THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 95 authority back to the overseas missions, drawing on James Q. Wilson’s account of why effective agencies push decisions toward the lowest-level person who can identify and address the problem. While I agree that a cabinet-level department for international development is the ideal outcome, I worry that foreign aid is uniquely susceptible to the counter-bureaucracy. A new department won’t stop the Government Accountability Office, Congress, and the administration from saddling it with the same restraints. The deeper problem is that institutional design means little without the people to drive it. The technical expertise that was the heart and soul of USAID has not disappeared—it was dismissed. Whatever comes next should start by bringing those people back to it. A new department that cannot design effective programs or move money, and does not know how to build relationships, will not advance U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. The case Natsios lays out for why this matters is hard to argue with. He describes USAID as the last line of defense against the Four Horsemen— famine, disease, tyranny and chaos, and destitution. But USAID is gone now, in practice if not in legislation. The current administration speaks often of undermining the existing international institutions and the order they support. That order was never charity—it was how we advanced our own influence, which makes its dismantling, as Natsios deems, an act of “self-inflicted vandalism.” Austan Mogharabi is AFSA’s USAID representative on the Governing Board. He was a USAID FSO for more than 15 years, serving in Haiti, Senegal, and Morocco. He also covered Syria/Iraq/Yemen crisis response. Making Policy Smart Vigilance Is Not Enough: A History of United States Intelligence Mark M. Lowenthal, Yale University Press, 2025, $40.00/hardcover, e-book available, 832 pages. Reviewed by Charles Skinner Ever thought about the role of intelligence in policymaking? I expect we all have, even if we have not served in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, participated in interagency meetings, or been part of a country team in allied or non-allied embassies. Still, I think we would all benefit from getting to know the “big picture.” To that end, let me strongly recommend Mark Lowenthal’s Vigilance Is Not Enough. This 832-page book (643 pages are text) covers the history of intelligence since the American Revolution. Its first chapter, “Revolution and War,” is good reading alongside the Ken Burns documentary film, “The American Revolution.” Subsequent chapters take the reader from the “Young Republic” and its expansion across the continent through the experience of Civil War and the “re-united” United States’ emergence as a world power. The bulk of the book, however, is taken up with the last century, and its focus is on the role of intelligence as an instrument of government in the broadest sense—serving, in other words, both Congress and the president. Author Mark Lowenthal is, in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine from grad school (since the end of the 1960s). A graduate of Brooklyn College, Lowenthal wrote his dissertation at Harvard, “Leadership and Indecision: American War Planning and Policy Process from 1937 to 1942” (1975), under the direction of diplomatic historian Ernie May (1928– 2009), who also played a key role at the Kennedy School and in advising a series of administrations. Lowenthal himself served in an impressive range of senior positions during his long career in government, including as staff director of the House Intelligence Committee, deputy assistant secretary for intelligence (INR) at State, and assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also the author of the standard textbook, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, which issued its “landmark” 10th edition in December 2025, as well as some 90 articles. Vigilance is most useful as an overview of the emergence of the intelligence function during the 20th century. While many would date the development of intelligence as an institution of government from the birth of the “national security state” in the Truman administration (covered in chapter 8, “Creating National Security”), Lowenthal clearly makes the point that the demands of waging the Second World War laid the foundation and provided the range of experience that the principal actors drew on in tackling the Cold War. And FDR, while never failing to gather intel himself, also encouraged the development of useful initiatives, ranging from espionage and codebreaking to partnership with the British and research and analysis under the leadership of
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