How the Dismantling of USAID Will Hurt Americans
(This was originally shared to r/USAIDForeignService.)
I first wrote this in response to a comment on my post yesterday that summarized USAID loss impacts in various regions. It became a complete statement, and so here it is:
The document was meant to chronicle portions of what has occurred. We can have a discussion about whether the United States has an obligation to help some of the poorest on moral grounds.
But there are two critical aspects of this that go beyond this:
- The way in which it was done, and the basic moral repercussions of that, as just basically human beings
- The repercussions to the United States itself, as this is the dismantling of American soft power that has been built up over generations
To mention (1) for a moment, we have broken countless agreements, tried not to pay extant contracts (including to American farmers, by the way), and generally left millions (yes, millions) of people with no option, and deaths will be (and are) occurring. Any person who wishes to be taken seriously in the future should honor his or her agreements and for his basic honor, should maintain his own integrity.
It's one thing to say "We choose not to take care of those people; that is not our concern". Fine. It is another thing to say to your neighbor, "Yes — I will help you". And then, midway through their critical life-saving treatment, or famine relief, to say "Sorry, suckas! I'm outta here — we've got crises at home — byeeeeeeee!", leaving them with no other option. I liken this to saying, "we don't like where this boat is going," and so you throw all the people in the boat out into the ocean; you don't even give other boats time to come by and pick them up.
This simply a moral deterioration and goes against basic Christian — and human — values. We are simply not so poor that we could not have afforded to at least give those NGOs time to find other means of support. The entire USAID budget was less than 1% of the total US expenditure, so that argument is not rational.
As far as the intimation that all this money was corrupt and funneled to prop up dictatorships, this is simply not true. Money is largely channeled through local NGOs, is carefully monitored, and frequently does not align with regime goals, which often seek to simply ignore the populations being helped.
Now, let's talk about (2), soft power. You don't care about helping every person in other countries — fine. The reasons — if we are honest — for the founding of USAID by John Kennedy in 1961, and its continued support by every administration since (up till now) has had a lot to do with the maintenance of soft power, which has generated tremendous returns on investment for the United States over the past 64 years for every dollar spent.
Here are some projections of the likely outcomes of ceding our soft power in the world.
Replacement by China and Russia
- China's Belt and Road Initiative as well as programs out of Russia, have already filled in the gaps where the US has retreated and will continue to do so because this is in their national interest.
- If we continue to cede soft power to them, this will have the effect of realigning the global power balance in ways that will affect us here at home. Part of why we have enjoyed such a basically healthy and good way of life since WWII is because we did establish ourselves as the global center. Letting this go is not as attractive as it sounds, as our "tendrils" go around the world for a reason.
Health impacts "coming home to roost" to ordinary Americans
- Rapidly dismantling healthcare systems in some of the world's most vulnerable regions isn't just cruel; it is also foolish: by withdrawing in such an unplanned and sudden manner, this has had so many unnecessary impacts on the global health system that were totally foreseeable:
- Creating mistrust among vulnerable populations may reduce their trust when (and however) programs are able to be brought back online by other actors
- Chains of critical expertise have been broken and will be harder to put back in place
- These actions greatly increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks in vulnerable regions. As we are all aware now, diseases do not know about borders. A bird flu outbreak coming back to U.S. shores could mean 100,000 deaths. There is also multiple drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and multiple other possible risks to U.S. citizens.
Security impacts
- One of the main reasons for helping the poorest people is because they are usually in very unstable regions, such as Sudan, Congo (DRC), and Yemen. When you feed people and keep them from dying, you create an impression that the U.S. are the "good guys", you can "keep an eye on them", and prevent the likelihood of large refugee crises or stateless areas where the next ISIS can form.
- We know that the above conditions can lead to terrorism, which can of course, come back to the United States and impact us.
Economic impacts
- If we cede our soft power to China and Russia, the dollar is likely to lose its place as the world reserve currency, resulting in higher interest rates for Americans, higher prices on electronics and clothing, and significant American job loss.
- One of the things we do with USAID is to create economic relationships in "developing" regions that lead to American jobs and business, which ultimately impacts each of us here in the U.S.A.
- Also, USAID has purchased $2 billion in agricultural goods from US farmers, providing them with a stable market when it's just hard to be a small farmer these days.
We can disagree about the moral imperatives, and we can all look at whether things were being done well (although intensive oversight was already implemented). But we can also separate this out from the way it was done, as well as to the implications for American soft power. Even Project 2025 did not recommend a wholesale dismantling of these programs, but a reduction of budget to pre-COVID levels and selective changes to certain programs based on "administration goals". That would, at least, have been some sort of a logical execution of a strategy — not this.