Closing USAID will weaken the foundation of American power
Elon Musk has fabricated baseless claims of fraud and program failure
OPINION:
Washington is in turmoil as career civil servants across the federal government fear they may be fed into the Department of Government Efficiency wood chipper. Under the populist guise of taming the federal behemoth, Elon Musk has fabricated unsubstantiated claims of fraud and program failure and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development in just a few weeks, ending one of the most powerful and cost-effective instruments of American influence and leverage around the world.
Lost in the turmoil are the impacts made for decades by officers in USAID field missions where the rubber meets the development road. USAID developed a deeply rooted network of relationships with local leaders and communities. Missions, staffed by skilled USAID foreign service officers and local staff called foreign service nationals, are central to the agency’s and America’s greatest strength as they are American outposts across the Global South. American institutions, values and culture are expressed in programs that strengthen young democracies and improve governance, promote fiscal transparency and stimulate private-sector economic growth, public health and education.
These USAID missions are also early warning systems for disease outbreaks that can lead to pandemics. Disease cannot be stopped at the U.S. border. It can be stopped only where it originates, which USAID has done successfully.
The missions are managed by senior foreign service officers who are experts in achieving results to save lives, improve health outcomes, and strengthen economies and representative governance. They collaborate with and report directly to the U.S. ambassadors representing American interests abroad. They are closely aligned with virtually all embassies to protect these national interests and connect American institutions and culture with local society through professional exchanges, higher education, scholarship programs and partnerships with grassroots organizations. U.S. ambassadors are often the strongest supporters of USAID. Across Republican and Democratic administrations, the USAID mission directors and their staffs have consistently implemented the policies of the U.S. president they serve. This was my experience and that of every other former administrator.
USAID mission directors are highly visible and influential with host governments on development issues.
Often, they are on a first-name basis with Cabinet ministers and heads of state who consult them on development issues such as educational reform, disease outbreaks, economic and trade policy and agricultural technologies. Would we prefer that national leaders ask the Chinese for advice? We are already seeing this.
The USAID missions work closely with the Millennium Challenge Corp. partnerships and the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. agreements. They negotiate deals and oversee program implementation. In 2001, USAID started the Global Development Alliance, a system of partnerships with 25% public funding and 75% private financing, often from U.S. corporations and foundations.
U.S. corporations have invested more than $60 billion in USAID-designed and -managed projects over 23 years, which in the past decade has amounted to about $6 billion annually in private funding. This is not so much corporate philanthropy as integrating corporate supply chains with locally sourced products, dramatically increasing poor people’s income as they become part of international business systems. USAID’s public-private alliance system is widely acknowledged as the model for other bilateral and multilateral donors.
Sixty national and regional missions oversee programs in approximately 130 countries. They are staffed by 1,500 USAID foreign service officers and 5,000 foreign service nationals who are citizens of the country, many with advanced technical degrees. They speak the national languages and work through their networks to ensure effective USAID programs while strengthening their societies and helping protect American interests. They have insights into the currents and cultures of their countries, helping inform U.S. development policy. Some go on to hold seats in parliament or national assemblies, become Cabinet ministers or even become presidents and prime ministers. The first woman elected as president of Costa Rica and the first female vice president of El Salvador were foreign service nationals in the USAID missions for many years. Rumors circulate that all USAID foreign service nationals will shortly be terminated by Mr. Musk’s DOGE bulldozer. This is madness.
By contrast, the greatest weakness of the Chinese aid program is that it has no local staff, no missions in the country and no hands-on oversight of its financial assistance and loans. Everything is run out of Beijing. The Trump administration has just given the Chinese a golden opportunity to remedy this weakness and take the place of the USAID missions, at least in countries of vital interest to China.
In annual surveys, Africans are asked which national model of development they prefer: the U.S., Russia or China. They most often choose America. One reason for that is the visible presence in their country of the USAID mission and the 18,000 to 20,000 USAID scholarships granted a year during the Cold War, which educated a cohort of future leaders in American universities for their advanced degrees. China saw the USAID success story and is now providing 40,000 scholarships annually. Instead of drawing from a reservoir of American-educated leaders, increasingly Chinese-educated elites will be the leaders making decisions on military base locations, trade agreements, votes in the international bodies, licenses to access natural resources, business deals, and diplomatic and military alliances.
Since its founding in 1961, USAID has built and supported a chain of universities, agriculture, business and engineering institutions around the world that are linked with U.S. colleges and spread American culture and values. The Chinese have built a chain of Confucian Institutes mimicking the U.S. model; they are expanding them as we retreat.
The Chinese and Russians cannot compete with the network of USAID missions, at least not yet. This explains their sustained disinformation campaigns to undermine the USAID missions as part of their influence war against the United States. Why would they employ so much time and so many resources to undermine USAID’s presence and programs? There is one simple answer.
The most powerful instruments of U.S. influence and leverage abroad are the USAID missions; shutting them down will surrender the development space to our adversaries at a crucial moment in world history. The question we must ask as a nation is: Why are we trying to defeat ourselves?
• Andrew Natsios served as USAID administrator and special envoy to Sudan for President George W. Bush.Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.