US to lose international foothold as USAID faces end of the line

By Eugene Nicklaus S. Laqui

Many have swiftly expressed their condemnation of the announcement of President Donald Trump on the potential shutdown of the United States Aid for International Development (USAID), saying its closure would be a window of opportunity for the foreign rivals of the US to cement their influence globally.

Trump and his closest ally, tech billionaire Elon Musk, have heavily slammed the existence of the USAID as an independent agency and its failure to adhere to its core mission by prioritizing other issues, which pushed the president to place the agency under the State Department with State Secretary Marco Rubio acting as its head and Pete Marocco as his deputy administrator. 

What are the allegations against USAID?

Trump and Musk said the USAID had been tainted with corruption and misaligned goals for decades and had been wasting the money collected from the American taxpayers with programs unrelated to the agency’s missions.

“Special government employee” Musk lashed out on his social media platform X, saying that the USAID had been pushing “far-left political psy op” and enumerated anomalies of USAID, including funding a USD 1.5 million program for a “DEI in Serbia’s workplace and business community” and LGBT activism in several Latina American nations, including in Guatemala, Colombia and Peru, according to Fox News. 

Fox News, however, admitted that it has yet to confirm the authenticity of Musk’s claims from both the government and USAID. 

READ MORE: LGBTQ+, HIV healthcare NGOs limit operations after US freezes foreign aid

What experts fear the most about USAID’s shutdown? 

Political and international relations experts, even allies of the Trump administration, on the other hand, said that USAID had been a vital “soft power” of the US to keep its foreign influence robust, and losing the agency would let powerful nations swoop into its place and claim a new age of international diplomacy.

American political scientist Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” in the 1980s to describe USAID’s role in exerting US influence in international regions in exchange for America’s stable assistance and, obviously, support for developing nations facing detrimental social issues.

Republican Senator and Budget Chief Lindsey Graham said losing USAID would also mean a loss of “soft power” for the US, especially in Africa and Asia where Chinese and Russian influence is on the rise. 

Iran, Russia commend move to scrutinize USAID 

Meanwhile, rare support from Iran was sent to the Trump administration for discontinuing the services of USAID, saying his move was needed to finally end the hypocritical acts of the US in using “charities” to push Western ideologies in Iran.

It added that opposition coalitions in Iran had been utilizing resources from USAID to fund their political motives and destabilize Iran. 

Moreover, an unnamed top Moscow ally sent its regards to Musk over his leadership to finally sweep USAID anomalies while also claiming intervention from the US through the humanitarian agency. 

The Russian government had ordered the closure of USAID’s mission office in Moscow back in 2012 and expelled its personnel, claiming interventionist plans to destabilize Russia.

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