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Why cutting USAID will hurt American foreign policy
Ian's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take for today on USAID, the US Agency for International Development, which is in the process of being shut down. Nearly all Washington staff have been put on leave, they're closing missions abroad, the State Department moving to evacuate all staff around the world. Why should we care? Does this matter? This agency was set up back over 50 years ago, 1961, by then President John F. Kennedy, and it was meant to coordinate the distribution of foreign aid for the United States all over the world and differentiate that from military support that was provided by the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the US isn't providing charity, that's not what foreign aid is, that it should be providing support for US national interests. And I agree that it should be providing support for US national interest, but it is important to recognize that actually when USAID was set up, it was set up in part as charity, that President Kennedy's position was that the United States had a moral obligation to support poorer people, and poorer countries around the world. They are fellow human beings, after all, and the United States has historically benefited massively from developing resources all around the world, and frequently, the people that lived in those countries didn't get very much as a consequence, and the US has benefited massively, as have other wealthy countries, from industrialization, and putting carbon into the atmosphere that now poor countries can't do because of climate change, and we're saying, "We need to transition," but the US, of course, has gotten the benefits of that historically.
You know, my view is, I'm okay with charity. I actually think that helping save lives with food and medicine for millions of people and especially babies and children. I mean, even if it did nothing for the United States directly, I would be okay with spending some of the money of American taxpayers on that, especially as opposed to say a war in Afghanistan or the latest sort of bomber program that is expensive and more than the Americans need. So, I push back on the US should never do charity argument. But leaving that aside, you don't need that argument to focus on the importance of USAID.
And I want to, before I get into the national interest side, I do want to say I am empathetic with why it is unpopular. Because at a moment when so many average Americans feel like the US government has not taken care of them, and this is why you see so much backlash against all of the illegal immigrants that have not been addressed by administrations for many years, and why there's so much backlash against the US establishment, whether it's Democrat or Republican, in saying, "What about the average working American? What about our healthcare? What about our public school system? What about things that you should care a lot more about than sending aid to brown people around the world?" Which is essentially what USAID is mostly doing. I get that. And in that regard, it's an easy target for Trump. It's a particularly easy target for Elon Musk. I would ask first, "Why tax cuts for and regulations written by billionaires in the United States before poor people and Americans?" That would be my higher priority if I was really, really angry and antagonized by how badly money is being spent in the US. But that's a different story.
The point is you don't need to make the argument of charity. It is very clear that US foreign aid supports America's economic and national security interests. It is growing markets for consumers, for American businesses and products all over the world. The US has the biggest businesses. It has the biggest market. It benefits the most from other countries around the world having more capacity to sustainably consume and engage with those businesses. America benefits in having more health security by containing disease and pandemics because those diseases and pandemics don't suddenly stop at the American border. The US benefits from aid that reduces insurgencies creating instability that leads to more illegal migration all over the world, many of whom ultimately end up in the United States. It creates more economic opportunity and safety and security in origin countries. And that is a carrot that matters. It's not just about sticks. It's a carrot for economic statecraft that gives the Americans more influence as opposed to say the Russians, or more importantly the Chinese.
Because getting rid of USAID and cutting back on all these programs creates a vacuum. And that is an opportunity for adversaries. I've already seen ministers from large African countries who have their American programs getting cut off, reaching out immediately to their counterparts, ministers in China saying, "Are you willing to send in the programs to replace the Americans that are leaving?" And China doesn't have the economic wherewithal, the Americans do, but they certainly will seize opportunities that are economically useful to them, long-term, because they have a much longer-term perspective on these things than a US administration that's gone in four years. So I worry about that.
I think that USAID has been America's principle interlocutor with civil society in developing countries. And to the extent that we care about those countries having systems that are more aligned with the values and standards that the United States has historically promoted, then you don't want to undermine that and allow the Chinese to come in, which has very little interest in civil society, indifferent to civil society. It's a source of intelligence for the United States. And we've seen that even if it's sometimes uncomfortable for the local governments who aren't necessarily in favor of that. It is true that all USAID projects are probably not going to ultimately be killed, that the State Department is going to take it over and Marco Rubio has said that, "There's a lot of corruption in USAID, and a lot of this money is misspent, and is spent badly, and breaks executive orders," and I am sure that is true, and I am sure that that corruption needs to be addressed. It wouldn't surprise me. The US is an incredibly bloated government system. But shooting first and asking questions later tends to kill innocencts. And that is of course the approach here. And the reality is, that Elon and Trump and their ability to act and be destructive is much greater than the damage control that the secretary of state can do at this moment. And the State Department just does not have the people or the infrastructure to execute on a lot of these programs once USAID is shut down.
And the message that this is really sending to allies is that the United States is an unreliable partner. You cannot count on it. That what they say to you in one administration is not going to be consistent in a second administration, in a way that is not true with other countries, most other countries, around the world. And so I continue to believe, as I did before Trump was inaugurated, that the US is going to see a lot of wins. A lot of countries are going to bend to his will because he's more powerful and he's willing to use that power directly. But that does not mean that the United States will long-term succeed in a law of the jungle approach, an approach which is all stick and no carrot, even when the stick is very, very big, but you can't wield it effectively for a long period of time. And other countries are learning that carrots are kind of smart. I mean, the Chinese originally perfected the all stick and no carrot approach and then saw that the United States was more effective in a lot of countries because they also had economic statecraft. They also had these commercial levers, and so the Chinese started saying, "Oh, we need to figure out how to deliver aid to a lot of these countries, doesn't have to be transparent, can work right with the governments, but ultimately that's going to give us more influence in these countries." And that is something that President Trump and his administration in the early weeks at least seemed to be jettisoning.
So I think this is Pennywise pound foolish. I think it is short-term beneficial to Trump and will look like a win for him and his base and long-term will undermine US power around the world and will of course make the world a less stable place. So on balance, I think this is a problem. It's not something that I think is going to go well. I would love to be proven wrong. I'll be watching it carefully and I think it's a good thing to be debating.
So that's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
How Biden’s presidency will be remembered
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US Politics this week: One question that's going to be debated for a long time in the coming years is what is President Biden's legacy? I think there are a couple of things that he's going to be remembered for.
The first is the extraordinarily chaotic global environment over which he presided. Republicans will tie this back to the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Biden presided over. But following that, you had the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the events of October 7th in the Middle East that led to the ongoing war there that is just now starting to look like it's settling down. But this is clearly going to be one of the background themes of any assessments of President Biden's legacy.
Biden's now one of four one-term presidents in the last 50 years, and one of the reasons that he lost was of course inflation. And inflation, you could argue was fueled by the pandemic or you could argue it was fueled by early actions taken by the Biden administration to spend a lot of money, perhaps more money than was necessary. But either way, the inflationary story of 2021 and 2022 is going to be remembered as one of his key legacies and one of the reasons that he lost reelection. Now that loss to Donald Trump, allowing probably one of the more controversial presidents in certainly recent American history, to come back into office and mount an unprecedented political comeback is also going to be part of Biden's legacy. Because of the fact that he decided that he was able to run even at his advanced age, that blocked out the Democrats from having an opportunity to hold a primary and then forced the Democrats to change horses midstream and move over to Kamala Harris in the middle of the election cycle, who of course lost to Trump. That is also going to be part of his legacy.
And it's unclear. Biden thinks, says it publicly, he could have won election if he just stayed in. He's 82 years old. He'd be the oldest president ever if he did, and there's obvious decline in his faculties over the course of the year. But more importantly, the American people really started to lose confidence in Biden as time went on this year. So not at all clear that he would've won that election or that any other Democrat could have won that election if there were a primary process. But his sticking around and the White House staff and other Democratic operatives that covered for the age-related decline that he was experiencing is also going to be a part of President Biden's election.
Probably one of the more consequential things I think he's going to end up having done over the longer term is increasing the US confrontation with China, particularly over technology policy. The world is at a critical juncture when it comes to the advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence. And the wall that the Biden administration has been trying to erect around Chinese access to US advanced technologies is going to have ripple effects and repercussions for years to come. The Trump administration's likely to continue a lot of that, and this could potentially be an inflection point in 10 years time as we look back and look at the two different tech ecosystems that are being built out. A lot of that legacy is going to trace back to the Biden administration.
So that's a pretty complex, mixed legacy. The US doesn't have lot of one-term presidents in recent history. Most one-term presidents aren't remembered that fondly. Presidents like George H.W. Bush look a lot better in the long distance of history, whereas President Jimmy Carter who recently passed away still has a bit of a mixed legacy. And that's probably where Biden's going to end up.
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New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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