In my social circles, there’s no bigger news freak-out right now than Trump’s war on the US Agency for International Development.
Not only has USAID’s website been shut down. Not only has its leadership been removed. Not only has USAID been folded into the State Department and no longer functions as its own agency. All foreign aid has been suspended (except to Israel and Egypt…).
Everyone who’s not a MAGA foot soldier or a tech oligarch finds this appalling and worrying. And that is a perfectly sane reaction, not least because of the whirlwind of shit that’s swirling simultaneously as Trump slashes the executive branch, purges the FBI, directly takes over the payments mechanism of the Treasury Department, launches a global tariff war, and gets ready to launch an actual boom-boom war with Mexico. Add a war on USAID to this and it’s all just too much. A counter-revolution that everyone is failing to recognize as such.
But the account of why the attack on USAID warrants fear matters a lot. At the level of vibes, we know. At the level of analysis though, we need to not just grasp for the narrative of convenience. We need an account that doesn’t perpetuate still more harm.
Senator Chris Murphy, a progressive I generally like but who, frankly, is hit and miss when it comes to his positions, had a big rant on Twitter condemning the politicization of USAID and the suspension of its aid programs.
The trouble is that he did so by accusing Trump of doing what China and Russia want. That is seriously silly. The CCP does not stay up at night wishing USAID would die. So I critiqued him as follows:
Senator Chris Murphy going full Yellow Peril in response to counter-revolution being imposed in America? This is not the way. China does not want USAID destroyed. And Cold War liberalism will not save America from tyranny--it will be its source code.
I’m not sure this needs much elaborating. Cold War liberalism—inflating foreign threats and making out-competing them our purpose in life no matter who must suffer along the way—helped bring us to this moment…it won’t save us from it.
But also, shoving the USAID-shaped peg into a China-shaped hole is a massive, massive distraction form the real reasons people should be worried.