Rhetorical restraint is not prominent in Washington these days. Given the volatile personalities involved and the escalatory effects of social media, one hesitates to declare that the apogee of apoplexy has been reached — or ever will be. Elon Musk’s denunciation of the U.S. Agency for International Development as a “radical left political psy op” and a “criminal organization” did raise the bar to new heights, however.
I am no uncritical celebrant of U.S. foreign aid programs. Catholic University’s Jakub Grygiel was certainly on-target in arguing that “funding ‘net-zero emissions goals’ in Vietnam” made no sense; the “woke imperialism” of aid programs that “undermined the stability of states we are supposed to help, [through] DEI directives [and the promotion of] an ever-mutating spectacle of sexual preferences” was even worse. Such foolishness, Professor Grygiel rightly noted, makes for lose/lose situations: recipient countries are harmed, and so is America’s reputation in those countries.
Nonetheless, there were good things that USAID did well — and by doing good things well, USAID made friends for the United States around the world. Food aid programs were, and are, one example. PEPFAR was, and is, another.
The President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief was one of the noblest accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration. Overseen by the Department of State, PEPFAR is — or, must we now say, was? — largely run by USAID through partnerships with governments and healthcare organizations in 55 African, Asian, and Latin American countries. With bipartisan congressional support through four presidential administrations, American taxpayers, through PEPFAR, have helped save some 25 million lives while preventing untold millions of HIV infections and contributing to increased health security in some of the world’s most impoverished regions.
According to the current administration, lifesaving programs were to be exempt from the ransacking, indeed demolition, of USAID by Elon Musk’s DOGE operatives (the same geniuses who, until corrected, thought a Pentagon website mentioning the B-29 “Enola Gay” was an exercise in LGBT advocacy). We must hope that that exemption remains the administration’s intention. At the outset, however, a blunderbuss approach to reorienting U.S. foreign aid has created chaos at the receiving end of PEPFAR funds — suspension of local workers, interrupted supply chains, breakdowns in the distribution of already-acquired medications — and that chaos resulted in unnecessary deaths. Moreover, while treatment programs continue under PEPFAR funding, prevention programs seem to have been stopped, leading to the possibility of 2,000 new infections a day. In dealing with HIV/AIDS, each leg of the prevention/testing/treatment triad has to function if PEPFAR is to continue to work as it has in the past, saving lives and winning America innumerable friends in the process.
“Soft power” foreign aid programs like PEPFAR are an indispensable part of any serious U.S. approach to world politics. To dismiss these programs as a matter of America playing the world’s “Sugar Daddy” – as opined by Kentucky senator Rand Paul – is strategically myopic to the point of blindness (ironic, in that Senator Paul was an ophthalmologist before entering public life). Xi Jinping’s China, eager to position itself as the true champion of Third World development, has spent over $1 trillion on its “Belt-and-Road Initiative,” creating badly needed infrastructure in poor countries while tying those countries to Beijing through loans and credits. That play for hegemony will doubtless be expanded into areas such as healthcare and food relief if the United States abandons the field – and abandons it to the power that administration officials claim is the primary threat to American and global security in the 21st century.
USAID was certainly in need of deep reform. Most of the federal government is. But there’s a difference between effecting genuine reform and playing Demolition Derby. Shock-and-awe approaches to hidebound federal bureaucracies may make for great news clips and soundbites, but they risk eliminating the good along with the waste. So here’s a suggestion for a reform of U.S. foreign aid that makes it great again.
Texas A&M’s Andrew Natsios, who ran USAID from May 2001 until January 2006, and Ambassador Mark Green, USAID administrator from August 2017 until April 2020, are two of the finest public servants I’ve known in my forty years in Washington. Both are Republicans; both are adults; and both are fiscal conservatives who understand the connection between foreign aid and a coherent national security strategy. Let Secretary of State Marco Rubio give these two men a mandate to reshape USAID or a successor agency in the next six months – with precision tools, not sledgehammers.
Doing so might help improve America’s moral standing in the world, which could use a boost right now.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
This essay apparently has two main propositions:
A. All “serious-minded” people should keep the insanity going; and
B. Anyone who disagrees with proposition A is not a “serious person.”
I would observe that Mr. Weigel’s essays are quite often constructed on “the formula” appearing in this essay:
(a) that his proposals are to be deemed “serious” as a matter of principle, and (b) people disagreeing are to be dismissed as “unserious.”
That formula is “an argument from authority.”
In this case the “authority” is about what, that the gangster operations of the federal bureaucracies are “the cost of maintaining our bureaucracy…err…check that…our democracy?
This is an appeal to keep going over the cliff.
GEORGECWEIGEL: Foreign Aid i.e. USAID was not being use for good purposes abroad. Good purposes that would be synonymous with human development. No, Foreign Aid was being used to advance a woke political agenda, like DEI, radical feminism, transexuality, homosexuality, contraception, abortion and other examples of corrupted Leftist thinking. That’s what needed to end and so it did. It was being used to fund wars and clandestine “intelligence” operations. That’s why it needed to end. And so it did.
Deacon Ed. Not all apples are red.
Br. Jaques: Please stop defending the indefensible.
Athanasius, you’re kinder to “Br. Jaques” than I’d be inclined to be.
I usually agree with George Weigel, but this time—well, at least when it comes to AIDS treatments, I think we need to be careful not to inadvertently appear to condone behaviors that can lead to infection with AIDS, e.g., drug use in which needles are shared, or certain types of sexual activity.
Yes, we treat the medical needs of people who are DUI and cause devastating auto accidents, but we don’t send them on their way after treating them without making them serve time for their dangerous actions and also giving them help to break their addictions or at least be responsible for finding a sober or drug-free driver in the future.
Especially when it comes to AIDS treatments–I personally believe that there are plenty of well-off individuals who are sympathetic with those who indulge in behaviors that may result in AIDS that they could probably be prevailed up to willingly give private donations to fund the treatments; e.g., many of the movie and music stars who are fabulously wealthy. I do believe that the government-funded research into AIDS and AIDS treatments have resulted in discoveries that have helped develop cures for other auto-immune diseases, but I’m not sure I agree with the government handing out AIDS treatment freely without expecting some reimbursement from the person–after all, those of us on Medicare paid INTO the system for years to make sure the money would be available for us when we reached our Senior Years! Perhaps a voluntary “HIV-Care” system could be developed with the condition that those paying into this would be doing it voluntarily rather than because it is automatically withdrawn from a paycheck.
Thanks, George, once again on target. Rash change rarely accomplishes much , and more often than not causes more harm than good. Somewhere down the road someone will have to clean up the resultant mess and start over. But time is against us and it seems unlikely that we will ever be given that chance. May God help us!
In this case, rash changes will accomplish the beginnings of a much needed fiscal responsibility that is long overdue in the progressive government policies you support. Short-term suffering is the price that needs to be paid for long-term fiscal health. People will simply have to adjust to the end of funding. USAID is already a mess, and that has been painfully obvious to those who are paying attention.
$36 trillion in debt not including unfunded liabilities, taxes are the biggest expense for most working families, veterans of the neo-con foreign wars are homeless in the streets, and the big government globalists want to keep “projecting soft power”. I think a key phrase in this article is “in my forty years in Washington”. What utter nonsense. USAID needs to be exterminated along with 95% of the federal government. Our foreign entanglements have been nothing but disastrous.
Why does CWR keep publishing this guy? Because he happened to write a biography of JPII? Isn’t he the one that tried to convince JPII that our criminal invasion of Iraq was somehow a just war?
Using words like “ransacking” and demolition” to describe the USAID cuts is dishonest and manipulative. The corruption in the federal government goes deep and has existed for decades with no accountability. Massive and indiscriminate cuts across the board are necessary to bring accountability to the process. Reigning in the monster is more important at this point than any negative consequences that arise due to the cuts. People will have to make the necessary adjustments. The cuts should be indiscriminate because everyone is going to view their little piece of the pie as necessary and vital, but that’s just more dishonesty.