion in 2007. Meanwhile, for the first time in years, Congress has launched an effort to rewrite the law that governs U.S. de- velopment aid overseas, the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. Doing so, USAID’s supporters hope, will provide the agency with the clear direction it needs to succeed and free it from the multitude of mission goals that Congress has heaped on it since the last Foreign Assistance Act reau- thorization in 1985. Advocates of a strong USAID also detected hopeful signs in some of Pres. Obama’s early appointments. Two key members of his National Security Council staff, Gayle Smith and Michael McFaul, have advocated making USAID a Cabinet agency, which would be a far-reaching way to restore its influence. (Smith was previously a sen- ior staffer at the Center for American Progress, while Mc- Faul was director of the Center on Democracy, Develop- ment and Rule of Law at Stanford University.) Now, a year into President Obama’s first term, with a new administrator finally nominated — Rajiv Shah, a 36- year-old medical doctor who was previously an executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was named in mid-November — many observers cling to the hope that the president is still attentive to the need to revitalize USAID. That commitment is essential, most believe, if the United States is ever to have an effective development program: one that successfully assists the poor and at the same time burnishes our image in a world deeply skepti- cal of U.S. intentions. Hopes Tempered Skeptics, however, cite the extraordinarily long delay in appointing an administrator as evidence that a streamlin- ing of foreign assistance and resolution of the agency’s ex- istential dilemma will not be quick or easy. Many blame the leadership drift on an ongoing dispute within the ad- ministration over the agency’s relationship with the State Department. “What’s happened is there is a fight going on over control of USAID,” says Andrew Natsios, the agency’s administrator from 2001 through 2005. “You have the National Security Council and the White House on one side and Secretary Clinton on the other. Clinton is ar- guing for more absorption into the State Department.” To be sure, she has denied any such intentions, blam- ing the protracted delay in naming Shah on the arduous vetting process for top-level appointees. Clinton cited that problem when one potential nominee, the renowned physician and humanitarian Paul Farmer, withdrew his name from consideration this past summer. However, nu- merous USAID staffers have said the delay was mainly due to uncertainty about the agency’s future, a limbo that has made the top job unappealing. “I know if someone offered me the job, I wouldn’t take it under the current circumstances,” says J. Brian Atwood, USAID administrator during the Clinton administration, now dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. “Increasingly, USAID is expected to show results for its work, and the administrator is held accountable for those results. But I wouldn’t know what authority I would have, or whether I would have the independence and budget authority and autonomy to reach those results.” Shah receives good reviews, both for his work during his short tenure at the Agriculture Department — he served as the department’s under secretary for research, education and economics and its chief scientist last year — and for his previous work at the Gates Foundation. There he oversaw agricultural development grants, was the foundation’s director of financial services to the poor and led a strategic initiative aimed at recommending new areas for grantmaking. Samuel A. Worthington, president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of 150 nongovernmental organiza- tions that provide humanitarian and development assis- tance, expressed approval of Shah’s enthusiasm and management skills, but said he had a tough task ahead. “It is our hope that he will bring that same energy and man- agement expertise to an agency that desperately needs strong and vigorous leadership, especially considering the complexity of issues he’ll find in his in-box,” Worthington said. Among those, Worthington noted, are the budget process, development work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, C O V E R S T O R Y Shawn Zeller, a regular contributor to the Journal , is a free- lance writer in Washington, D.C.