My thoughts on the dismantling of USAID

(apologies in advance if these thoughts are a bit unstructured. tapping this out on a short flight to San Fran)

USAID has officially been dismantled. Here are a few apolitical thoughts on what this means for the world and the USA.

For context, USAID is the government agency responsible for providing foreign aid and development assistance to promote economic growth, democracy, health, and humanitarian relief worldwide. In other words, its mission is to advance U.S. national security and economic interests through "soft power."

It's had some successes - such as helping to implement PEPFAR which has saved millions of lives from HIV/AIDS. It's also had some failures - such as the Afghanistan reconstruction.

It's easy to assess that USAID's efforts globally have had mixed results, but it's also important to contextualize any failures through a lens that understands just how hard and complex those missions were. In many ways, each one of them was a "moonshot," with plenty of opportunity to fail.

So what do you do? Obviously Silicon Valley doesn't mind failure (one could even argue that they don't even mind total fiscal mismanagement... but I digress). So it's interesting that someone like Musk, who famously embraces failure in his pursuit of amazing innovation, has viewed the agency through a different lens.

We must understand that dismantling USAID is a retreat from the notion of soft power. But make no mistake - I don't think this saves us any money in the long-term, because it will force us to invest even more aggressively in "hard power."

Hard power and soft power are two sides of the same coin when it comes to global influence. Hard power is about military force, coercion, and economic sanctions—getting results through pressure or direct action. Soft power, on the other hand, is about winning hearts and minds through diplomacy, culture, and economic aid.

While serving as Secretary of Defense, General Mattis once said "if you don't fund the State Department fully, then I'm going to need to buy more ammunition." This was an acknowledgment of the important balance of soft and hard power.

USAID's mission is in many ways a long-term bet (I use that term specifically, because bets always have uncertain outcomes) on increasing long-term stability, thus reducing the need for military intervention.

How? Well, I've seen first hand the role economic disempowerment has in the radicalization of youth, in particular young men. I can still recall the moment I realized that half the gunfights we got into in Afghanistan weren't with ideologically motivated Taliban, but teenage boys willing to fight Americans for a few extra bucks. But this desperation almost assuredly led to their eventual radicalization, because suddenly they had purpose, and purpose is a powerful drug.

It's fairly easy to trace the roots of radicalism in groups like ISIS, Boko Haram, Latin American gangs, and others to economic disenfranchisement. Even the radicalized left- and right-wing fringe of American society is the result of an America increasingly split between the haves and have nots.

So I think all of the below can be true at the same time:

1. USAID was bureaucratic and inefficient and in need of an overhaul
2. It's in America's long-term security and economic interest to invest in soft-power around the globe.
3. It's in America's long-term interest to invest in economic and democratic projects within our own American communities
4. Holding USAID to a 'zero-fail' standard on its complex mission is the wrong litmus test (but I cannot articulate at the moment what the right one is)
5. This move is damaging to the USA's reputation in global regions where we want to have influence
6. Simultaneously, this move opens the door to China and Russia to move in and fill the soft power vacuum (something China has already been investing in very aggressively for the last decade). This strengthens them on the global stage while isolating us.
7. The wholesale dismantling of an entire agency causes tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of years (literally) of international aid experience to evaporate, and 95% of these folks will not return to the work if America decides to change course in a future administration. This is an "extinction level event" that will also reverberate throughout the many INGOs that operate in partnership with USAID. In other words, we will have abandoned soft power for one to two decades.

I'm a huge believer and proponent of evolution and change within organizations. I'm in support of taking a critical eye to any government agency. We should constantly re-evaluate departments and agencies to ensure that their mission and objectives are still relevant, that their strategies and tactics are effective, and that their creating a return for the American taxpayer.

And I believe that these evaluations may at times call for radical, apolitical change. My fear here is that with USAID a thoughtful evaluation was not done, alternative "evolutions" were not explored, and the consequence will be that we've painted ourselves into a corner that leaves few options to rethink what we've done.

As a final note, the impacts of the move will more likely be felt by the baby in Sudan that will die of dehydration and hunger today because of a program that was cancelled without notice, than it will be in your tax bill. Because make no mistake, USAID's $50 billion budget won't suddenly evaporate from Congress's appropriations. That's way too much pork to give up. Instead, it'll be heaped into the military's nearly $1 trillion budget.

Because, as Mattis said, they're going to need more ammunition.