USAID, the UN, and these other NGOs often make life worse in the receiving country. This is very hard for Americans to grasp because we're so charitable individually and thus feel our nation should be as well, but these NGOs interests are not aligned with the average American and they're certainly not aligned with the receiving country's. One need only look at the stability of recipients of USAID money v those countries that have refused.
Charity is great but when it comes from NGOs demanding cultural subjugation to American culture and restrictions on how the money works, this leads to resentment, instability and war.
Of course, most Americans would probably not just want to hand out money willy-nilly without any restrictions.
Thus, in my opinion, the entire premise of USAID is flawed, save for a select few endeavors to a small cadre of countries.
The entire diplomatic purpose of USAID is to build up good will abroad, but that's simply not working. No amount of money handed to whomever is going to change the fact that, within recent history, America has undertaken several pre-emptive wars and managed them poorly.
Even with all the social & economical issues within & outside of the U.S., they should in my view occupy the power vacuum for the time being. The real issue is then not that U.S. is evil, but that you cannot both be the tyrant playing zero sum with China & Russia, and the gentleman.
Security wise U.S. cannot even if they can intervene with socially bad policy except to prevent widespread civil arrest etc which is why CIA exists. U.S. pre-emptive wars were good for the military-industrial apparatus that keeps them in power & made sure others can't get those places. In global strategy terms, I suspevt Web3 & DeFi should be seen as an economical third party that reduces Chinese & Russian share of the Western economical pie at times dollar weakens.
The public can never understand that you need to be "though" to win because might makes right in statescraft & geopoli, so the U.S has to censor the internet including inside NATO to prevent economical ties' risk of dying due political pressure. It's understandable. If the game is played classified, and most humans hesitate to pull a gun's trigger, they have no idea about the world inside the entities that protect them. They cannot see that it's a very very zero-sum world, hobbesian world.
This is different from human history because WWII ±25 years we boiled over the techno-industrial pot, and nowadays all of the seemingly evil work of US & its agencies is, actually, necessary for the survival of mankind.
I've heard lots of bad about USAID from people directly involved in it too. I've heard lots of good as well fwiw, and your points about NGOs demanding cultural subjugation to American culture can't be more spot-on. It's incredibly difficult to provide assistance without actually creating more harm.
IOW I probably agree that the premise of USAID is flawed. However wiping it off the face of the earth over a matter of days is a massive over-reaction to the problem and is going to kill people short-term that didn't need to be killed if we had decided to take a deliberate approach to dismantling it.
> The entire diplomatic purpose of USAID is to build up good will abroad, but that's simply not working. No amount of money handed to whomever is going to change the fact that, within recent history, America has undertaken several pre-emptive wars and managed them poorly.
That is just so damn true. We do such a fantastic job of creating enemies of America.
Charity is great but when it comes from NGOs demanding cultural subjugation to American culture and restrictions on how the money works, this leads to resentment, instability and war.
Of course, most Americans would probably not just want to hand out money willy-nilly without any restrictions.
Thus, in my opinion, the entire premise of USAID is flawed, save for a select few endeavors to a small cadre of countries.
The entire diplomatic purpose of USAID is to build up good will abroad, but that's simply not working. No amount of money handed to whomever is going to change the fact that, within recent history, America has undertaken several pre-emptive wars and managed them poorly.