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.
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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.
Two points to pile on what Chris is saying:
1. USA gross federal debt is $36 trillion. WE need foreigners to fund us. Our interest on that debt this year will be about 1 trillion dollars and $15 trillion over the next decade. THAT IS THE INTEREST WE OWE – NOT TO PAY OFF OUR DEBT! Charity is for the wealthy. Borrowing foreign money to give out foreign charity is nuts.
2. Bureaucracy will bankrupt us. JFK began this do-gooder program with a few folks and a small budget. Now look at it.
3. If we keep this program, the only person in DC that can be trusted to evaluate USAID is Rep. Chris Smith:
https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/scanned_from_a_xerox_multifunction_printer.pdf https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/african_leaders_concerns_with_pepfar_reauthorization.pdf https://chrissmith.house.gov/uploadedfiles/letter_from_pro-life_organizations_on_pepfar_to_mccarthy_and_mcconnell.pdf
https://www.c-span.org/clip/house-committee/user-clip-rep-smith-r-nj-at-house-hearing-on-usaid-feb-13-2025/5153517
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.
PEPFAR is indefensible??? You have a muddled reading of the Gospels, Athanasius.
Perhaps. Maybe you can show me where in the gospel it teaches that a national government should use taxpayer funds to support an LGBTLMNOP+× agenda. I must have missed that somewhere.
Biden and Planned Parenthood are the Gospel? https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=411693
The Gospel says that charity is the responsibility of Caesar? How is it reasonable for the Government to pay for foreign services with money funded by foreigners who buy our treasury debt? We need to pay off our credit card debt before we can write checks to charity. Oy veh!
No, not all apples are red. But to extend your metaphor to a mor apt frame:
All bureaucracies are red or end up red.
Also, see Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.
Yes…as we see now…millions are brown.
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.
Dear Athanasius, just saying just because some things were wrong, don’t accuse the whole program .
$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?
“in my forty years in Washington”
Bingo. Viewed through the proper lens, this statement is the presenting symptom of Stockholm Syndrome.
George and the rest of the political paparazzi need to spend time outside the swamp and start to identify with the people who pay for the unending appetites of the parasites that siphon off the sweat of their brow.
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.
I’d like to ask George Weigel if he ever fought in a military operation himself…has he ever put his life on the line for the principles he espouses?
Weigel hopes to correct the “apogee of apoplexy” with the parigee of perplexity.
Mr. Weigel seems to praise Jakub Grygiel for saying in so many words essentially the same thing that he criticizes Elon Musk for saying, but Elon Musk worked for Trump so that explains that.
In the last fiscal year, in round numbers, we took in $5 trillion in tax revenue and spent $7 trillion. The $5 trillion covered mandatory spending of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, etc. Additional $2 trillion in expenditures covered what is known as discretionary spending and spending that Mr. Weigel is advocating falls under that category.
If Mr. Weigel is advocating that we borrow millions/billions for this foreign aid and go further into debt I think he should say so explicitly.
Mr. Weigel, I’m sorry but corruption at USAID is so deep it can’t be reformed. Read “Masters of Corruption” by USAID political appointee/insider Mark Moyar who tried to make reforms. Before you think this is someone trying to make a buck based on recent DOGE revelations, not the case. The book was published in May 2024. Moyar found that if you try to take away the cash trough you will be attacked by those feeding at the trough. The book is a tedious read, and sadly, in the end the bad guys win.
As an aside, so often US aid makes things worse. Just one example: All the free food to Hatti put local farmers out of business. Thousands of Haitian farmers were forced out of business as they could not sell their crops at competitive prices, leading to increased rural poverty and migration to urban areas. By the mid-2000s, Haiti was importing nearly 80% of its rice, up from less than 5% in the 1980s. BTW – the rice came from US farmers which makes one wonder who got their pockets lined.
These days much of the rice that makes it to Haiti is then pirated by gangs off the ships, trucks, & warehouses & sold on the black market.
‘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.”
Most people learn early in life that you can’t buy friends or love-even with billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers or, given our present fiscal disorder, yoked on the unborn without their consent. Any relationship based on money soon becomes transactional and inauthentic.
To say that something was done “well” means that it is both effective (i.e. is has done the right things) and effective (it has done things right).
There is simply no evidence to support Weigel’s claim.
On the contrary, with regard to effectiveness, there is every evidence that the vast majority of the expenditures were used to support deviant leftist causes or projects that were at best benign inanities. As a general rule, once unaccountable bureaucrats get the power of expenditure-they pursue private agendas. See Fauci and his “gain of function” experiments.
With regard to efficiency, there’s likewise no evidence that any project was ever properly limited in scope or scale of expenditure or that there was any ex-post review would reveal any project that achieved designed, measurable objectives.
I really wish people would refrain from opining on matters that are outside their competencies or would at least refrain from basing their uniformed opinions on emotional responses.
Yes, Mr. Weigel, let’s do it the way it’s always been done. So that nothing changes, the corruption continues, and the taxpayers, both present and future, are stuck with the bill. Any other way of approaching “much needed reform” would be rash. As for the current moral standing of the nation in the world, I can tell you from personal experience that there is a huge sigh of relief in many countries that USAID will no longer be tied to LGBTQ+ demands, that peace is better than war, and that co-towing to cultural insanity is over. And, yes, if one needs to kick over the tables to get things started, so be it.
Although I do agree with Mr. Weigel sometimes, not in this case. Foreign Aid like a lot of Government programs went off the rails. The no questions ask approach resulted in spending on bad programs, but even when aid was worthwhile money was siphoned off by fraud. Another thing that has come out from the DOGE boys was the total lack of internal controls. The internal audit function was completely lacking.
Another thing that is not discussed is how a program with good intentions destroy individual initiatives within the country being aid. In effect the aid first serves companies paid to give the aid, with no thought given to the potential destructiveness to local initiatives.
Articles on subject like this need to dig a little deeper on what promotes local initiatives to improve a country. It is more about than throwing money at a country and supporting NGOs, its about what works best/how the program should be implemented for the issue addressed.
“Rhetorical restraint is not prominent in Washington these days.”
1) George lives in Washington (or within a 9 mile radius).
2) George is not prominent.
George is also wrong on USAID cuts and on the PEPFAR program. Abortion IS funded, with the Mexico City policy not uniformly enforced. Also, George, do you know the cost of a lifetime supply of antiretrovirals? WebMD puts it between $1,800 to $4,500 US DOLLARS each month through a person’s lifetime. WHO IN HELL does
George think pays that?
George, finally, scrapes his little barrel bottom when he reports the ad hom and now SNOPES and common sense de-bunked claims about the intelligence of DOGE employees. Yes, the word “gay” was searched, but does George really know anything about DOGE employees’ levels of intellect? Seriously, George proves a fool…..Correctly guess the fool’s ID, and award George first prize.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/10/dei-enola-gay-wwii/
George is WRONG on AID
Mr Weigels arguments are always thought out and presented well. In this case, I agree that a scalpel would be better than a sledge hammer. USAID is beyond that however. It must be closed, dismantled and rebuilt with reason and thought rather than funding every loony, anti-American group. I believe all abortion clinics must be closed today. Mr Weigel would argue that they all must stay open and their funding must be provided by the US government because last year Susan had an x-ray at an abortion clinic that showed she had a broken arm.
Foreign aid from the US needs to be rare, limited and short term. The problem with many US aid programs is that they are open ended and go on forever. Its also true we hand the cash directly over to the foreign nationals to disburse, instead of administering it ourselves. Corruption in third world countries being what it is, it means much of the aid is stolen or diverted and never reaches those it was intended to help. Although Musk has shown US cash being spent here without so much as the spender needing to file a form or provide a receipt. That must STOP.
Meanwhile, US citizens who fund this nonsense out of their exorbitant taxes are living in cities with crumbling bridges and roads, schools which are inadequate, hospitals which need modernization, and houses which are unaffordable to our own children because of soaring prices, high mortgage rates and exorbitant property taxes. Maybe its time to help our own people in a reasonable way FIRST. I think that private and religious organizations may be better able to help the poor, as their mission, after providing immediate emergency aid, is often one of “teaching them to fish” as opposed to handing them the fish.
I have no issue with Doge checking out and eliminating waste. As for the knock against someone not knowing about “Enola Gay”: Sadly, Americans are largely ignorant of their own history. The issue of “Enola Gay” is more a TV show trivia question than an essential piece of knowledge. They dont even know broad and obvious facts of history, let alone obscure ones. I believe that only a history buff ( like myself ) would know the reference. Its been my observation that the radical left, intent on statue elimination and building renaming, are the ones almost wholly vacant in their knowledge of US and world history, which quite clearly (and dangerously) makes them ever so easy to manipulate. Most would not know who is buried in Grants tomb.
I say we stop the freebies, both foreign and domestic, pay down our debt before we are owned by China, and then take a hard look at who REALLY needs help.
I like the response of Obianuju Okeocho (Target Africa) to the cuts to USAID.