14 MARCH-APRIL 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Trump said Washington would oversee a transition while U.S. oil companies moved to rehabilitate Venezuela’s energy sector. In the Eastern Hemisphere, China is framed primarily as an economic and technological competitor rather than an existential ideological rival. The strategy calls for rebalancing trade and reducing supply-chain dependence while maintaining a “mutually advantageous” economic relationship. It reaffirms long-standing U.S. policy opposing unilateral changes to the status quo regarding Taiwan. The strategy also deemphasizes the Middle East as a central U.S. priority, casting the region as a place for investment and partnership rather than democracy promotion, and it treats Africa largely as a theater for commercial engagement and competition with China. While not binding, observers say the document codifies a fundamentally different theory of U.S. engagement that favors sovereignty, spheres of influence, and transactional diplomacy over alliance-centered global leadership. SIGAR Final Report and Oral History Project A final report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), published December 3, 2025, finds that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan was a twodecade effort “fraught with waste” that failed to build a stable democracy despite nearly $145 billion in reconstruction spending from 2002 to 2021. The report attributes the outcome to corrupt partners, shifting strategies, and the absence of a clear plan. Acting Inspector General Gene Aloise said corruption “affected everything,” describing Afghanistan’s government as a “white-collar criminal enterprise.” He noted that SIGAR identified systemic weaknesses, particularly in Afghan security forces, years before the 2021 withdrawal, but key findings were increasingly classified. While the report does not assess the withdrawal itself, it estimates the United States left behind about $38.6 billion in military equipment and infrastructure. Aloise said SIGAR was not consulted in the Pentagon’s current withdrawal review ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Established by Congress in 2008 and closed on January 31, SIGAR says it generated $4.6 billion in cost savings while identifying at least $26 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse: an oversight role Aloise said helped limit far greater losses to U.S. taxpayers. This January, SIGAR also released video interviews and transcripts from the SIGAR Oral History Project, “Conducting Oversight in a War Zone.” That project consists of interviews with more than 30 SIGAR personnel about their experiences helping SIGAR identify, report, and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan. The interviewees include SIGAR criminal investigative agents who pursued fraud cases in Afghanistan, auditors who inspected and evaluated U.S. program and project sites there, as well as research analysts and other subject matter experts who tracked bigger picture issues for SIGAR’s “Lessons Learned” reports. The interviews contain case studies and internal insights from SIGAR’s work overseeing reconstruction in Afghanistan and are offered by the organization as a resource for the education and training of future federal government professionals who may engage in related work. The SIGAR Oral History Project Overview document provides brief highlights from each interview, and details about how to access the full edited interviews and transcripts, today and after SIGAR sunsets and ceases. The archived version of the SIGAR. mil website is now available online through the University of North Texas CyberCemetery at https://bit.ly/SIGARarchives. For the oral histories, go to “News” and then “Spotlights.” State Department Rejects Fact-Checkers A State Department directive issued on December 4, 2025, instructs consular officers to reject visa applications, particularly H-1B petitions, from individuals whose prior work involved fact-checking, content moderation, or other activities the administration considers censorship of Americans’ speech. The guidance, first reported by Reuters and reviewed by NPR, calls for findings of ineligibility where applicants are deemed “responsible for, or complicit in,” restricting protected expression in the United States. The memo operationalizes a May 2025 policy announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and directs officers to closely examine applicants’ work histories, including résumés, LinkedIn profiles, and media references, for roles tied to misinformation or disinformation efforts, trust and safety, compliance, or content moderation, fields common in the tech sector. Civil liberties groups and industry experts criticized the move, arguing it conflates safety work with censorship
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