THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2026 19 its partner countries—and support the reforms needed to do it even more effectively. The Open Letter assumes that conclusion. A Church Committee–style reckoning would earn it. The reckoning should not stop at USAID’s door. The Church Committee did not limit itself to one agency—it examined the CIA, FBI, NSA, and others—because the problems cut across the whole enterprise. USAID may have been the most visible instrument of U.S. foreign assistance but was never the only one. Any serious review should be as sweeping as U.S. foreign assistance itself. Then Reform. Seriously. Sustained congressional investigations. Sweeping reforms of complex bureaucracies. Too difficult? History suggests otherwise. In 1986, after operational failures in Iran and Grenada became too obvious to ignore, Congress passed the GoldwaterNichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, fundamentally reforming the Defense Department and its approach to warfighting. Congress willed those reforms into existence following bruising, divisive, but ultimately clarifying hearings that leveled clear-eyed scrutiny on the entire military enterprise. Goldwater-Nichols forced genuine interoperability across the armed services through structural changes and incentives, not sloganeering. The U.S. foreign assistance community would benefit from the same unsentimental congressional scrutiny toward the same result: real integration with diplomacy and defense to maximize effectiveness in support of U.S. foreign and national security policy— not a re-creation of the “three legs of the stool” formulation that became a substitute for genuine integration. and in a way that brings Americans along and keeps members of Congress invested. A process styled after the Church Committee or Goldwater-Nichols would find them. We’ve Been Here Before The United States has always been— and will continue to be—an activist power that seeks to shape the international environment in ways that serve its interests. Gunboats and bombs have their limits when a country’s support is better and more economically achieved through sustained U.S. investment in its health, education, governance, and economic development. USAID had a model for doing this, and the United States invested in this model for decades. Despite the results delivered, too few Americans and members of Congress ever understood the work well enough to defend it. If the United States wants to reimagine USAID, it must first resist comforting assumptions and thoughtfully challenge every orthodoxy about the agency. It must choose a patient, rigorous examination of USAID’s record, and tell the whole story of what the United States has supported through USAID. True public understanding of that record—the good, the bad, and the ugly—must be the foundation of what comes next. Without it, whatever the United States builds next will be just as vulnerable as what we lost. n Speaking Out is the Journal’s opinion forum, a place for lively discussion of issues affecting the U.S. Foreign Service and American diplomacy. The views expressed are those of the author; their publication here does not imply endorsement by the American Foreign Service Association. Responses are welcome; send them to journal@afsa.org. The Open Letter points in the right direction by calling to “eliminate barriers to a whole-of-government approach.” Goldwater-Nichols shows us how to get there. Limits of Leaders’ Wisdom If the United States chooses to subject USAID to similar scrutiny and explore reorganizing the broader foreign assistance enterprise, careful thought must be given to how and whose experiences inform those processes. The former USAID leaders who signed the Open Letter are not wrong about what U.S. foreign assistance can do. Their service should be honored. Their recommendations contain real wisdom that should be expanded on and studied. But any wisdom earned within a system has its limits when that system collapses and needs to be reimagined. For decades, USAID leaders directed thousands of USAID employees across dozens of countries. They programmed tens of billions of dollars annually through hundreds of U.S. and international organizations whose reach extended deeply into the U.S. economy— into the health care, research, and agriculture sectors, among others. Collectively, this work effectively advanced U.S. interests against the world’s most complex challenges: war, disease, famine, poverty, genocide, and others. That was a winning hand. But playing a winning hand to a losing outcome demands an honest accounting of what went wrong. Despite all of USAID’s accumulated achievements, agency leaders failed to build a durable constituency that could defend the work. There may be other development thinkers with valuable perspectives to consider and other business models that would do the work better—
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