Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Attack on USAID Weakens America
Donald Trump and Prime Minister Adolf Musk appear to have it in for US national security. They have appointed an alcoholic to be Secretary of Defense, they are putting the FBI counter-terrorist teams out of business and they want to end US foreign aid. The attack on USAID, the agency that manages most of American foreign aid distribution, is illegal and stupid. USAID prevents conflicts that could draw in US troops. As the aid ends, the popularity of the US declines. This planet is not one where it is safe to be unpopular. While the desire to spend money to develop the US is understandable, even noble, it is short-sighted to take that money from foreign aid. If the US does not send aid, it may have to send troops later, a vastly more expensive move.
There is an isolationist streak in the American body politic which is idiotic. Minding one's own business and hoping one is not attacked may work for a place like Switzerland, but America is a different kind of nation. It is an empire, for better or worse, and nothing that works for Switzerland is likely to work for America and vice versa.
America has been the world's policeman and main charitable donor since 1945. Like it or not, it is. Laying down those roles will create a power vacuum that will inevitably get filled. Those doing the filling (e.g., China) do not have America's interests at heart. Restructuring the world order so that a policeman is unnecessary and that donors are optional is not going to happen any time soon. So, that is where America finds itself.
USAID is an easy target. It only helps foreigners overseas, not American citizens in the US. Its budget of $40 billion a year sounds like a lot, but is less than 1% of the federal budgets. Indeed, it is a rounding error. What does it do with all that money? Here are a few things:
It spends money in South America to protect the Amazon and to fight the cocaine trade. It is difficult to say that fighting cocaine imports is bad for America, but the funds are gone all the same.
In Africa, it spends on disease response (Ebola for instance), girls' education and free school lunches. That latter point is probably not well-appreciated by US citizens. If a child gets fed at school by US aid, that child is much less likely to grow up hating the US. The response to disease ought to be very popular, as no one wants to get sick. Yet, the funds are gone all the same
In addition, it spends the money on hospitals in Syria, where a war has raged for over a decade. It spends money on mine clearance in Cambodia. It supports the media in Myanmar to give a little oxygen to the flame of freedom there. Yet the funds are gone all the same.
The plan is now to reduce the 10,000 strong USAID to just 300 and to put them under the State Department. They will lack the manpower to do anything on any significant scale, and they will lose their independence from State, a department that does not have the logistical expertise and necessary contacts in the non-governmental space.
Now, the defenders of the Trump move say that these things do not need to be done or some other delivery system can be created. They did no review of the projects to separate winners from losers. They did not have any plan for shifting the responsibilities elsewhere. Their approach is to blow it all hope and see if the rubble from their explosion magically forms a better system. It almost certainly will not.
The execution of USAID was a part of the Trump plan all along. Destroy one agency that does not have a lot of MAGA support as a warning to all the others. And in doing so, the US is in greater danger and less able to respond to that danger. A $40 billion savings here is a false economy at best.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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