The challenging but compelling political case for USAID

Political strategists recently opined that Democrats shouldn’t waste time fighting the Trump administration’s decision to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development. They argued that the issue isn’t salient enough; the American people have never really supported foreign aid. 

Having run the agency back in the 90s when the end of the Cold War, for some, meant ending foreign aid as a “peace dividend,” I do understand the challenge. I would occasionally start my testimony before congressional committees saying that my mother often asks me why we have to spend money overseas when we have so many problems at home. 

I could no longer argue that we were fighting communism, but even in the 90s we were facing population growth in the developing world, instability, natural and manmade disasters, infectious disease outbreaks and failed states. It wasn’t easy, but eventually, we put together a bipartisan coalition and USAID prevailed. 

One of the challenges in defending foreign aid spending today — beyond the inexplicable hostility expressed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk — is making a compelling case for an agency whose main role is prevention. Rarely if ever does a newspaper headline include the words “crisis averted,” yet, that is what investments in development cooperation do. 

One of the many capabilities closed down in the dismantling of USAID is something called the Famine Early Warning System Network. This is a satellite and ground truthing system that detects drought conditions and enables poverty-stricken nations and the international community to take action before a famine destroys a community and destabilizes a region. 

In the mid-90s our early warning system reported that 20 million people in East Africa were at risk. I took this information to my weekly meeting with Vice President Al Gore. We arranged a briefing for President Clinton and the National Security Council, and the president’s Greater Horn of Africa Initiative was launched.  

I led a delegation to the region and to Europe. The result was a massive food aid infusion and better information sharing among the countries of the region. 20 million people were saved as a famine was averted.  

Just a decade before, the American people watched on television as babies died from starvation in Ethiopia and Somalia. Not this time. There were no headlines or television images. 

USAID had averted the crisis. The East Africa region continues to be mostly famine free despite periodic droughts. 

The politics of today revolves around immigration. Surges of people on the move have activated populist and extreme nationalist movements in the U.S. and Europe. 

Considering that the world has added almost 6 billion people since the 1950s, 80 percent of whom live in the developing world, it isn’t surprising that many would be seeking a better life in the underpopulated industrialized world. 

There is no disputing the numbers of migrants that have been pushing toward our southern border. But how many have stayed home because they feel they have a secure future in their own country? How many are now prospering and working in meaningful jobs that help them educate, feed and keep their family healthy? 

The Biden administration revived programming in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America that had been terminated by the previous Trump administration. USAID invested $450 million in the region in Fiscal year 2022. 

The program, called Centro-America Local, improved economic conditions and paved the way for additional foreign investment. USAID estimates that it created 90,000 jobs and significantly diminished the threats of gang violence and government persecution. 

There is little data available to demonstrate the extent to which the program inhibited the flow of migrants to the U.S. border, but there is no question that it made an impact. 

One may not be able to argue that the crisis was fully averted, but the work of USAID helped. Eliminating that effort is the equivalent of taking an arrow out of the policy quiver. 

Perhaps the most politically salient USAID intervention relates to public health. Some 40 percent of USAID’s budget is spent on the ongoing effort to monitor and control infectious disease. New viruses and permutations are multiplying exponentially, most are being spawned as a direct result of the conditions existing in poverty-stricken countries in the global south. 

When the acting director of USAID’s global health bureau left the agency a few weeks ago, he released estimates of the impact of leaving the field: 18 million additional cases of malaria and 166,000 additional deaths, 200,000 children paralyzed by polio, 1 million more children suffering from malnutrition and 28,000  new cases of infectious diseases like Ebola and Marburg every year. 

Well, Ebola is back in Uganda, and USAID’s effort to treat it there have been terminated. The same is true of the effort to monitor and arrest bird flu, HIV and AIDS, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever and other viruses. 

The politics of closing USAID is about more than the invocation of fear. The agency and its work have been an expression of our national values, of our generosity as a people. It is the most conspicuous manifestation of our nation’s “soft power.” 

As polls have shown for many years now, the American people believe that we spend upwards of 25 percent of our national budget on foreign aid. When asked how much should be spent, they usually say less than half that amount. When told that it is less than 1 percent they wonder whether that is enough for the richest nation on earth. 

Now Secretary of State Rubio has pronounced that 83 percent of USAID’s programs are to be eliminated — 83 percent of 1 percent of the federal budget. That leaves a few security-related programs and precious little investment in preventing the worst consequences of growing global poverty.

The future without USAID portends few crises averted. The next time a drought produces a famine, we may see a screaming headline that 20 million people have lost their lives. 

Perhaps then we will ask ourselves why, and the political finger-pointing will start in earnest. 

J. Brian Atwood is a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute. He served as the administrator of USAID in the Clinton administration.