What I learned about leadership in the Situation Room

At a time of complex crises in our world, our nation is without a top leader for USAID, the lead U.S. government agency on international development. The agency needs a Senate-confirmed Administrator who can forcefully represent U.S. interests in the world and ensure our ongoing leadership. The president has nominated Gayle E. Smith, and I hope the Senate will act quickly to confirm her.

In 2009, President Obama appointed me as the acting administrator of USAID. At the time, there was little doubt that a new permanent Administrator would be brought in quickly. Conventional wisdom and the Beltway elite suggested that I would be out within two months. Yet, I ended up staying in the role nearly a year and I was honored to pass the baton to Dr. Rajiv Shah.

{mosads}This past February, Shah left USAID after five impressive years leading a progressive and game-changing agenda that has transformed how the U.S. engages in international development. The allies and relationships he built for USAID among Republicans and Democrats in Congress are a model of bipartisan engagement. Such engagement cannot be allowed to dissipate amid a leadership vacuum.

At this critical juncture in the agency’s history, we face an equally critical moment in world history. We are living in a new global reality with increasingly complex and challenging opportunities. The traditional Westphalian model of neatly ordered nation-states no longer applies. This spring, the Atlantic Council’s Barry Pavel and Peter Engelke released a major strategy paper, titled Dynamic Stability, cautioning how powerful individuals, groups and non-state actors are disrupting the traditional world order. “A diffusion of power across nearly every domain of human experience is making the world much more dynamic than ever before,” they write, and if the U.S. hopes to restore stability to global order, “it will have to effectively harness vast, and increasingly powerful, global changes.”

The rise of ISIL and the current meltdown of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, a faltering Afghanistan, conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, Asian urbanization, China’s incursions into the South China Sea, terrorist threats across the African continent, financial unrest within the EU, and a host of other potential socio-economic and political flashpoints are all looming on the horizon and threatening to spill over. In this global context, the immediate need for a resolute, forward thinking and highly skilled leader for America’s primary international development agency could not be more pressing.

Over the next 20 months – and in the years to come – our nation will continue to lead our international partners in responding to numerous challenges across the diplomacy, development and defense spectrums. USAID must have a fully empowered Administrator to provide the president, Congress and the American people with consistent leadership and seasoned, practical guidance on the range of collective issues affecting our national interest. USAID must be firmly seated and represented at the intra-agency table as an equal partner with our diplomatic and defense operatives.

When I was the acting administrator of USAID, I had the honor of representing the agency at the National Security Council’s deputy meetings. In hindsight, knowing that I was not the president’s permanent pick for the top post surely placed some limitations on my influence and authority within the Situation Room. Given the challenges facing our world, USAID can ill afford to find itself in a holding pattern right now. More than ever, the agency needs a strong, confident and highly competent Administrator to continue the reforms started by Shah and to ensure it can respond as effectively as possible across our world.

Obama has advanced such a nominee with the selection of Smith, his special assistant and senior director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council. With her credentials, confidence, and competency, she is the voice that USAID needs at this critical time in global affairs. Simply put, our Senate must confirm this new nominee quickly. Any unnecessary delay adversely impacts our national security and impedes our response to new challenges and opportunities in an ever-changing international environment.

Fulgham served as the acting administrator of USAID from January 2009 until January 2010.