After just two weeks in power, President Donald Trump and his top donor and adviser, Elon Musk, are declaring war on U.S. foreign aid.
Within hours of taking office, Trump issued an executive order suspending all U.S. foreign assistance. Days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stop-work order for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Then, the purge started. Dozens of USAID’s top leaders were placed on immediate leave. Hundreds of support staff were let go, and those remaining were told not only to stop funding development work, but also cut off communication with partner organizations. USAID employees were told to stay home and the agency’s website was taken down.
Across the globe, aid agencies have been forced to lay off staff, turn away the needy and even shut down operations.
Then, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn’t an official department within the federal government — sent workers in their late teens and early 20s, with no federal government experience, to demand access to personnel records and classified material. Security officials who tried to stop them were placed on administrative leave. Now Washington is abuzz with speculation that Trump will try to shut down USAID or fold it into the State Department (two actions that he is forbidden by law from taking).
The impact around the world has been immediate and catastrophic.
No country on earth is more affected by malaria then Uganda. Every single day, the mosquito-borne disease kills 14 children under the age of 5. Because of Trump and Musk’s actions, Uganda’s Malaria Council has suspended insecticide spraying and shipments of bed nets, one of the most effective tools in limiting the spread of the disease, have ended.
Medical supplies to help pregnant women and save babies from dying of diarrhea are no longer reaching villagers in Zambia.
Efforts to eradicate polio and stop an outbreak of the Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola and has a death rate of up to 90%, have stopped.
One of the most popular and effective U.S. government health programs, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved tens of millions of lives from the scourge of AIDS, is also halted. This includes the delivery of daily medications that are keeping alive 20 million people in 50 countries who are HIV-positive.
In Sudan, staffers at a U.S.-supported aid agency faced an impossible choice — “defy President Donald Trump’s order to immediately stop their operations or let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.”
Thankfully, they chose to save the children in their care, but they still may run out of supplies in weeks or face reprisals from the Trump administration.
Across the globe, aid agencies have been forced to lay off staff, turn away the needy and even shut down operations.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Musk has sent out a host of tweets calling “USAID a criminal organization,” comparing foreign aid to “money laundering,” and calling USAID employees an “arm of the radical-left globalists.”
For good measure, Trump said the agency was “run by a bunch of radical lunatics.” In all its forms, foreign aid is a crucial aspect of American soft power. USAID is far from perfect. It’s too reliant on for-profit contractors when it should be working more closely with local groups in the countries it serves. But considering how little a percentage of the federal budget it represents (around 1%), it’s also an agency that punches far above its weight. For example, it’s the world’s largest supplier of humanitarian aid even though, in percentage terms, less of the U.S. federal budget goes to development assistance than in other Western countries. However, the United States does not spend $68 billion on foreign aid simply out of the goodness of its heart. Foreign assistance has always been a tool for furthering U.S. national security interests. Indeed, the impetus for PEPFAR and fighting AIDS was that it was seen as a way to build goodwill toward the U.S. as the American military traversed the world after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, fighting the global war on terrorism. In all its forms, foreign aid is a crucial aspect of American soft power and for an expenditure 12 times smaller than the Pentagon’s $815 billion budget. But foreign aid does more than spread goodwill and positive attitudes toward the U.S. A world that is freer (USAID supports democracy promotion programs), more economically liberal (USAID fosters local entrepreneurship and economic growth), healthier and better educated is also less prone to conflict. That’s because countries that are democratic, enjoy higher living standards and are intertwined in the global economic system are less likely to go to war with their neighbors. As the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, has noted, “USAID’s efforts can do as much — over the long term — to prevent conflict as the deterrent effects of carrier strike group or a marine expeditionary force.” Or, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, “Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.” Taking USAID and U.S. foreign assistance off the global chessboard creates a political vacuum that other countries — like China — can fill. Indeed, it should perhaps not come as a shock that former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has publicly praised Musk’s efforts. Dismantling USAID is a gift to America’s rivals. However, the more significant danger is that without USAID, America risks creating instability and hardship that could lead to more conflict, greater migration flows and undermining potential trading partners. What Trump and Musk are doing to USAID and foreign assistance in general isn’t just illegal and ill-conceived — but it’s also undermining U.S. national security.
Michael A. Cohen is a political writer and a fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation. 
