An End to US' Soft Power

USAID, Trump and a new Century

Morning Comrades.

Over the past weekend, Trump and his administration, apparently, for the time being, appear to have immobilised one of the most effective tools the US Empire has wielded for as long as I remember; USAID. According to the Guardian:

“The website for the US Agency for International Development, or USAid, appeared to be offline on Saturday, as the Trump administration moves to put the free-standing agency, and its current $42.8bn budget for global humanitarian operations, under state department control.

A message stating that the “server IP address could not be found” appeared when attempts were made to access the website on Saturday.

Two sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Friday that the Trump administration was moving to strip USAid of its independence as a government agency and put it under state department control.

The apparent failure of the website comes after plaques embossed with the agency’s official seal were removed on Friday, according to Reuters, a sign that the merger into the state department was in the works.”

Whilst this may come across as relatively insignificant to the many people within the US, especially those following the train of thought of “why are we sending money abroad when we need it here”, this signals one of the greatest break of US hegemonic policy since the end of WW2. Some of you know that in the early 90s my family moved to Warsaw, Poland where I, as a teenager, witnessed the rearrangement of a post-Soviet world first hand.

About that: lived experiences, mine included, do not and cannot account for historical accuracy, they can form a small part of history but they certainly are too biased and inaccurate to be believed as fact. The fact remains though, that throughout my formative years I saw what US Soft Power meant, could do and did do and the USAID department played a significant part in that. Hell, it did still a huge part in what we call history up until last week. The fact that the Trump administration as decided to effectively end this reality is superficially confusing.

The US empire relies on this soft power machinery as much as it relies on its military to ensure its dominant role in the Capitalist world order. USAID was never about giving US tax money away around for the sake of it, it always had massive, draconian strings attached to it.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy’s administration, marking a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy toward international development and humanitarian aid. Born during the Cold War, USAID was designed to promote economic and social development in the Global South, ostensibly to alleviate poverty and foster stability. However, its creation was deeply intertwined with the geopolitical objectives of the United States, particularly its desire to counter the spread of communism and expand its influence in decolonizing nations. USAID has to be understood as a tool of U.S. imperialism, perpetuating global capitalist structures while masking its exploitative nature under the guise of humanitarianism.

USAID emerged as a successor to the Marshall Plan, which had been instrumental in rebuilding Western Europe after World War II. While the Marshall Plan was explicitly aimed at stabilising Europe to prevent the spread of communism, USAID extended this logic to the Global South. During the 1960s, many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were gaining independence from colonial powers, creating a geopolitical vacuum that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union sought to fill. USAID became a key instrument of U.S. soft power, providing economic aid, technical assistance, and infrastructure development to newly independent nations.

Kennedy’s vision for USAID was rooted in modernisation theory, which posited that traditional societies could be transformed into modern, industrialised nations through Western-style economic and political reforms. This theory, however, often ignored the structural inequalities inherent in the global capitalist system, instead framing underdevelopment as a problem of insufficient technology, education, or governance. USAID’s programs were designed to integrate these nations into the global capitalist economy, often prioritising the interests of U.S. corporations and geopolitical goals over the needs of local populations.

And now, this appears to be over, which posits a number of questions. Is Trump and his team running around like a bull in a china shop to cause chaos, simply to implement a “Kleinian” Shock Doctrine? Is it an admission of an end of US Hegemony? A few, as an example.

What remains clear though is that this is incredibly significant and with that understanding lets get into what this means, to us.