The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

M A 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 21 to other departments and agencies. Most recently, the De- partment of Defense became by default the dominant pol- icymaker in the early phases of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its resources still dictate much of the ac- tion today, and it is increasingly training its personnel for the tasks State and USAID lack the bodies to perform. After decades of calls to develop the professional skills we have chronically lacked, it is time for State to stop vali- dating Battle’s conclusions about what will happen to us if we don’t. The relatively new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization is a good start, but it is still small and its training lies largely outside the normal skill sets of State officers. In addition, it is ridiculous that most FSOs have had no formal training in conducting negotia- tions, either with foreigners or within the interagency com- munity. Whom to Train State Department Foreign Service specialists, as well as their consular and management-cone colleagues, are still routinely shortchanged in language training and professional development. But they have plenty of company, alas. Neither the Foreign Commercial Service nor the For- eign Agricultural Service provide much language instruc- tion or area studies education to their officers, even though they confront many of the same cultural and political issues as their State Department counterparts. And many new hires at the U.S. Agency for International Development are not even getting basic training in the languages spoken in their countries of assignment. The fact that more of them receive instruction in world languages is commendable as far as it goes, but the failure to meet both sets of needs il- lustrates the nefarious way in which resource-driven deci- sions limit field effectiveness. In addition, the world of foreign assistance has changed greatly in recent decades, moving away from government-to-government partnerships. Yet USAID still has few resources to devote to leveraging and build- ing partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. F O C U S