The most consequential decision and executive order which came within the opening days of President Donald Trump’s administration has without doubt been his “reevaluating and realigning US foreign aid” — which sent shockwaves through Washington especially given federal funding has been cut to USAID in a shock blow to the agency. But it is also having a massive ripple effect throughout the world. Some foreign powers will welcome the news, while many allies as well as an assortment of US-backed ‘opposition groups’ will feel completely abandoned.
This has meant that pro-Western media outlets, NGOs, and ‘soft power’ organizations are in panic mode. This has basically overnight shutdown a multi-billion dollar regime change apparatus which pushed or often imposed American interests throughout the globe, especially in the very vulnerable Third World, as well as former Soviet satellite regions. The way this works on a practical, on the ground level is detailed in the well-known book Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man. As for Trump’s apparent efforts to dismantle the powerful USAID agency, we compiled some of the best current analysis from around the web outlining the huge significance of this move, which is nothing less than a historic reset (and we say a very welcome reset) of Washington’s relations with the rest of the world.
We’re looking at a seismic shift in the US’s relationship with the world, via Arnaud Bertrand:
1) The US is dismantling its foreign interference apparatuses (like USAID )
2) Marco Rubio stating that we’re now in a multipolar world with “multi-great powers in different parts of the planet” and that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us.”
3) The tariffs on supposed “allies” like Mexico, Canada or the EU: This is the US effectively saying “our attempt at running the world is over, to each his own, we’re now just another great power, not the ‘indispensable nation’.” It looks “dumb” (as the WSJ just wrote) if you are still mentally in the old paradigm but it’s always a mistake to think that what the US (or any country) does is dumb.
Hegemony was going to end sooner or later, and now the U.S. is basically choosing to end it on its own terms. It is the post-American world order – brought to you by America itself. Even the tariffs on allies, viewed under this angle, make sense, as it redefines the concept of “allies”: they don’t want – or maybe rather can’t afford – vassals anymore, but rather relationships that evolve based on current interests.
You can either view it as decline – because it does unquestionably look like the end of the American empire – or as avoiding further decline: controlled withdrawal from imperial commitments in order to focus resources on core national interests rather than being forced into an even messier retreat at a later stage. In any case it is the end of an era and, while the Trump administration looks like chaos to many observers, they’re probably much more attuned to the changing realities of the world and their own country’s predicament than their predecessors.
Acknowledging the existence of a multipolar world and choosing to operate within it rather than trying to maintain an increasingly costly global hegemony couldn’t be delayed much further. It looks messy but it is probably better than maintaining the fiction of American primacy until it eventually collapses under its own weight. This is not to say that the U.S. won’t continue to wreak havoc on the world, and in fact we might be seeing it become even more aggressive than before. Because when it previously was (badly, and very hypocritically) trying to maintain some semblance of self-proclaimed “rules-based order”, it now doesn’t even have to pretend it is under any constraint, not even the constraint of playing nice with allies.
BREAKING: USAID security chiefs placed on leave after they refused to turn over classified material to Elon Musk’s government-inspection teams, officials say. https://t.co/vqdPmJBs1q
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 2, 2025
It’s the end of the U.S. empire, but definitely not the end of the U.S. as a major disruptive force in world affairs. All in all this transformation may mark one of the most significant shifts in international relations since the fall of the Soviet Union. And those most unprepared for it, as is already painfully obvious, are America’s vassals caught completely flat-footed by the realization that the patron they’ve relied on for decades is now treating them as just another set of countries to negotiate with.
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How the Biden administration weaponized USAID, via @DefiyantlyFree
1. Abortion: One of the first things that Joe Biden did after assuming office was to revoke the Mexico City policy, which was supposed to prevent the federal government from using our tax dollars to fund overseas abortions. He did this, even though 73% of Americans strongly oppose using taxpayer funding to support overseas abortion. That includes 59% of people that are actually pro-choice. He resumed funding to the United Nations population fund and dramatically expanded the scope of programs that are authorized to pay for abortion services. Joe Biden tied taxpayer funded abortion services internationally to the United States efforts to advance, gender quality globally and respond to gender based violence and to confront challenges such as HIV aids, tuberculosis and malaria. That means that grants given through ID that go towards malaria or other diseases include paying for abortions on demand in those countries. As a result of these abortion driven objectives in 2022 the US Department of state and USA ID budget was 12% higher than previous years and totaled 70 Billion dollars.
2. Identity Ideology: In 2021 the national gender strategy was implemented for foreign aid and started using an intersectional approach that considers barriers and challenges faced by those who have intersecting in compounding forms of discrimination. That’s a fancy way of saying Marxist victimhood in order of priority. In the Biden administration intersectionality dictated the manner in which US AI ID designed its programs and designed who received its funding.
3.Global DEI: Representatives of the UN who discussed for an aid frequently mentioned the 1619 project and said that slavery is an original sin of America. The Biden administration made accepting and requiring communities of color to adopt to DEI a condition of receiving foreign aide.
4. Global Climate Change: By reentering the Paris climate accords USAID was mobilized into action to fight climate change across the country and force the United States of America to underwrite this climate change overseas. In 2021 USAID announced that it would mobilize $150 billion in public and private climate finance by 2030 with the majority of funding coming from private service actors in collaboration with the United States Taxpayer dollars. There was an integration with the WHO‘s initiative on climate, resilient health systems and sustainable, low carbon health systems and the US national oceanic atmosphere administration. When they say malaria, they mean through climate change hysteria, and green energy policies. For instance, South America needs $26 billion to transform its power system and the United States and Europe under Joe Biden committed to $8.5 billion each to help the country make that transition. That money would be facilitated through USAID.
5. Perpetual need for foreign aid: There is no better example of the insidious relationship between foreign aid and nation building then that of Afghanistan. Even after we pulled out of Afghanistan, USA ID was used to continuously fund the nation.
6. UNRWA and terrorism: The moment President Trump left office and Biden restored to this organization and removed the Houthi rebels in Yemen from a US list of designated terrorists. Removing them from this designation meant that funds flowed to them in foreign aid and were misappropriated to attack and occupy the US Embassy in Sana.
More than 30 Iranian opposition orgs and media outlets have lost funding due to the pause in USAID programs (via Middle East Eye) pic.twitter.com/1p30I94bcD
— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) February 2, 2025
7. USAID has been used to fund leftist progressive causes exclusively: If you look at 50 USAID employees chosen at random, which the heritage foundation did 48 of them donated to Democratic candidates and causes, and only two of them donated to Republicans. Following the Floyd riots, 1000 USAID employees demanded the agency make a public statement, affirming Black Lives Matter and accused USAID of structural racism by not designing plans to combat systemic racism, injustice, colonialism, and police brutality, all around the world. The Rockefeller Center, one of the most leftist organizations signed an agreement to be in a strategic partnership with USAID and all of the individual political contributions went to progressive campaigns. The international rescue committee received hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund its highly partisan causes. The former cochair of this committee was Obama’s treasury secretary.
The Board of Directors has every single one of the founders of the Democratic Party and support progressive policy goals. Another major recipient of foreign aid is CARE international. This is probably one of the most partisan groups who has people like Valerie Jared, Nancy Pelosi, and Hilary Clinton carve out its policy. What once started out as an agency that was about helping to end global poverty in world, and hunger and has become an organization that is solely aligned with radical progressive Democrat agendas. And that is not even touching the vast censorship arm that USAID controls and funds. If anyone is curious about the rabbit hole that exists as it relates to censorship from USAID, I would suggest that you subscribe to Mike Benz on X.
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Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, says more often there’s a hidden nefarious agenda…
Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.
At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda. Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.
USAID, like the National Endowment for Democracy, are well-documented CIA fronts that are designed to manipulate other countries’ internal politics for the benefits of DC elites and nobody else in the US.
Both agencies have wrought destruction and can’t die soon enough: https://t.co/NoDxJDtht7
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 2, 2025
And here’s journalist Glenn Greenwald: “USAID, like the National Endowment for Democracy, are well-documented CIA fronts that are designed to manipulate other countries’ internal politics for the benefits of DC elites and nobody else in the US. Both agencies have wrought destruction and can’t die soon enough.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 02/02/2025 – 21:35
