The Foreign Service Journal, March 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2021 33 We should eliminate the current EER system, replacing it with an annual anonymous survey to all colleagues (peers, supervisees and managers) containing two questions: (1) On a scale of 1-10, how much did you enjoy working with X? (2) Would you work with X again? (Yes or No) As for bidding, we shouldmove the entire State Department to a directed assignment system, much like the one entry-level officers and the Bureau of Consular Affairs currently have. Employees would be able to state their priorities and parameters (e.g., special needs education or tandembidding), and a teamof dedicated staff- ing professionals would weigh equity and other considerations to place people into jobs.This would eliminate wasted time on lobby- ing, reduce cronyismand refocus employees on their work. These two changes alone would enormously increase job satis- faction and improve retention in the Foreign Service, at very little cost to the department. FSO Rongjie Chen is an economic officer on the Canada desk at the State Department. Reimagine Foreign Aid In a recent Foreign Affairs article, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates bemoaned the decline in development aid, warn- ing that China was doing a much better job of courting countries to gain access to their natural resources. Unfortunately, Mr. Gates was talking about security aid, not development aid. The two are often confused. Some believe that security aid kills the two birds with just the one stone, but that’s not true either. How could it be? The U.S. Agency for International Development implements four distinct categories of foreign aid: development, security, humanitarian and public health. Defense handles a fifth: mili- tary. USAID does a pretty good job with humanitarian and public health aid, primarily because it effectively segregates its work- force so that employees can more effectively specialize and are not distracted by competing objectives. Both humanitarian and public health departments are hamstrung, however, because of overlapping responsibilities—with State for refugees, and with both State and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for public health. The workforces for security and development aid aren’t segregated at all at USAID, which causes all sorts of problems. A State official once told me: “We don’t have time for your five-year plans.” The Trump administration proposed eliminating devel- opment aid altogether in favor of security aid. A broad bipartisan alliance in Congress wisely and resoundingly declined his offer. Instead, in partnership with Congress, do the following: • Assign each aid type to a separate agency. a. USAID: Development (incorporate MCC, USDA) b. State: Security (incorporate USAID Economic Support Fund) c. CDC: Public Health (incorporate USAID and State public health) d. FEMA: Humanitarian (incorporate USAID disaster and State refugee) • Assure either “security” or “development” aid is provided to a country, but never both. • Assure sensible development aid planning with five-year appropriations. Jeffrey A. Cochrane is a retired USAID FSO who lives in Washington, D.C. Put State in Charge of Interagency Meetings There is an interagency system to coordinate foreign policy issues. My recommendation is that interagency meetings be chaired by the appropriate assistant secretary of State rather than the senior director at the National Security Council. Why?The NSC director is in a lonely situation, seeing all the cable traffic but talking to nobody during the day. The assistant secretary talks to ambassadors, U.S. embassies abroad, the press, office directors and desk officers, as well as counterparts in other national security agencies. The assistant secretary is at the center of U.S. activities in the region, while the NSC director is there only to watch what is going on to make sure the president’s overall policy is being followed. That is not sufficient to enable the NSC director—who is, more often than not, junior in rank—to chair the interagency process. Hank Cohen, a retired FSO and former ambassador, lives in Washington, D.C. Choose Ambassadors for Their Skills Past presidents have opted to fill ambassadorships with top donors, and we saw “ambassadorships for sale” at its worst during the Trump administration. Please choose ambassadors for their skills, background and