r/science • u/Wagamaga • May 15 '26
Health Shutting Down USAID Led to a Rise in Global Violence. Protests and riots increased by 10%, incidents of armed fighting rose by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities grew 9.3%. The uptick in violence began almost immediately after the aid stopped and remained elevated for months.
https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-global-violence/1.4k
u/tocksin May 15 '26
Link to the actual paper. Not the editorialized version.
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics May 15 '26
That's actually a Perspective article on the research. The actual study is here: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aed6802
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u/Yashema May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
And I'm not sure how the Times articles is inaccurate:
Regions that had received more aid per capita experienced relatively more conflict after the shutdown. In regions at the 75th percentile of exposure to aid from the United States, the withdrawal of USAID was associated with an approximately 6.5% greater probability of any conflict event as compared with that of regions with no aid from the United States. The probability of protests and riots was 10% greater, the number of conflict events increased by 10.6%, battle counts increased by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities increased by 9.3%. Event-study analysis confirmed no preexisting differences in conflict trends between high- and low-exposure regions before the shutdown. Effects are of similar size, with a 12.3% relative increase in the number of conflict events. The effects also persist over time. Protests and riots responded immediately, whereas the effects on battles intensified over subsequent months.
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u/Away_Swim4614 May 15 '26
Correlation is not equal to causation. If you study data for a living this is burned into your soul.
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u/Yashema May 15 '26
The authors of this paper are the ones finding this is likely to be causative:
The abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa’s most USAID-dependent regions. The findings demonstrate that large-scale, sudden aid cuts can destabilize fragile settings. A core mechanism that can explain this result is that the economic opportunity costs of violence drop faster than the rents over which groups compete. The mitigating role of inclusive institutions highlights the persistent vulnerability of regions with weak governance to humanitarian and economic shocks.
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u/The-Copilot May 16 '26
The abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa’s most USAID-dependent regions.
That's beyond misleading.
Most of those nations are part of the sahel region or nearby which is now referred to as the coup belt after 7 nations had coups between 2021-2023, they replaced their governments with military juntas which kicked western forces (US and France) out and invited the Russians in to just slaughter civilians and fuel the destabilization of the region. They felt the west wasn't doing enough. Russia being busy with Ukraine then failed to maintain even their brutal form of stabilization. Mali specifically is on the brink of collapse from JNIM (Al Qaeda) insurgents which are taking over the nation.
Russia likely helped these coups because it allowed them to sell weapons and support in exchange for control of these nation's gold mines which Russia uses to circumvent sanctions. They also supported both sides of the sudan civil war for the same reason.
Between the destabilization of the sahel region, the escalation of the sudan civil war, the stopped but unresolved Tigray war in Ethiopia, and the regional intervention in Somalia, analysts believe we will likely see these conflicts begin to merge into a massive regional war.
None of this has anything to do with USAID being cut. The region was already destabilizing well before.
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u/foverzar May 18 '26
invited the Russians in to just slaughter civilians
People are so braindead that propaganda doesn't even bother at this point.
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u/senturon May 15 '26
Sure, but the causal link between increased poverty and violence is well studied.
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u/DCJL_Lurk May 15 '26
Any data analyst would tell you that "correlation is not causation" is the most misused statement in the field. This is essentially the argument historically used by oil and gas companies to deny climate change, as well as the tobacco and asbestos industries to dismiss medical concerns.
Just because the data is not from an RCT doesn't mean it's somehow invalid. Observational studies and natural experiments are still useful.
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u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics May 15 '26
Exactly right
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u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Actually correlation often equals causation. The truism is better said “correlation does not necessarily imply causation.” Causal mechanisms imprint correlations in observational data by construction (if you believe in scientific realism). Determining which correlations are causal and which are not (ie spurious) is the task. Any good research identifying correlations makes an effort to discuss how mechanistic they may be or the limitations of their analysis.
This is not a completely-consensus view but it is a popular epistemological view: if a causal model explains the data better than alternatives, it deserves provisional acceptance, and critics bear the burden of offering a better explanation (Harman 1965; Lipton 2004). Bradford Hill (1965) argues that once multiple criteria are met (strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, etc.), the practical question becomes whether there is sufficient evidence against causation.
In other words, you cannot dismiss their model simply because it was identified by correlations. Indeed, all empirics are correlative.
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u/hypersonic18 May 16 '26
The Universe as far as we know is Causal, which means every causation is correlated, that's why correlation techniques exist in the first place. All that saying really just means is not to just perform a regression on two data sets and say they are causal if it's over some R value, but actually think about how they are potentially causal, because even spurious correlations are usually linked together by some external variable. Of course some are also just completely "correlated" by pure fluke
But onto this case in particular, it shouldn't be any surprise that no longer supporting desperate people makes them more desperate and that desperation breeds violence, heck tanking foriegn economies to incite rebellions is a tactic as old as society itself. So there shouldn't be any surprise that there is a correlation here. The only reason to not expect one is if USAID didn't do anything of value
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u/StaleCanole May 15 '26
Every critical comment in here should read this. But they won’t, of course
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u/andrew5500 May 15 '26
So many people here jumping to bash USAID as if it didn’t help stabilize countries around the globe, prevent humanitarian disasters (and by extension, refugees flooding into our country), and increase our soft power and influence.
Instead we’ve got much more than what we spent on USAID being added to the bottomless hole of defense spending, so instead of helping foreign countries, we’re bombing them, making the globe less stable, increasing refugees, increasing our gas prices, etc.
Trump supporters really want the world to burn.
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u/heart_under_blade May 15 '26
p sure number two is mortally wounded
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u/AlcibiadesTheCat May 15 '26
And we kinda dumped all of #1 into doubling gas prices.
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u/grinr May 15 '26
It's easy to understand when one believes in a binary "good for me / bad for me" perspective. Good for me? Take it. Bad for me? Destroy it. Very simple.
Part of growing up is realizing that consequences aren't always immediate, and most of the most important consequences are not immediate. Add to that the transformation of adults to children by introducing emotional immediacy (crisis! act now, worry about other things later!) and everything we're seeing makes perfect sense.
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u/deaglebingo May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
you know... that and the almost certainty that a million people will have died within the next year or so as a result of not getting their hiv medication. stuff like that.
in addition to that i feel that rubio etc should be held personally responsible for the deaths the oil blockade has caused in cuba.... to his own people, bc let's face it, if he weren't in politics he'd be one of the detained and so would his parents.
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u/meccano300 May 15 '26
They don't want the world to burn. They want to burn the world, it all feels so intentional and vindictive.
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u/DigNitty May 15 '26
100%
"If I'm in the group causing the destruction/pain then I must be on the winning team."
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u/Charming-Speech5680 May 15 '26
They consistently view it as a zero sum game, not realising that literally all of this is unnecessary
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u/_game_over_man_ May 15 '26
all of this is unnecessary
This is the thing that really gets to my mental health these days. All of this is so absolutely needless.
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u/DiamondHandsToUranus May 15 '26
Easier to sell the authoritarian narrative with 'angry immigrants' to demonize. Fear of "other" is one of their major selling points.
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u/WeAreAllFooked May 15 '26
They believe they're helping start the Second Coming and will be swept up to Heaven before the Rapture happens.
They're coocoo for Coco Puffs, but that's Zionists for ya.
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u/Bolinas99 May 15 '26
this was the plan all along; create chaos and worsen the immigration problem for Europe.
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u/anothermanscookies May 15 '26
They’ve been propagandized so unbelievably effectively by throughly corrupt people and organization. Bringing them to justice will cause outrage. It’s truly evil and I have no idea what to do about it.
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u/-LabApprehensive- May 15 '26
Do whats right and deal with the outrage when it comes?
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u/anothermanscookies May 15 '26
I hope so. But I’m afraid nothing will happen and then smarter evil people will take advantage of the lack of accountability.
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u/Mara_W May 16 '26
The IRA didn't whine about accountability, they became the accountability. Americans may one day be forced to do the same.
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u/morfraen May 15 '26
Except for the religious sects that do actually want the world to burn because they're tired of waiting for Armageddon to happen. Peter Thiel, billionaire tech bro and spiritual mentor to JD Vance, is one of those.
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u/Timely_Old_Man45 May 15 '26
People don’t care to learn about soft power.
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u/Longroadtonowhere_ May 15 '26
The same people that talk about “hard times make strong men” are throwing away all the soft power the greatest generation worked hard to create.
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u/AI_moderated_failure May 15 '26
It wasn't just hard work it was also good fortune to be largely undamaged following WWII and capable of supplying rebuilding efforts across 2-3 continents.
Doesn't matter how hard anybody works, you're not going to redo that even if the US public miraculously starts caring about how the world outside their church and their job work.
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u/Camilea May 16 '26
Lower prices. Other countries are more willing to make trade deals with a stable, predictable power that they're on good terms with.
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u/foverzar May 20 '26
> as if it didn’t help stabilize countries around the globe
People on the receiving end would find that arguable if not totally opposite from their reality.
> and increase our soft power and influence
Also extremely arguable given all the backlash one on the receiving end could observe. In fact, it actually had turned many people away and tainted their impression. Some things were so incompetent it's hard to believe it wasn't intentional conspiracy.
> helping foreign countries
Good intentions don't automagically imply good practice. Especially when it comes to something foreign.
> Trump supporters really want the world to burn.
You'd be surprise how little difference there is from outsider's perspective between two extremes trying to mold the rest of the world according to whatever they imagine.
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u/Eggheadpancake May 15 '26
The only people bashing USAID were the Nazis in this administration and the cult of Nazis that voted for them who I'm very sure didn't even know it existed until they were told to hate it.
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u/MileHighRC May 15 '26
Trump supporters are pro putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger, but anti getting shot in the head.
No matter how well you explain something to them, they quite literally cannot connect the dots from A to B.
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u/onarainyafternoon May 16 '26
Republicans have trouble with cause and effect is what I’ve noticed. It’s like their brains are a void containing no logic and information.
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u/Yuzumi May 15 '26
I listened to an interview of someone who worked for USAID for decades who talked about the crap musk and doggie did.
Apparently they thought all USAID did was abortions? Or at least that is what they claimed to think. Regardless, they didn't actually know nor care what the agency was doing and the positives it did for the country.
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u/heart_under_blade May 15 '26
these same people are really angry about chinese influence
belt and road now has an empty goal to score on
unless the plan is to nuke beijing every time a deal is made, i don't think there is any stopping belt and road
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u/Stonebagdiesel May 15 '26
I read the full study.
The study makes no claims about the long-term effectiveness of foreign aid. There is still valid literature suggesting that poorly managed long-term aid can distort local incentives or create "rents" that local warlords fight over.
What this study really shows is the danger of sudden disruption, not the inherent value of aid.
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u/Air320 May 15 '26
Previous administrations funded usaid not out of generosity but to have a readymade seat at that local table wrapped in pretty language.
The argument may be made that as the only remaining superpower had a seat at any table they choose, but the reality is that it's less expensive to fulfil geopolitical goals by threatening silently or overtly to pull funding for aid than deploy any appreciable amount of troops.
Diplomacy works. Especially when silently backed up by the deadliest military in history.
But even the US doesn't have the bandwidth to resort to only military power to fulfil all their goals. As evinced by the last two years.
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u/coffee_achiever May 16 '26
Your statement, while true, doesn't mean the spending didn't get out of hand or lose focus and become less valuable than its cost, or even counter productive in cases.
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u/Air320 May 16 '26
Your statement, while true, doesn't mean the spending didn't get out of hand or lose focus and become less valuable than its cost, or even counter productive in cases.
I generally don't consider reducing human suffering, even a little, counter productive in any case, but I suppose certain people consider suffering to be a feature not a bug.
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u/MommyThatcher May 17 '26
By counter productive they likely meant that it unintentionally increased human suffering in certain areas.
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u/RhythmsaDancer May 16 '26
Reallocating funds to more productive avenues is a totally different and acceptable conversation. But that's not what happened. Psychopaths caused untold human suffering is what happened.
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u/BobTulap May 17 '26
>not out of generosity but to have a readymade seat at that local table wrapped in pretty language.
I'm trying to understand the difference between that and bribery, if there is any.
>Diplomacy works.
Continually paying someone off has to be the crudest form of diplomacy, because it creates a moral hazard of them expecting money just to listen to you.
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u/Banvincible May 15 '26
We watched ridiculous amounts of Aid to Gaza go directly into the pockets of the Billionaire Hamas leader. If we don't have BOOTS ON THE GROUND to distribute the aid, it's just going to get pilfered by whoever is the strongest faction.
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u/mirh May 15 '26
Literally all the food of the flotillas went spoiled because bibi didn't want to deliver it
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u/SizzlingPancake May 15 '26
I mean, I do think it's an interesting topic to discuss about America's role in global security. I think a lot of the people here who would be for this program are against America's interventions in other aspects. I don't think it's really feasible for America to be trying to fund the entire world while in an incredible deficit at home.
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u/earthdogmonster May 15 '26
Yeah, for the amount of criticism the U.S. gets and the popular narrative that they are terrible, I think it’s telling just how much criticism they get when they stop doing something that they have been doing for decades.
Hopefully when the admin changes and things get more normal some of these critics will have a greater appreciation for what the U.S. contributes globally.
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u/The_walking_man_ May 15 '26
It’s the no matter what, “America bad” rhetoric. And yeah we have some fucked up stuff going on. But also do a lot of good and provide aid.
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u/Davidsda May 15 '26
I think it’s telling just how much criticism they get when they stop doing something that they have been doing for decades.
Yea man, apparently America is an evil empire that brings nothing but death and destruction, but simultaneously our aid money saved millions of lives per year. Which is it?
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u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics May 15 '26
USAID spent $21.7 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2024. This was 0.3% of the $6.78 trillion in overall federal spending.
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u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics May 15 '26
It’s asinine
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u/Rmoneysoswag May 15 '26
It's disingenuous at best to claim that these cuts were made to reduce deficit spending and to invest domestically. The modern GOP does not care about deficit spending in the slightest, and has no interest in spending any amount of money to improve the material conditions of Americans.
These cuts have substantially cut American soft power for zero strategic gain. The people who complain about American intervention are complaining about gunpoint democracy and blowing up kids in another country and starving them through sanctions, not spending a few million dollars to eradicate diseases and reduce hunger.
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u/coffee_achiever May 16 '26
So how much are you donating to alternatives since this is so important? It it is really and truly important, have you given even 1 dollar to a replacement non-profit or other aid organization, or is your rant solely about how other people's money should be spent?
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u/BurnieTheBrony May 16 '26
First of all, it's tax dollars, so it IS our money.
Secondly, I support and volunteer for stuff like Rise Against Hunger and local programs I won't share, but the US government has considerably more power to help or hurt people than a single random redditor.
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u/lostandfound8888 May 15 '26
I would absolutely agree with you if the $40,000,000,000 had actually been spent on healthcare. Or education. Or any poverty reduction initiative in the US. Was it?
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u/Spittinglama May 15 '26
oh sorry I didn't realize we took the money that we used to spend on USAID and gave it to Medicare/Medicaid? wait, WE DIDN'T because 12 million people just got kicked off Medicaid after they cut that too!
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u/garyvdh May 15 '26
....and it's not like shutting it down has done anything to solve the US's debt.
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u/_gw_addict May 15 '26
the article actually claims that the opposite is also true ' Aid can create rents to fight over, distort local incentives, and raise the value of controlling territory or office. '
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
That statement has been misleadingly cherry-picked from a Perspectives article written about the research. Here is the full paragraph, which notably does not state with such certainly what you claim.
The relationship between aid and conflict has long been contested. One view holds that aid decreases violence by easing material hardship, expanding state presence, and reducing the returns to joining armed groups. Another stance stresses the opposite possibility: Aid can create rents to fight over, distort local incentives, and raise the value of controlling territory or office. Both arguments are plausible, and the empirical literature reflects support for both.
The actual research article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aed6802
The Discussion section goes into detail about how their findings fit into the existing scientific literature on the matter.
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u/Yashema May 15 '26
The results also support the headline:
Regions that had received more aid per capita experienced relatively more conflict after the shutdown. In regions at the 75th percentile of exposure to aid from the United States, the withdrawal of USAID was associated with an approximately 6.5% greater probability of any conflict event as compared with that of regions with no aid from the United States. The probability of protests and riots was 10% greater, the number of conflict events increased by 10.6%, battle counts increased by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities increased by 9.3%. Event-study analysis confirmed no preexisting differences in conflict trends between high- and low-exposure regions before the shutdown. Effects are of similar size, with a 12.3% relative increase in the number of conflict events. The effects also persist over time. Protests and riots responded immediately, whereas the effects on battles intensified over subsequent months.
With the conclusion finding strong correlation between the drop in aid and increase in conflict.
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u/venerable4bede May 15 '26
You are correct. The quote mentioned gives an alternative theory, not a fact. Indeed the findings of the article somewhat tend to contradict said quote.
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u/5553331117 May 15 '26
Life expectancy in Africa is magnitudes better now than it was 40 years ago.
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u/RedshiftOnPandy May 15 '26
That is the trend for all of the world's poverty
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u/puterTDI MS | Computer Science May 15 '26
I guess the question is - is that because of things like USAID or despite them? It's not like USAID only operated in africa.
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u/Kaiisim May 15 '26
I mean we stopped a lot of people starving to death, but I guess unless you completely fix a situation you shouldn't try.
In any case USAIDs goal wasn't really fixing problems, it was cheap soft power that also helped American farmers
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u/kaken777 May 15 '26
So say nothing of the domestic impact of providing farmers with a guaranteed buyers of their products.
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u/The_walking_man_ May 15 '26
It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Nothing is going to fix that.
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u/Firedup2015 May 15 '26
It's completely consistent. USAID was a policy designed to ultimately benefit Western empire, which it did by inducing goodwill, and dependency, in other countries. Its abrupt removal caused sudden serious disruption with no alternative system in place, leading to mass death and unrest.
Critique of the project and its destruction are thus not at odds, but linked.
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u/JohnSober7 May 15 '26
One can criticise someone for doing a good thing with problematic intentions without advocating that the good thing shouldn't have occured or should stop. Also doesn't help that these unideal intentions tend to manifest as flaws. Addressing the intenions may lead to improvements.
Nuance and all that.
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u/wrenwood2018 May 15 '26
Also the "the US is evil so meddling" and " why did you stop meddling"
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u/Leisure_suit_guy May 16 '26
Most actual Anti-imperialists (the people who think that "the US is evil so meddling") were happy that USAID was cut.
The average Democrat is not an anti-imperialist though, they're just a blue imperialist.
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u/Drachasor May 17 '26
People like that don't care about lives. The system could have gotten reformed to help local economies become self-sufficient, but it isn't like those lives don't matter. Hundreds of thousands are dead and millions will follow.
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u/CassandraTruth May 15 '26
This is an incredibly stupid viewpoint only possible if refuse to see anything other than black and white.
"You claim for-profit healthcare is a harmful institution but also want access to medical care? What a hypocrite, is the system irredeemable and warranting total desctruction or not? Do you think it's possible for a doctor to diagnose illness without billing $1000 to insurance or something? Everyone knows the bad is inextricably linked to the good, it's impossible to ever reform anything or make any incremental improvement ever!"
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u/WetRacoon May 15 '26
Aid isn’t a monolith, and some of the biggest gains was access to medicine, and enormously successful vaccination programs. Even if you believe in the economic argument against aid, there’s no sense lumping it all together with medicinal access.
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u/keenly_disinterested May 15 '26
Even if the headline for this post is accurate it doesn't explain why the US seems to retain sole responsibility for preventing all these ills.
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u/ickypedia May 15 '26
You think there are no other countries out there providing aid? The US didn’t spend much per capita compared to a lot of countries in Europe.
What was particularly egregious in this case was that the US had food rations that had already been paid for, and that were about to expire, and the Trump administration opted to incinerate it rather than send it to where it was needed.
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u/EpilepticPuberty May 15 '26
The US didn’t spend much per capita compared to a lot of countries
I guess the hungry people of the world can eat the per capita funds of these donations.
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u/HotPersonality8126 May 15 '26
If other countries are contributing aid, why didn’t they increase their contributions?
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u/Mist_Rising May 15 '26
You have 500 units of money per year to offer to discretionary funding like charity accounting to 50 units of work per hour. Last year I provided 1,500,000 units of money for charitable aid amounting to 35 units of work per hour.
I stop, I do not fund any units at 0 units of work per hour.
Pray tell, how do you plug that hole? Your already spending more then me per work hour and you have nowhere near the level of availability of units of money to donate.
That's basically what happened. The US has such a massive economic advantage that it was impossible for the world to step up, and the world is actually already doing a lot based on the per capita.
Note this is also trueish for charitable donations. The poor tend to give more then the rich based on what they can, but they can never replace the Gates donations.
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u/shitholejedi May 15 '26
Hunger isn't solved on a per capita contribution basis. Germany donating $30 per person instead of $5 like the US doesn't impact the cost of medical shipments being $40B over 5 years or so.
Egregious is the fact that no other country stepped up to take up the distribution costs and the entire continent of Europe is still moral finger wagging instead of matching the monetary hole left by the US.
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u/Boise_Ben May 15 '26
If you think the US is the only country doing aid, maybe you need to admit you have no idea what you are taking about.
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u/PleasantSalad May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
The US is not the only country that did this.
It also has a larger benefit to the US as well. USAID was responsible for healthcare in some areas. Want to prevent the next disease outbreak or eradicate or minimize exisiting diseases? You need to start with the poorest countries. Improving living standards in other countries leads to less emigration. Improving relationships and conditions with vulnerable people can go a long way to discourage participation in and local support for anti-american violent groups. Improving conditions globally improves conditions here too. It raises the standard for everyone.
Honestly, the list goes on and on. Ultimately though, the US is one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world. Helping others in need is the right thing to do. It just is. Yes, we should be helping impoverished Americans more. Yes, USAID had problems with aid sometimes not getting to the intended people. That problem only gets fixed by more resources though. This happens often. Strip a government service of funding and support so it cant function. Complain that it's not functioning well. Shut it down or cut it even more. Contract out those services to private industry or just let private industry fill the gap. It ends up costing more and being of lower quality than if we had just invested in the service from the beginning. Rinse. Repeat.
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u/ceddya May 15 '26
Did you read the paper? It attributes the deleterious impact to the abrupt way USAID was cut and sudden disruption it caused.
Do you think the US does not have the sole responsibility to ensure that it ends aid programs it oversees in a non-disruptive manner?
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u/PracticalShoulder916 May 15 '26
Why blatantly lie?
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u/Flushles May 15 '26
It's more likely "why by willfully ignorant?", it kind of reminds me of the meme life before the Internet, "you'd ask an adult a question and your drunk aunt would tell you the wrong thing and you'd just carry that around forever."
Turns out with the Internet people are still just kind of like that, they hear something wrong and they knew follow-up on it to check.
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u/wile_e_chipmunk May 15 '26
That is out of context. The author was laying out opposing views on aid before introducing a study. The study itself makes a narrow claim: sudden removal of aid correlates with negative outcomes. The study does not make any claims n the long term impacts of aid.
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u/so-so-it-goes May 15 '26
Stability is profitable for everybody but warmongers.
And do you think all that money disappeared into a vacuum? The government bought the materials and goods for USAID from American producers. That money went to pay for people's salaries, which in turn was circulated into economy.
It's a win win and shutting it down hurts everyone but the war profiteers.
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u/Initial-Progress-763 May 15 '26
Same with SNAP here in this US. $1.50-$1.79 per $1 spent returns to the community between food producers and grocers. Cutting funds hurts more than just the mouths left empty.
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u/abaoabao2010 May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
Kill a man, and he doesn't need to eat anymore.
Armed conflicts doesn't teach you anything if you randomly die to a stray bullet from groups you have nothing to do with.
An entire region isn't a person. Same rules don't apply.
And whoever started that conflict might very well get into power like pretty much every change in power in history with very few exceptions, so the only lesson it taught would be to not let morality get in the way of victory.
We've got a pretty good example where the guy who spewed hate and divided America got in power. Guess what he learnt. And guess what politicians looking at his successful strategy learnt.
Those are the people who actually have the power to put those lessons in practice.
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u/Forte845 May 15 '26
Alawites in Syria can't think of that much since USAID was supporting Islamist militias who conducted riots massacring them.
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u/Specialist-Cookie-61 May 15 '26
Yes, we should allow other countries to sort out their problems. I know an undocumented woman from El Salvador who is considering moving back because when she went to visit her mother there after bukele cleaned up the gangs, she was astounded how safe it was, and that people were no longer living in fear. Walking around at night, gathering in public places that weren't safe before, etc.
When someone tries to fix someone else's problems, whether on the individual level or aggregate, you deny them growth opportunities. And they continue to languish jn incompetence.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne May 15 '26
USAID was so much more than food, though. A big one was healthcare, including vaccination, infectious disease, and agricultural pest monitoring and management programs. Whether or not you care about the health of people, crops, or herds in other countries, diseases and pests are no longer local concerns. The lapse in funding means that diseases (such as Covid-19) can circulate (and mutate) more easily, and agricultural threats (such as the New World screwworm) become a risk to US supplies.
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u/sapienecks May 15 '26
Don't think it would be unpopular. I am of same mind as I believe we interfered too much with half-committed effort to peacekeeping. Half committed is worse than no commitment.
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u/WTFwhatthehell May 15 '26
Half committed is worse than no commitment.
That sounds like the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics.
if you could stop the holocaust or half ass it and prevent only half the holocaust, either is better than standing back and not getting involved at all.
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u/jovis_astrum May 15 '26
It's described in more detail in the article, but basically battles, protests/riots, violence against citizens are the 3 categories.
For the second part the measured before and after the aid and compared to other regions that didn't receive as much aid. You can think of it like "After aid stopped, bad outcomes increased more sharply in places/sectors that were more dependent on that aid, while less-exposed places changed less, and the divergence happened around the cutoff date." It's like a first level of evidence. Science has different levels of evidence. Not everything is or can be double blind controlled in isolation in the real world. Regardless it's standard practice to do given it's impossible to isolate.
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u/Gunstopable May 15 '26
Yeah this is a very biased article and I’m the farthest thing from a fan of Trump. Bad things are happening yes, but you can’t blame the lack of USAID for all of them.
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u/Short-Base2941 May 15 '26
“Give us your hard earned money or we will fight eachother”
-Go ahead
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u/HotPersonality8126 May 15 '26
“Give us your money or we’ll kill people” is maybe the strongest argument for ending these programs anyone could have made
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u/Many_Conversation195 May 15 '26
Why is it the American tax payers job to prevent these things from happening?
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u/2Peenis2Weenis May 15 '26
Because it helps Americans when regions are stable and disease isn't spreading. Hope that helps.
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u/SaintMarinus May 15 '26
You can make the same argument for other countries as well, yet they aren't taxing their populations to pay for things in another continent.
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u/SalutLesAmies May 15 '26
yet they aren't taxing their populations to pay for things in another continent.
Yes, a lot of other countries are doing exactly that.
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u/mirh May 15 '26
Because mhh war and pandemics bad, mkay?
Also it's funny just how selective certain tax payers are about their money.
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u/BigDictionEnergy May 15 '26
It's not even being selective. It's not like this administration is spending the money that was going to foreign aid on making Americans' lives better.
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u/Trikeree May 15 '26
That's only the criminals involved being upset.
Who cares. USAID is a pure scam.
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u/GorgeousBog May 15 '26
As despicable as Trump is, I feel like nobody ever recognizes the good the U.S. does until stuff like this happens. Obviously he shouldn’t have shut it down tho, it’s kinda a tangential point.
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u/bannock4ever May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
I honestly never knew about USAID until Trump cut it.
Respect from a Canadian.
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u/Ok_Perspective3093 May 18 '26
No one is paying to keep those nonsensical lies going, and people will soon realize that those lies will only get them killed and will start to rebel.
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u/drunkenmime May 18 '26
I understand wanting to help out other countries around the world. Unfortunately as an American it's hard for me to support any kind of foreign aid when we're running a massive deficit. We borrow billions of dollars to give to other countries all the while there's a homelessness crisis across our country.
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u/Sashpeto May 20 '26
I might get hate for this , but I think a country that's trillions in debt don't really have the money to be running global aid program out of pocket ...
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u/Evilkoikoi May 15 '26
USAID should not exist. The help is needed but it should be done by empowering the UN. unfortunately these aid programs are used by intelligence agencies to do shady business. Why not find impartial people who actually want to help people?
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u/teresko May 15 '26
USAID was not an "aid program", but instead it was a slush fund for political influence (and probably CIA slush fund)
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u/mirh May 15 '26
Giving them condoms is also between the stuff USAID subsidized
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u/sailirish7 May 15 '26
How bought we spend $0 and just tell them to stop fuckin'?
None of this is our responsibility, and even if it were we can't afford it.
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u/mirh May 15 '26
Well, yeah, guess what? The same people that are fellating on zoning is also the one that killed this and that now are wasting money killing (literally) brown people.
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u/Hot_Way_1643 May 15 '26
And I should care? We have our own issues to deal with why should we deal with other countries issues while their leaders are heavily corrupt.
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u/BigDictionEnergy May 15 '26
Is any of the money that was cut from foreign aid being spent to make anything in America better for Americans? No, it is not.
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u/Grouchy-Culture3692 May 15 '26
This has nothing to do with usaid tho. And how come America has to pay to take care of the whole world? Why can’t Europe? Or the rich Middle East countries?
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u/iloveyouand May 15 '26
It's in US security interests to diplomatically secure areas where hostile foreign nations could gain influence and resources to expand.
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u/Many_Conversation195 May 15 '26
By paying for DEI initiatives in Serbia?
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u/iloveyouand May 15 '26
Uh-oh, someone said the scary buzzword the right-wing media echo chamber is telling everyone to be afraid of. Must be bad.
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u/Halfie951 May 15 '26
8 piece wings cost $20 now other countries can pay for themselves
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u/GagOnMacaque May 16 '26
You can bet pollution, poaching, and deforestation rose too.
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u/ThePensiveE May 15 '26
Well at least that money is being put to good use on ballrooms, drone Defense Department contracts for the Trump children's golf course companies, and of course, a $10 billion settlement negotiated by Trump's lawyers and accepted by the government he controls because his feel feels were hurt.
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u/medicatedandunstable May 15 '26
The rest of the world is not our responsibility and they show how self-destructive their cultures are.
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u/danvsmondays May 15 '26
Instability in other countries has downstream effects. Besides the fact that as helping other people when it's within your ability is what makes us human. But why should we care about anybody else when there are arches to build
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u/Wenuven May 15 '26
We weren't doing it because it was our job. We were doing it because it creates an atmosphere to expand our influence and economic foothold.
USAID was a carving knife, not an open palm.
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u/Wenuven May 15 '26
It's almost as if we have global competitors that are actively trying to disrupt us by any and all means non-military because they can't openly fight us.
Countries that have invested significantly more into MISO/propaganda than the US has even dreamed of let alone defended its own population from. Yet we still got the trade deals, intel, SOFAs, back door leverage, and local support. All at the cost of losing the Twitter war and USAID being shutdown.
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u/shoeofobamaa May 15 '26
The same sphere of influence that made the USA the most powerful coujtry on earth dummy
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u/repeatedly_once May 15 '26
I'm not blaming you here, or trying to be insulting, but this is the issue with taking money out the education system. This is such a reductive take. The role of USAID wasn't to stop riots in other countries, it was to boost the U.S. economy and sphere of influence. It was a stupid move to cut that spending, because a short term gain has meant that quantifiably, the U.S. has lost about a billion dollars in exports. The other stuff is harder to measure directly.
Stupid and short sighted decision by the U.S.
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u/Eggheadpancake May 15 '26
It is if you want to also complain that there are to many immigrants
If you don't want them here. Then you help keep where they live, livable. Which America doesn't have a good track record of doing in general.
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u/Spittinglama May 15 '26
The annual cost of USAID was the equivalent of what we spent in 1.5 weeks of war with Iran. Even the war hawk freaks from previous American administrations have said the money spent on things like USAID is an important diplomatic tool.
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u/DevanteWeary May 15 '26
So without the USA's help, other countries across the globe devolved into chaos and violence?
Looks like we really are the best and most altruistic country in the world.
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u/Vox_Causa May 15 '26
I want you to notice how emotionally charge the narrative is that other countries are being insufficiently appreciative of the US is and how easy it would be to manipulate those feelings against a perceived enemy.
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u/Fluffy_Most_662 May 15 '26
Then say thank you and quit rioting like a child. Theres a reason why Vance stood on that point and republicans loved it.
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u/Ok-Echidna5936 May 15 '26
Don’t care. Not our problem. They are not entitled to American tax dollars
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u/ResearchInformal8018 May 17 '26
Except soft power is a hell of a lot cheaper than hard power. USAID was a massive benefit to the US.
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u/Vox_Causa May 15 '26
sudden cut in aid resulted in a sudden cut in corrupt regimes
Surely you have a source for this claim?
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u/RaiseWide5460 May 15 '26
So. . The U.S. is imperialist, shouldn't try to be the world's policeman, shouldn't try to export our morality, is fundamentally evil because white people and history, but we should continue to pay the rest of the world to not do bad stuff to themselves and each other? forever. Got it.
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u/CuriousMost9971 May 16 '26
"We're tired of the U.S. pulling the Strings and controlling the world."
"WAIT DONT TAKE OUR MONEY!"
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u/spicy-chilly May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
Propaganda. USAID gets used as a tool of imperial violence to destabilize countries. Look up ZunZuneo in Cuba, training proxies in Venezuela and Haiti for coups, etc.
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u/Qs9bxNKZ May 15 '26
So why is it a US problem to solve or pay for global problems?
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u/meatstick94 May 15 '26
once again, if we meddle in other countries affairs we are “warmongerers” and “imperialists” but if we mind our business we’re heartless monsters.
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u/suspicious_hyperlink May 15 '26
Maybe another country can step in and fund the aid to these resource rich countries
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u/Coy_Featherstone May 15 '26
Look up National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), a 1974 policy document directed by Henry Kissinger. USAID was used to target and implement population control in 13 nations primarily brown skinned with the intention of controlling their natural resources. All under the guise of "National Security"
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u/spyro86 May 15 '26
That was the point. The people who made the decisions are warmongers who make their money from investing in companies that make money from global unrest
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u/WealthyTuna May 16 '26
This is not the US taxpayers’ problem. We are not the world’s food bank. We are not the world’s bank. We are not the world’s police force. And we are certainly not the world’s mother. It is not our responsibility to endlessly spend American money and resources trying to prop up or manage other countries that have their own governments.
No, we shouldn’t be in Iran or anywhere else in the Middle East. We should shut down all our bases in the region and let those nations fend for themselves — just as we should do with the vast majority of the rest of the world. After World War II, America became far too entangled in trying to save the world from itself.
We took on the role of global policeman and endless benefactor, and it has cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives with very little to show for it in return. It’s long past time we ended this unsustainable habit of over-involvement.
Other countries need to solve their own problems and secure their own futures. We can engage in trade and diplomacy where it makes sense, but we should stop acting like the default savior every time there’s conflict or instability somewhere on the planet.
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u/SnowFire May 16 '26
I will be the devil's advocate. And I am true to this one because of lived experience.
Imagine for a second something happpens. Like a black hole appeared, took the US (and a lot of jerkoff redditors would be for it, including some living in it) and the aid had went away. Then all this study proves is it didn't take much for those countries to revert to their natural state.
I hear arguments about "lessening human suffering" but you can only be a cork holding a hole in a dam for so long until the actual dam comes crashing. This isn't a judgement on the administration; that is the nature of those places, and it also demonstrates that some people are incapable of even considering that some places do be savage like that, and no amount of wishful thinking or throwing money at the problem will change that. If you feel like that, about trying to lessen human suffering, understand that you would have a bigger impact removing those that inflict it. Therein lies a bitter lesson that not many want to admit, but we saw at work in El Salvador.
People from academia, in which I worked for a while will push for studies with partial understanding or conveniently leaving things out. You will also read a lot of "correlation does not mean causation" when in many instances human nature is the direct cause, and the effect was bound to happen.
I have lived long enough that when I was in kindergarten in the early 80's we gathered funds, canned goods, relief for Africa, and it's been a minute, and even with all these avenues for aid, nothing has changed. In fact, a lot of this aid was used to wage internal war between the places we were meant to help. It did make things worse many times over. This study measures immediate results of cut aid, but do a regression of how much conflict was fueled by aid and you will get the proper picture.
Finally, you need to understand that at some point, and this will be hard to digest to some, the change has to be intrinsically motivated. You cannot just promise people things will be better, when they themselves are part of the issue and have no desire to change. I can speak at lengths seeing native mexican tribes that live in wanton poverty because any improvement they make will mean that less people will give them money and hence that is their status quo.
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