How Mark Green held the line at USAID

WASHINGTON — Just under three years ago, on May 10, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Mark Green to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development. “He’s made some deep systemic changes that will last, because he’s smart enough to understand how systems work.” --— Mark Dybul, Center for Global Health Practice and Impact co-director, Georgetown University Medical Center Since then, the Trump administration has proposed three massive foreign assistance budget cuts — plus two additional attempts to rescind money that Congress appropriated — slashed aid to Central American countries to stop migration, forced the agency to direct funds to religious groups, thrust USAID into the middle of a standoff with the Venezuelan government, and ordered foreign assistance to focus on America’s “friends and allies.” While some of those political pressures were more disruptive to the agency’s work than others, USAID is, by most accounts, no worse off today than it was three years ago, and by many accounts, the agency — under Green’s leadership — has managed to move forward despite the headwinds of an administration that regards foreign aid with a mix of ambivalence, apathy, and outright antagonism. USAID commands roughly the same budget it did at the start of the administration, has retained its independence from the Department of State, and has put in place a number of internal reforms that advocates hope will strengthen humanitarian coordination and allow for a more integrated approach to supporting broad-based country development. While not everyone who spoke to Devex was enthusiastic about Green’s internal reforms, the outgoing USAID administrator — an introvert who shunned the spotlight — is widely credited with shepherding the agency through a tumultuous period with a combination of political savvy, bureaucratic expertise, and quiet leadership. “In this political environment, to be able to protect USAID, to make the progress we’re talking about, to manage total budget dysfunction … is a pretty remarkable record of success,” said Porter DeLaney, founding partner of Kyle House Group. Green will step down on April 10 to lead the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a Washington-based think tank that was previously led by Ambassador Kurt Volker, President Trump's former special envoy to Ukraine. John Barsa, currently the assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean and a former Department of Homeland Security official, will serve as acting administrator until a new administrator is nominated and confirmed. “I think he’s made some deep systemic changes that will last, because he’s smart enough to understand how systems work,” said Mark Dybul, co-director of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact at Georgetown University Medical Center. The ‘journey to self-reliance’ On his first day in office — Aug. 7, 2017 — Green walked into the lobby of USAID’s Washington headquarters and told the crowd of employees who had gathered there what they might expect from his leadership — and what he believed the agency’s mission should be. “I believe the purpose of foreign assistance should be ending its need to exist,” Green said. “Each of our programs should look forward to the day when we can end it. And around the world we should measure our work by how far each investment moves us closer to that day.” This vision — branded the “journey to self-reliance” — became the defining mantra of Green’s term in office, and it managed to bridge the gap between a White House with little interest in open-ended foreign aid commitments and Green’s own views about what a successful development strategy should look like. “He found a way to take a philosophically antagonistic approach to foreign assistance and turn it into a positive,” said Rob Mosbacher, co-chair of the Consensus for Development Reform and former president and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. While aid skeptics in the White House might have interpreted “self-reliance” as a euphemism for cutting foreign aid and moving countries off of assistance, Green focused on improving USAID’s internal processes in hopes of achieving better development outcomes. “He had a strategy for USAID that seemed rooted in good development policy but also was not disconnected from those more base instincts around foreign assistance,” DeLaney said. The heart of Green’s vision was shifting U.S. assistance from a program-by-program approach to comprehensive development strategies that sought to make U.S. support more responsive to what countries need for equitable economic growth, Dybul said. As a result of this vision, USAID’s partner countries can now be compared with one another on their “capacity” and “commitment” to development. Every country where USAID operates has been plotted according to a series of metrics, which grade countries on various measures — from tax system effectiveness to biodiversity and habitat protections — that assess where they fall on the self-reliance spectrum. USAID’s country development cooperation strategies, which outline the agency’s programs in a given country, now include self-reliance metrics to better evaluate the programs. “He found a way to take a philosophically antagonistic approach to foreign assistance and turn it into a positive.” --— Rob Mosbacher, co-chair, Consensus for Development Reform Combining years of experience in the U.S. foreign aid community with the country-based perspective of a former ambassador — Green served as U.S. ambassador to Tanzania from 2007 to 2009 — allowed the administrator to see how bureaucratic changes in Washington could shift USAID’s engagement in partner countries, Dybul said. Green realized it was not possible to change how USAID functions without adjusting how the agency spends its money. “What he understood was that if you don’t change the procurement system, you’re not going to change anything,” Dybul said. While members of Green’s team shied away from implementing a sweeping, catchall target for procurement reform — such as the 30% local spending goal attempted by former Administrator Rajiv Shah — they introduced a variety of policies aimed at broadening the agency’s partner base and ensuring that money channeled to large international organizations was also focused on supporting the growth of local and national implementing partners. “I think Mark was able to help USAID adjust to the new reality in terms of development and the role of the private sector and the role of nonprofits and how all those players work together in a collaborative way,” Mosbacher said. According to Dybul, Green was not able to put the entirety of his vision into place. His ultimate goal was to align the U.S. government’s various development tools around a country-based approach to self-reliance, much in the way that PEPFAR, America’s HIV initiative, coordinates multiple agencies around the singular goal of fighting that epidemic. “He couldn’t do that on his own,” Dybul said. In fact, the most significant move toward the consolidation of development programs during this administration occurred outside of Green’s direct purview, with the creation of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. That effort, which pulled some of USAID’s capabilities into a new agency, created tension between Green and those pushing for a unified approach to development finance, but the administrator eventually helped set the two institutions on a path toward a complementary relationship, Mosbacher said. Rooted in humility In addition to the “journey to self-reliance” and procurement reform, Green oversaw a large-scale reorganization of USAID’s bureaus. This was highlighted by the merger of two offices that coordinate humanitarian assistance — the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office of Food for Peace — and the consolidation of the agency’s technical assistance into a centralized Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation. Current staff and people close to the agency who shared their views on condition of anonymity told Devex of mixed feelings inside USAID over these changes. Many employees are still waiting to see how the reorganizations will play out, while others are worried about ongoing “infighting” over who will be moved from the regional bureaus to the technical bureaus, one source close to USAID told Devex. The source added that the overall result of these changes is that USAID’s regional bureaus have been “weakened,” while it remains unclear whether the agency’s ability to share technical expertise across programs will be any better than it was before. Even those who question some of Green’s specific decisions acknowledge that he deserves credit for ushering USAID through hostile political terrain. A current USAID official told Devex that some of Green’s less popular policy decisions, such as broadly publicizing the agency’s support for religious groups in response to pressure from Vice President Mike Pence, were understood — at least by employees aware of Washington’s political environment — as necessary to stay out of the White House’s crosshairs. A source close to USAID pointed out that since the administration consistently forced Green to play defense with the agency’s budget, he was left with less political capital to push back against other demands. “Mark is an effective politician, but I think it’s rooted in his humility, and so he didn’t care about getting credit. He didn’t care about being a political influencer inside the White House,” DeLaney said. “He was very tactful in how he went about building relationships with key power centers like Ivanka Trump and finding the moments and the means to engage where it made sense with the White House but largely just keeping his head low and being under the radar and doing good work,” he added. At the same time, Green could have toed the White House line more closely and benefited from doing so, but that was not his ambition, DeLaney said. “The mission of USAID was always his top mission, so he was able to put that on top of what would have been an urge, I think, for a lot of other political players to basically sign up for whatever foreign aid views the White House had in order to earn favor, which would have been very detrimental to USAID, and he did not do that,” he said. While Green sometimes found himself at odds with lawmakers because of his service to an administration that sought to upend the U.S. government’s development priorities, they too recognized the difficult position he faced. “Administrator Green never shied away from speaking truth to power, and he leaves a legacy of working honestly and transparently across the Executive and Legislative Branches to do what is in our collective interest,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, in a statement. “He will be sorely missed,” Menendez added.