The Downside of Smart Power

After ten months of waiting, USAID finally has a new chief: Rajiv Shah, currently the agriculture department’s top scientist. Directing the country’s principal agency for administering foreign aid is a heady position for someone who is all of 36. And it’s going to be a difficult one. Shah is stepping into the middle of a struggle that has been quietly simmering for years in Washington. On the surface, it’s a classic bureaucratic turf battle over who gets to control foreign aid--USAID staffers or the State Department, which assumed control of the once-autonomous organization in 2006. Several months ago, one USAID employee told me that colleagues at the agency see themselves as “being colonized” by State. A longtime USAID watcher put it this way: “They’re paranoid, that’s for sure. There’s a culture of victimization going on over there, and for good reason.”