THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2025 11 intentional diplomacy. My fear is that the current administration does not understand this. Stephen Wickman FSO, retired McLean, Virginia Moral Leadership I just read the FSJ article “Lives Upended: The Impact of USAID’s Dismantling on Those Who Serve” in your AprilMay 2025 issue. Both the introductory note from the editors and the testimonials from affected individuals were powerful and offer a necessary and courageous resistance to the Trump administration’s cruel and thoughtless cuts. Your refusal to be complicit in the travesties that are occurring is moral leadership at its best. Thank you for what you do. Mary Ellen Weir Belmont, North Carolina Dereliction of Duty In my decades of involvement in U.S. foreign and security policy, both in and out of government, I have never been so disheartened in reading the FSJ than with the April-May 2025 issue. Ironically, my concern was set off by the extraordinary record of the Foreign Service and others in developing relations with Vietnam over the last 50 years. One quote from Amb. Ted Osius’ article (“Vietnam and the United States: The Way Ahead”) underscores the danger that U.S. foreign policy now faces: “By decimating the team of Foreign Service Asia experts—people who would have known about 11 centuries of enmity between Vietnam and China— [Sen. Joe] McCarthy left the State Department unprepared.” That history now risks being repeated—this time because of actions being mandated from within the building. By killing USAID and decimating the State Department itself, both at home and abroad, the current administration has already ensured that State will not have sufficient talent, experience, and proper organization needed for U.S. foreign policy to prosper in the years ahead, or even for State to be able to provide critical help sometimes needed by Americans abroad. Even if the Secretary of State immediately rescinded what has already been done, the time needed to get the State Department (and other parts of the U.S. foreign policy structure) back to needed levels would take months, if not years. Already, America’s reputation in the world has taken its worst hit at least since Iraq in 2003 and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. This is worse than sad or tragic. It is dereliction of duty to the people of the United States, who expect the State Department and other agencies to reflect the interests and values of our country abroad. Robert E. Hunter U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1993-1998 Washington, D.C. Too Many Losses Like many of you, after my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer, I chose to remain in service to our country by joining the USAID Foreign Service. Unfortunately, the current administration is erasing all that I stood for. My lifetime of work has been reduced to ashes, not due to natural causes but because of cruel acts of misguided people. I know I am not alone when I write that I am fed up. I worked for 10 years with the Peace Corps and 40 years with USAID and associated organizations. Now these U.S. organizations, which are themselves 63 years old, are being hastily and carelessly dismantled by a small group of people, leaving thousands of American employees and their families—whose jobs focused on providing life-saving humanitarian aid and relieving poverty in some of the most desperate parts of the world— without their livelihoods. The rapid evisceration of U.S. foreign aid programs also hurt thousands of locally employed (LE) staff (which we knew as Foreign Service Nationals or FSNs) working in their respective countries. FSNs were the institutional continuity and backbone of all U.S. overseas missions. They and their families were also deeply affected by the abrupt closure of their missions and their own sudden dismissals. Moreover, the termination of foreign aid has left millions of impoverished people in some of the world’s poorest countries without sufficient food and health care. Is the United States now abandoning these people? Questions must be asked: How do we now plan to stop the worldwide spread of disease, including pandemics? The loss of food markets for U.S. farmers also comes to mind. At least $2 billion of food will not be purchased by USAID in 2025. The loss of this market is catastrophic for U.S. farmers, many of whom have already planted crops with this market in mind. Our foreign assistance represents only 1 percent of the federal budget, so how much money do we save by its total and rapid demise? It is difficult for me to see how such actions by our government can be viewed in a positive light. There are many ways to reform our foreign aid programs, but reform must be done in a thoughtful manner rather
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