The GOP was putting out a lot of bullshit about how the US spends so much money on other countries and doesn’t help people at home to get votes for a long time. Eventually some people that actually believed the bullshit got into power and killed it.
Really USAID was about soft power. The US provides aid and that allowed the US the threaten to cut off aid if a country didn’t go along with US interests. Way cheaper than threatening to use military force to get your way.
USAID had a lot of problems and definitely could’ve been made a lot more efficient. But eliminating it was a stupid move.
In many places China stepped in when USAID was gone. Not because of altruism but because China wants that soft power the US abandoned.
The obsession with hard power is their undoing. If your only means of coercion is shoving a gun against their head, it makes it very, very easy for the coerced to say ‘fuck off’ and ally themselves with your enemies. Chinese soft power is something that the USSR only dreamed of having but could never achieve.
The GOP was putting out a lot of bullshit about how the US spends so much money on other countries and doesn’t help people at home to get votes for a long time. Eventually some people that actually believed the bullshit got into power and killed it.
Really USAID was about soft power. The US provides aid and that allowed the US the threaten to cut off aid if a country didn’t go along with US interests. Way cheaper than threatening to use military force to get your way.
USAID had a lot of problems and definitely could’ve been made a lot more efficient. But eliminating it was a stupid move.
In many places China stepped in when USAID was gone. Not because of altruism but because China wants that soft power the US abandoned.
Yes, it was incompetence.
The obsession with hard power is their undoing. If your only means of coercion is shoving a gun against their head, it makes it very, very easy for the coerced to say ‘fuck off’ and ally themselves with your enemies. Chinese soft power is something that the USSR only dreamed of having but could never achieve.