Donald Trump’s USAID halt opens up a window for China, Russia?

Concerns over the US losing its global status and an opportunity for China and Russia arose after the Donald Trump administration’s moves to dismantle the USAID, which helps to fight starvation and poverty overseas.

The halting of assistance to the US Agency for International Development “opens up a window for China and Russia,” George Ingram, a former senior USAID official, told NBC News.

This move will affect the US’s influence in Africa, South America, and Asia. USAID assists with several needs, such as health care and clean water and provides aid to nongovernmental organizations. The agency provides military aid to Israel and Ukraine as well.

“Nobody anticipated” that Trump would suspend “and then decapitate USAID of its personnel,” Ingram said, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on their first day of office to halt foreign aid for at least 90 days so his administration could review the program’s compatibility with his “America First” policy.

Following the executive order, several USAID employees and contractors have been fired or furloughed, and most foreign assistance has been halted.

On Monday, the world’s richest man and Donald Trump’s aide, Elon Musk, said that the plan was to shut USAID down. “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair,” he said. “We’re shutting it down.”

“I actually checked with him a few times [and] said, ‘Are you sure?’” Trump responded, “Yes,” Musk said.

When asked whether it would take an act of Congress to abolish USAID, Trump said, “I don’t know, I don’t think so. We just want to do the right thing.”

Currently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the acting director of USAID. He has included Pete Marocco, the director of foreign assistance at the State Department, in the review of all USAID work. He added that certain projects or programs might be suspended.

“This is not about getting rid of foreign aid. There are things that we do through USAID that we should continue to do, that makes sense. And we’ll have to decide is that better through the State Department, or is that better through something, a reformed USAID?” Rubio told Fox News.

USAID provides assistance to nearly 130 countries, including Jordan, Syria, Ethiopia and South Sudan, among the top recipients, the report said citing a review by the Congressional Research Service. Ukraine tops the list of top recipients. USAID also provided military assistance to Israel and humanitarian help to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Rubio issued a waiver for foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt despite the freeze on funding, the report said. The financing was provided for “emergency food assistance and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer such assistance.”

In the fiscal year 2023, the US provided over $44.6 billion on international development across the globe, which is less than 1% of its budget for foreign assistance.

Role of soft power

USAID was founded as an independent agency by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to challenge the influence of the then-Soviet Union during the Cold War for various foreign aid programs.

Foreign aid was considered a soft power in the 1980s by US political scientist Joseph Nye to describe the ability to influence others without the use of hard power.

Nye said that Trump lacked “an understanding of soft power.”

“Power is the ability to get others to do what you want and you can do it three ways: you can do it with coercion; you do it with payment; you do it with attraction, which is famous — sticks and carrots and honey — and Trump doesn’t understand honey,” Nye told NBC News.

“I think it’s an unfortunate moment,” he said.”Based on a misunderstanding of all the elements of power,” he added.