USAID Funeral Dirge

Today, whatever remains of USAID, was absorbed into the State Department. Apparently Bono was broken up about it. There is a raft of reasons given for the dismantling of USAID. The agency didn’t effectively communicate what it did to the American people. When Trump, DOGE, and Musk entered office, USAID staff was insubordinate, and the organization was wasteful.

I believe the demolition of the agency that helped me do good things around the world, and pay my bills, was taken apart because the US has been bad at soft power for decades (since at least 9/11), and Trump doesn’t care about soft power, so it was easy to gut.

Soft power—a concept developed by Joseph Nye—is the ability of a country to attract friends and partners. It’s about ideas, and values. China sucks at it in Asia today, and Russia tried it during the Cold War in Africa, but didn’t do so well. Their ideas and values are just hard to market. Soft power is as much about ideas of liberal democracy as it was once about consuming things, like Levis blue jeans, McDonalds, and more recently, Iphones, and supercars. Things others make but are associated with the US, at least in my mind. Soft power is a byproduct of USAID good works, State Department diplomacy, CIA subterfuge, and generalized messaging via things like Voice of America.

Trump has no use for these tools, by his own admission. He called it wasteful over a decade ago, but used it perfunctorily as a marketing tool when he needed (the COVID pandemic). Ironically, because he is a snake oil salesman, Trump has always sucked at selling US values and beliefs (such as they are). Maybe because he has none himself, other than making money. But to be fair, international views of US tools of soft power are kind of mixed, so it’s an open question as to what he would be selling.

The decline of US soft power is a direct result of the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror, Obama’s failure to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I would argue the failure of every American president since Reagan to reign in the Israeli settler colonial enterprise. In effect, the US since 9/11 invested disproportionately in military hard power. Bombs and bullets. And selling bombs and bullets to its friends, mainly Israel for the last colonial wars of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and Egypt, Jordan, and Ukraine.

When the US sees an international issue, it seems to reason the problem needs a gun or an exquisite military platform of some type instead of a diplomat (not that they always did good work either). It is easier to see the impact of military hardware than diplomacy, and military solutions require less abstract thinking. Militarization of problems leads to fewer public diplomacy failures that presidents can be blamed for. And, if you are a mercantilist (like Trump, and probably Biden to some extent before him), this is good for a positive trade balance. The US is after all the single largest arms dealer on earth; “its share of global arms exports grew from 35 per cent to 43 per cent. The USA supplied major arms to 107 states in 2020–24.”

When a preference for military investment is combined with a long-running underinvestment in the US diplomatic service (going back to the first Trump administration), the result is the over-militarization of US foreign policy. Over-militarization means fewer opportunities to talk about US values and ideas. Because despite what I have been told by military officials, the US military is not the best messenger for US values and ideas about governance and democracy. Maybe that’s because US military education is directly correlated with military-led coups.

A former Secretary of Defense, highlighted the beginning of the end of US soft power during the last part of the George W. Bush administration, at a time when US competitors were investing more in soft power.

even though the public has always been skeptical of spending money abroad rather than at home. With little popular support, the U.S. Agency for International Development has shrunk since the end of the Cold War. When I retired as director of the CIA, in 1993, USAID had more than 15,000 employees, most of them career professionals, many working in developing countries in dangerous and inhospitable environments. When I returned to government as secretary of defense, in 2006, USAID had been cut to about 3,000 employees, most of whom were managing contractors. In shrinking USAID, the United States unilaterally gave up an important instrument of power. By contrast, China has been especially adept at using its development projects to cultivate foreign leaders and buy access and influence. Its boldest gambit on this front has been the Belt and Road Initiative, which in 2019 encompassed projects in 115 countries with an estimated cost of over $1 trillion.…. By 2001, U.S. public diplomacy was a pale shadow of its Cold War self. Unlike China and Russia, the United States now lacks an effective strategy for communicating its message and countering those of its competitors.

In January 2025, there were about 10,000 USAID employees globally. Many still managed contractors. They are mostly gone now.

Here is a weak chart (thanks ChatGPT). No wonder the US sucks at soft power, it doesn’t invest in diplomacy or foreign aid compared to the military.

When recent US Presidents did try to build diplomatic relationships, they did it ham-fistedly. For example, Biden’s sole visit to Africa (the first of any US head of state since 2015) was to Angola, a country that rejects political and civil rights, because he wanted to secure a supply line for east African rare earth minerals. Maybe his mental infirmity made it hard to think about how this would look. Similarly, Trump sees transactions instead of diplomacy. The recent ceasefire deal between the DRC and Rwanda and the M23, is probably best understood as a rare earth mineral deal. Much like the Ukraine mineral deal Trump pushed.

I could go on, but I won’t. There are some gaps in my claims, because this lament is meant only to highlight where, and maybe how, the US has failed in soft power. And to point out that an agency that supported US efforts to build this type of power is now gone. American power won’t be the same. And even if a future president reestablishes USAID, it will be a long time before we see any returns on the investment. By then China and other powers may have figured out how to mitigate US soft power influences anyway, so maybe it won’t matter.