I know I said I was going to focus on state matters, but there’s one more national issue I would like to address.
One of the federal agencies that has been seized and effectively shut down by Elon Musk (with Donald Trum’s seemingly posthumous approval) is the U.S. Agency for International Development. I’ve noticed that among people who are either indifferent to or in support of what’s happening to federal agencies, there’s a particular … glee, for lack of a better word, regarding the takeover of USAID.
So I have two questions for people who may support dismantling USAID, or who may not care. These questions are not rhetorical, though they are not meant to spark an argument. (However, I wouldn’t object to a respectful debate.)
1. Do you support the United States’s position of power and influence in the world?
2. Do you like the U.S. not actively fighting in any wars?
I ask these questions because America maintains its status as a global leader through a combination of “hard power” and “soft power.”
Hard power is focused around economics, trade, and military. Fighting in a war is hard power; but so are trade agreements and economic sanctions like tariffs.
Soft power is focused around humanitarian work, diplomacy, and mutual aid agreements.
Where hard power forces compliance or compels cooperation, soft power gently encourages collaboration and forges bonds through compassion and respect.
The USAID plays an enormous role in America’s soft power. It funds clinical trials and HIV research in Africa; it also funds hospitals in war-torn Syria, provides support for marginalized communities around the world, fights the production of cocaine in South America, provides vaccines to help countries quash preventable diseases, and much more.
While USAID doesn’t do all of this work directly, it funds and supports nonprofits and agencies across the globe that have boots on the ground.
USAID had a roughly $40 billion budget in 2023, accounting for about half of America’s spending on foreign aid. And, I must admit, some of the line items that have been brought up, particularly in conservative media, are a little questionable. For example, USAID spent $2 million on pottery classes in Morocco over a decade ago and $20 million for a Sesame Street show in Iraq.
That said, I can see the justification for those projects. The pottery classes were meant to teach people a marketable skill that created a sellable product, helping to boost the economy. And Sesame Street has been teaching kids in America about respect, kindness, and equality for decades; I can see how bringing Sesame Street to Iraq, after years of unofficial war fueled largely by radical religious beliefs, would be seen as a good method for fostering tolerance in the next generation of Iraqi children.
Soft power costs less than hard power, but the U.S. has continued to dedicate more and more funding to the military and less money to diplomatic or public relations initiatives.
As Margaret Seymore wrote for the Foreign Policy Research Institute (ranked center-right by bias checkers): “[Soft power] has yet to gain the same credibility or accolades as its hard power counterpart in the national security space. In fact, U.S. soft power, by some measures, is in decline. The Soft Power 30 project ranked the United States fifth globally in 2019, its lowest position since the project began. Internally, this decline mirrors the differences in the budgetary allowances of the Department of Defense (hard power) and Department of State (soft power) for the last two decades. While some of this disparity could be attributed to the inherent cost differential of the two approaches—a PR campaign costs less than an air power campaign—the increasingly large difference between the two accounts is indicative of a U.S. overreliance on hard power.”
We can quibble about individual projects and expenses, but by and large, USAID does amazing work in the world — which, in turn, boosts America’s global standing. And that, in turn, helps combat Russia’s and China’s influence in developing nations.
If the United States continues to freeze foreign aid, including that provided through USAID, Russia and China will step in to fill the power vacuum. Both have not only an overt anti-democratic mission, but an anti-America viewpoint, and that is not something we want them sowing amongst countries we would much rather have as allies.
I understand that there is a latent impulse to think “Fine, let Russia and China have them. We have our own issues here at home that need dealing with.”
You’re right that we do have our own problems here that need attention. We have a variety of our own crises: opioids and fentanyl still ravages our nation (especially West Virginia), homelessness is rising, and people struggle to even make it from paycheck to paycheck.
However, sending funds to help people overseas does not necessarily take away funding for solving our problems here at home. Congress holds the purse strings; our representatives and senators decide how much money goes to any given cause.
But that involves working together, compromising, and talking out what the government wants to fund and how it will pay the expense. More and more frequently lately, Congress has chosen to do nothing at all — passing continuing resolutions to maintain funding at current level instead of doing the hard work of compromising and coming to an agreement.
Besides: Foreign aid overall makes up less than 1% of the U.S.’s total budget, which means USAID accounts for less than half a percent. That’s pennies compared to what America spends on other sectors. In contrast, U.S. military spending (hard power) makes up over 13% of the budget.
The same holds true in statehouses across America: our legislatures have tax dollars at their fingertips to distribute as they see fit. Ask your state delegates and state senators why your local homeless shelter has no funding; ask them where the money is for drug rehabilitation prevention programs. Ask them what they are doing instead.
Pulling American aid from foreign countries does not automatically mean that things will get better here in the U.S.; if Congress had a will to solve domestic problems, it would find a way. Rather, shutting down USAID only damages our influence abroad at a time when rivals like Russia and China are looking for every opportunity to undermine our standing on the global stage. Don’t let Donald Trump and Elon Musk play right into their hands.
J. Nelson - Writer 