THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2025 11 killers mistook the neutral Americans for French and sought to hide evidence by setting fire to the jeep. Mrs. Skewes and Ms. James are believed to be the only women Foreign Service members to lose their lives in the decades-long conflict in Vietnam. Sadly, one wonders why their sacrifice has been overlooked for all these years. Ray Walser FSO, retired Broadlands, Virginia Surviving a National Disaster For the past 80 years, U.S. diplomats could proudly say they served the administration of the moment in bipartisan spirit, and the Foreign Service was at the forefront in helping our country build a uniquely peaceful and prosperous international order. Now the Service is being asked to serve a radical administration without a mandate (the president took less than 50 percent of the popular vote, and his opponent was only 1.5 percent behind him), which threatens to destroy the global order that generations of FSOs helped to create. So, what do they do now? The younger could resign and seek work elsewhere. The older are near retirement. It is the middle ranks of the Service with whom I sympathize, because they have invested into this profession years of life they cannot reclaim, and they have families to support. To them this septuagenarian retiree can only advise “hang on,” because the nightmare may pass; but in the meantime, remember that your highest duty is not to a particular administration but to the nation. And if that means subtly doing what you can to at least ameliorate the worst decisions of the current radicals (though actual sabotage is wholly against our ethic), then be of good conscience in doing so. Do what you can at the margins, because our duty is to the country, not to a fly-by-night eruption of fools. My fear is that, even if this administration proves to be an awful aberration, the break in the continuity of postwar foreign policy consensus that it has caused could prove enduring, such that in the future U.S. foreign policies may oscillate wildly from one administration to the next. That is no way to keep allies. And it is not a situation that will attract future talent into the Foreign Service. FSOs do not sign up to be hypocrites. Marc E. Nicholson FSO, retired Washington, D.C. Why We Should Care About USAID The Trump administration’s attempts to gut USAID reminded me how much I respect the agency’s work and the Foreign Service employees who carry it out. In 2004, as a Federal Trade Commission attorney, I served as a technical adviser to Indonesia’s competition agency. My six-month stint in Jakarta was administered through USAID, and I attended the weekly meetings of USAID’s economic team at the U.S. embassy. There, I met contractors who were engaged in parallel projects. I also met USAID and embassy staff, both American and Indonesian; and 20 years later, I still recall how impressed I was with them—smart people, dedicated to the mission of helping people and representing the United States. The contractors reported on their activities to help Indonesia become
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