1. How has USAID been used by the government of the United States through the years to meddle in other countries, mainly Brazil and other countries from Latin America?
USAID is infamous for funding political programs under the cover of human rights and democracy to meddle in the recipient country’s domestic affairs. This popularly takes the form of funding movements, including media projects, to expose alleged corruption in Latin American states. The purpose is to artificially generate a groundswell of grassroots opposition to incumbent governments through street protests and/or surprise election showings to bring about political change.
Some locals collaborating with these foreign-funded political projects sometimes become advisors or even figures in the more pro-American governments that replace the targeted ones. Therefore, USAID doesn’t just work to remove Latin American governments, it also sometimes provides trained advisors and personnel for the next governments. This makes it a premier weapon of US Hybrid Warfare in the hemisphere.
2. Does the end of USAID mean the end of US interference in other countries’ domestic affairs? Will they change their method instead?
New Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that he’s the acting administrator of USAID as it goes through radical reforms. Per Trump’s Executive Order suspending foreign aid for 90 days, with the exception of emergency humanitarian aid, an assessment is taking place to determine their efficiency and consistency with policy. Accordingly, many programs dealing with socio-cultural issues like LGBT will likely be cut, while foreign media funding and the training of foreign political cadres will likely continue.
3. How do you evaluate Trump’s decision to end USAID?
USAID made sense from the perspective of older American interests when it was first founded. Still, it was hijacked by liberal-globalist ideologues to proselytise radical socio-cultural policies that don’t objectively align with the US national interests. Examples of the most ridiculous programs are being shared across X. Many Americans are enraged to discover what they were funding and surprised that a lot of the money also went to domestic “NGOs” for implementing these projects.
Ending USAID was necessary since that’s the only way to implement the radical reforms that the Trump Administration envisages, which are most immediately reducing government expenditures via the Elon Musk-led “Department Of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) and then realigning those that remain with policy. Many employees are also diehard ideological opponents of Trump and all that he represents, so keeping them around runs the risk that they’d try to sabotage his second term like they did his first one.
What’s essentially happening is that Trump 2.0 entered power with a detailed plan for purging hostile elements of the US “deep state”, which refers in this context to its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, with some also including its administrative and others. USAID was a significant component of the US power structure for decades before Trump’s second term, so dismantling it is considered crucial for the success of his team’s foreign policy.
4. Some US politicians have criticised the Trump Administration’s reforms of federal agencies, fearing that confidential information might leak out and even describing the overall gist of what’s going on as a “serious threat to national security”. What do they fear? Like Musk mentioned, is this a sign of USAID’s connection with the CIA?
Not every USAID employee and project is connected to the CIA. Still, the CIA does indeed sometimes employ the aforesaid in advance of its goals due to the relative ease with which their democracy and human rights covers enable US spies to infiltrate and/or destabilise foreign countries. Those criticising Trump’s reforms are elements of the US power structure who stand to lose from his and Musk’s campaign to expose irresponsible government spending and political meddling abroad.
Some of them do have a point, namely that innocent USAID employees might be suspected of being spies, and this could lead to credible threats against them. Still, the Trump Administration is willing to risk those consequences to pursue its ambitious reform campaign. Purging USAID, the State Department, and the “deep state” more broadly is the only way to prevent them from sabotaging Trump’s foreign policy the second time around, which he envisages revolutionising the US relations with the world.
Excerpts from this interview were published in Sputnik Brasil’s report titled “'Arma principal da guerra híbrida': o que muda na política externa dos EUA com o fim da USAID?”
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