The clenched fist

As soon as he returned to the White House, Donald Trump suspended funding for all foreign assistance, creating confusion in the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and consternation among the humanitarian organisations and charities receiving assistance. USAID has served as the country’s goodwill ambassador for decades while US embassies have been fortified behind walls and razor wire and patrolled by 24-hour armed guards due to Washington’s destructive interventionist policies: the clenched fist rather than the open hand.

Among disabled USAID programmes are polio prevention, treatment for HIV/AIDS, and dealing with cholera, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa. The suspension has also stranded hundreds of millions of dollars of life-saving medical supplies in warehouses and on ships. Agency directors warned that people are going to die during the temporary freeze.

The administration claimed that the suspension was only for 90 days while USAID’s operations were reviewed to ensure that it adhered to Trump’s “America First” agenda. He has argued that the amount of money it spends is “totally unexplainable.” During the weekend of Feb.1 and 2, agents of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency, founded by multibillionaire Elon Musk, entered USAID’s headquarters and on Monday the 3rd employees were told not to go to work. Before the raid, Musk charged USAID of being a “criminal organisation [that must] die.”

Musk wrote on social media site X, “We spent the weekend feeding UEAID into the woodchipper.” Senior staff were fired or rusticated while all 10,000 employees were put on leave and two-thirds of those posted abroad were ordered to return to the US. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was made administrator of what was left of USAID while Trump said the agency should have been shut down “a long time ago.”

Established in 1961 by the farsighted and transformational President John Kennedy, USAID had a budget of $40 billion (which amounts to 28.6 per cent of Musk’s vast fortune). USAID’s mission is to promote education, human rights, environmental sustainability, health care and economic growth in countries impacted by war and struggling with development. US assistance is the largest globally and stands at nearly $65 billion, this amounts to only 0.24 per cent of its GNP, ranking it seventh among donors led by Germany with 0.82 per cent, Britain 0.58 per cent, France 0.48 per cent, Japan 0.44 per cent, Canada 0.38 per cent and Italy 0.24 per cent. During 2023, nearly half the USAID budget was spent on development and most went to Ukraine. Among the other top recipients are Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

Recipient agencies in the 177 countries and 29 regions benefitting from USAID, have said food and medical supplies for the poor have been disrupted, staff have been laid off, and operations halted. While $100 million in exemptions was meant to be made for food, lack of staff and confusion have made delivery difficult. Key exemptions were made for Israeli-devastated Gaza: $78 million was tagged for non-food humanitarian assistance while $56 million was released to the International Committee of the Red Cross tied to the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

UN agencies which receive USAID funding have been hard hit. UN Population Fund (UNPF) head in Turkey Mariam Khan said the agency receives 50 per cent of its budget from USAID. Women in war-shattered Ukraine and Gaza and refugees in Syria could be impacted if UNPF is unable to raise money from other sources.

Lebanon, which received $225 million from USAID last year, says thousands could suffer from the cut. This amounted to 22 per cent of the total of external assistance, just ahead of the European Union. To make matters worse, the freeze includes an additional $220 million for implementing UN, international and local projects between 2018-2025 in education, water supply, sanitation, agriculture, health and emergency response.

USAID funds programmes to enable pregnant women to give birth safely in Afghanistan and and protection for the Amazon and its indigenous peoples in Brazil. USAID provided $770 for Jordan which has faced economic crisis and high unemployment in recent years.

The lack of USAID funding for the entire range of programmes could have serious security repercussions in countries where large proportions youths are unemployed and without a future. They are vulnerable to recruitment by Daesh and other militant organisations seeking to overthrow governments allied with the US or planning attacks on US interests.

Trump also pulled out of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Paris Climate Accord, both for the second time. The US is the largest contributor to WHO while the US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China.

Trump has said Washington should focus on his domestic “America First” agenda and has vowed to reduce 2.2 million federal workers to elimiate waste and to fire all 1,000 appointees of the Biden administration. By signing executive decrees, he has used a wrecking ball against the US Department of Education, Small Business Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the General Services Commission. He began by terminating employees or calling for resignations in federal agencies Musk says he is determined to “delete.”

Trump also ordered a review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US disaster response organisation which has come under criticism during for failing to deliver in crises. He halted federal hiring, except for military, immigration enforcement, national security and public safety. Federal employees who have been working remote have been ordered back to their offices. The Trump administration is cutting more than 11,000 jobs at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Pentagon, as part of its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce.

He sacked armed forces chief-of-staff Charles Brown, a four-star general, and appointed in his stead retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Caine. He will be the first in this post who is not a full general or an admiral. Trump also fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of the Navy. Brown was the second Black man to hold his post while Franchetti was the first woman to act as acting chief of naval operations and to serve in the joint chiefs-of-staff. It appears that Trump seeks to promote loyalist Whites in key posts in the military.

Democratic party guru James Carville has predicted the Trump administration will collapse within 30 days due to growing public opposition to its destructive actions.

Photo: TNS