Villagers in the province of Ra in Fiji pose with their first harvest of shrimp on Jan. 6, 2025, as part of a pilot aquaculture farm project assisted by the U.S. Agency for International Development. (USAID)
The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development is a boon to Beijing’s designs on Pacific island nations and weakens America’s national security, the former China policy lead for USAID told lawmakers Wednesday.
“Destroying a crucial national security tool, the trust of our allies — basically overnight — has not made the United States safer, stronger and more prosperous.” Francisco Bencosme testified during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs.
“It does not put America first,” he said. “It puts the People’s Republic of China first, and Pacific prosperity and security last.”
The hearing was intended to examine the Office of Insular Affairs’ role in fostering prosperity and addressing external threats to peace and security in the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa and Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.
Insular Affairs coordinates federal policy for those three territories and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Democratic subcommittee members, however, continually brought the topic back to the extreme cuts to federal agencies by the Department of Government Efficiency. Thousands of USAID employees have been fired, with only a remnant staff of a few hundred remaining.
Bencosme, whose appointment as China policy lead ended during the Biden administration, focused his comments entirely on the impact of the closure of USAID on Pacific islands security.
The U.S. had intensified engagements in the Pacific island region over the past six years after feeling chastened by China’s dramatic inroads into domestic affairs there, he said.
USAID was central to that renewed outreach. In August 2023, the agency opened an office in Suva, Fiji, and established a country representative in Papua New Guinea, Bencosme said.
“We also upped our diplomatic [presence] by opening up new embassies in the region,” he said.
USAID was tasked with conducting America’s “ground game for strategic competition” against China’s Belt and Road Initiative, he said.
With that 2013 initiative, sometimes called One Belt One Road, China aims to extend its economic reach by integrating with regional economies around the world, often through huge infrastructure projects financed by loans from Beijing.
“While diplomats would focus on high-level diplomacy, USAID would reach out to local communities and demonstrate American support in a tangible way,” he said. “USAID programs were visible signs of U.S. leadership expanding in the Pacific islands, oftentimes working alongside our military and diplomats.
“Gutting foreign assistance limits our ability to influence and address the challenges in the Pacific,” he said.
China is also expanding its influence and power on Pacific islands in other ways.
“The [Chinese Communist Party] and its proxies use a range of methods, including public and private loans, bribery, blackmail, coercion, investment and influence, to advance their interests,” Cleo Paskal, a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, testified Wednesday.
China has the world’s largest naval fleet, and its presence is being felt throughout the Pacific, Dean Cheng, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., testified Wednesday.
“It has 140 major surface combatants among its 370 ships,” he said. “It has an increasingly growing range. This past week, we have watched the PLA Navy conduct live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea, separating Australia from New Zealand, to such an extent that Australia had to issue a warning to airliners traversing the region.”
But in the realm of soft power, the U.S. has lost its most vital tool in the competition in a region vulnerable to natural disasters and most at risk for sea-level rise due to climate change, Bencosme said.
“The sudden U.S. withdrawal from programs in the Pacific, where we co-funded with our allies and withdrew without consulting or notifying them, leaves multiple partners and allies in the lurch,” he said. “It is the United States, not [China], that now runs the risk of being seen as unreliable and unpredictable.”