The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 15 U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE The United States and its partners relocated more than 124,000 people, including 6,000 U.S. citizens. “The worldwide effort has been just extraordinary,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Daily Beast . “There was transparency. There was consultation. We were in this together. We produced remarkable results under very difficult conditions.” The State Department began sending alerts urging Americans to leave Afghan- istan last April, and sent 19 alerts in all, the Daily Beast reported. “We inherited a backlog of thousands [of Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan nationals],” a senior State Department official told the Daily Beast . “There is a statutorily defined 14-step process for approving the visas. We dramati- cally accelerated the process. We did this even after a COVID outbreak had effectively closed the embassy. We did this in the face of a rapidly accelerating security problem.” The Washington Post reported that U.S. diplomats worked 20-hour days trying to get people out, while sleeping at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. “Nobody ever complained about working 20-hour days, and nobody com- The U.S. evacuation team leaders, including Ambassador Ross Wilson (holding flag) and, to his right, Ambassador John Bass, in Kabul in August. plained about sleeping on the floor and eating MREs,” FSO John Johnson told the Post . “The dedication and commit- ment really is impressive.” FSOs felt such a strong sense of duty, FSO Evan Davis said, “there was still this lingering sense of hope among everyone who was there that we would somehow be able to go back to the embassy, that we wouldn’t actually have to leave the country.” Johnson said he was “up close” to the “desperation and human misery” of the many people who wanted to flee Afghanistan but couldn’t. Those he “couldn’t get out,” he said, “will haunt me for many years.” Numerous staff members from other posts volunteered to assist with the Afghan relocation in the United States and other countries. U.S., France Strive to Overcome Rift T he United States and France strived to repair relations after the U.S. entered a deal in September with the U.K. to share sensitive submarine nuclear propulsion technology with Australia and support its push to acquire nuclear- powered submarines. This effectively canceled a $66 billion deal France had made with Canberra to deliver 12 diesel-powered submarines. French President Emmanuel Macron was so incensed by the U.S.-U.K.-Austra- lia trilateral deal, known as AUKUS, that he recalled the French ambassador to the United States for several days. The French embassy canceled a Washington, D.C., gala in anger. Major media called it the most serious rift in U.S.-French relations in decades. Macron also recalled France’s ambassador to Australia. “This brutal, unilateral and unpredict- able decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told franceinfo radio. “I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.” Macron and President Joe Biden discussed thematter in a Sept. 22 phone call.TheWhite House indicated regret in a joint statement afterward: “The two leaders agreed that the situation would have benefited fromopen consultations among allies onmatters of strategic interest to France and our European partners,” the statement said. “President Biden conveyed his ongoing commitment in that regard.” The joint statement added that the French ambassador would “have intense work with senior U.S. officials” on return- ing to Washington. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the deal “fundamentally a great step forward for global security. It’s three very like-minded allies standing shoul- der-to-shoulder, creating a new partner- ship for the sharing of technology. It’s not exclusive. It’s not trying to shoulder anybody out.” On Sept. 22, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in New York to repair damage to the U.S.- E.U. relationship, the Associated Press reported.