The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2019 13 TALKING POINTS Yet Another Attempt to Cut Foreign Affairs Budget T he Trump administration’s FY 2020 budget proposal, presented March 11, once again requests a double-digit cut in the funding for international affairs. Both Republican and Demo- cratic lawmakers have pronounced it “dead on arrival,” and say that they will reject the cuts, as they have for the past two years. The White House has set the budget for the State Department and USAID at about $42.8 billion, down from about $55.8 billion. The proposed 23 percent cut in funds for the State Department is concentrated in the area of international organizations and programs. Among other things, the budget request proposes a reorganization of humanitarian assistance, namely merg- ing the bulk of State’s Migration and Refugee Assistance account with two USAID accounts: Food for Peace and International Disaster Assistance. The new consolidated account would be called International Humanitar- ian Assistance and would “support all aspects of humanitarian assistance,” according to State’s fiscal 2020 congres- sional budget justification. “The request restructures our overseas humanitarian programming to enable the United States to respond seamlessly to evolving humanitarian needs,” said Eric Ueland, who heads State’s Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at a State Department press briefing March 11. While longtime humanitarian assistance practitioners say the pro- posal has some merits, they do not trust the Trump administration’s ultimate intentions and thus oppose it, Roll Call reported on March 22. GAO Releases Report on U.N. Peacekeeping Operations O n March 19 the Government Accountability Office released a report on worldwide United Nations peacekeeping operations. The report, GAO-19-224, is subtitled: “State Should Take Additional Steps to Work with the U.N. to Improve Effectiveness and Perfor- mance Information.” “As of December 2018, the U.N. had 14 ongoing peacekeeping operations with approximately 103,000 personnel. The United States is the single largest finan- cial contributor to these operations,” the report states. In compiling the report, GAO analyzed U.N. and U.S. documents and interviewed U.N. and U.S. officials. GAO also inter- viewed officials at peacekeeping opera- tions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kosovo and Lebanon. In reviewing the Department of State’s assessments as of December 2018 and in discussions with State officials, GAO found that U.N. peacekeeping operations generally do not fully meet U.S. principles for effective peacekeep- ing, which include host country consent and an exit strategy, among others. As former commanders of U.S. Southern Command, we have seen first- hand that the challenges in the region cannot be solved by themilitary alone but require strengthening investments in development and diplomacy. … Improving conditions inHonduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is a critical way to address the root cause of migration and prevent the humanitarian crisis at our border. This is a solution tomany of the drivers that cause people to leave their country andmove north. Cutting aid to the regionwill only increase the drivees and will be evenmore costly to deal with on our border. —Statement by former combatant commanders of the U.S. Southern Command, Generals Bantz Craddock, James Hill, BarryMcCaffrey, Charles Wilhelmand Admiral James Stavridis, April 8. Contemporary Quote GAO recommends that the State Department take additional steps to ensure that U.N. peacekeeping opera- tions meet principles of effectiveness, that the U.N. provides information on the estimated costs of mandated tasks, and that the U.N. addresses member states’ concerns about the quality of perfor- mance information. The State Department agreed with GAO’s recommendations. The New “For Country Caucus” Speaks Up for Diplomacy O nMarch 19 four members of U.S. Congress announced in a Wash- ington Post op-ed that they have forme d the “For Country Caucus” to “provide principledmilitary veteranmembers a platform to work in a nonpartisan way and create a more productive government.” The founding caucus members—Rep- resentatives Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) andMichael Waltz (R-Fla.)—are all mili- tary veterans. In the op-ed they point out that veteran representation in Congress “is near a historic low of 18 percent”—down from some 70 percent several decades ago. The group intends to work with veter-