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USAID inspector fired after revealing nearly $500m in food aid was about to spoil
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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Tens of millions of real live human beings who depended on the $40 Billion in USAID, for safe food, clean water, and medications have already started dying, literally all around the world. The death toll is going to be astronomical.
Sounds like the most extreme of the climate and animal rights activists are about to get a dream come true.
Talking gleefully about such things as people die is not in especially good taste.
Well conservation and animal welfare efforts are funded by USAID... So species are still going to be killed off
I'm sure PETA will continue to do their part as well.
This is going to sound terribly cold but why is the US the only country capable of stepping up to help these failed states feed their own citizens? Isn’t any other country helping? And why is it falling solely on the US instead of an international consortium?
The United Nations collectively runs a lot of aid programs. The EU and China also independently run aid programs. The US is far from being the sole provider of aid.
Multiple countries provide aid, but all these programs always operate on tighter budgets than they would like. So a big contributor suddenly pulling out is going to leave gaps that are hard for other groups to fill on short notice. Even if the US needs to reduce aid spending to balance the budget, it should be done gradually with coordination of other groups to best preserve coverage. Acting impulsively leads to suffering that could potentially be avoided with a more level-headed change.
To be fair, the intention of this is not to balance the budget. I think you nailed the motivation: acting impulsively to lead to suffering that could be avoided.
It is an incredibly fair question, and part (not all for sure) but part of the reason is the United States offered, both because it's a traditionally liberal Democracy, but also because it's wanted to project the soft power, that comes with donating Billions in aid to nation which it hope will look upon the US favorably when it come to Trade & Security negotiations. It's serves the US to project and maintain this soft power, and it assists Tyrants and Democratically elected governments all across the world assist their own citizens, for "free". Some nations have become so dependent on the "free" USAID it's not even an afterthought in it's own budgetary process, and for most of the USAID recipients they simply cannot make up the financial shortfall to fund these programs on a dime, most couldn't ever pay for these programs out of their own budgets ever. Some countries take advantage of the US, countries who can easily pay for the same services that USAID funding provides, but would choose not to because when put to the choice, they'd choose to let their people suffer.
Another commenter gave the main point but there's more: Treaties. There's a lot of treaties that only work because nearly every county signed on to them and the reason why they signed on is because of promises of aid... USAID.
Things like the Berne Convention that guarantee that countries will enforce copyright law. It's because of that treaty that it doesn't really matter where you upload pirated content... It'll still be taken down because all these countries (with Internet) signed on.
If there's nothing like USAID to help these countries they will likely pull out of the Berne Convention and other treaties and start pirating (and selling) content from other countries like the US.
Free movies from wherever for all citizens! Pirate anything and everything! Use our country's YouTube and TikTok equivalents and you'll never have to worry about your content being taken down!
There's other things like not developing weapons of mass destruction, not working with our enemies, providing for the safety of our citizens that visit, etc that will all likely go away along with USAID.