Papyrus Walk a miscellany of musings

US Aid: Strategic Transactionalism

The US Government is showing all the compassion of a loan shark, where the Rubio Rule rules—”What’s in it for me?” Tragically, any international social capital the U.S. built over the past 80 years has been torched in a bonfire of pointless cruelty.

Yesterday, Politico published a draft document obtained from a government aide describing a revamped USAID. It is entirely about the U.S.—safer, stronger, more prosperous—with the benefits to others only arising en passant, if at all.

According to the document, international assistance will focus on investments that deliver “first-order benefits back home [in the U.S.]”. That is, there must be an immediate, directly attributable gain to the U.S. from it’s humanitarian “investment”. This is in marked contrast to the successful decades of soft power developed by the U.S. after World War II.

Global Health would sit in a new agency for International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA).

“By responding rapidly to natural disasters, preventing famines, containing disease outbreaks, and securing peace, IHA would demonstrate American values, prevent instability that could threaten our interests, distinguish ourselves from our geo-political adversaries (such as China), enhance U.S. leadership on the global stage, and increase safety at home.”

That sounds great! I wonder what those Amercian values are? They are not the values of compassion or empathy, nor the values established by the U.S. in the international human rights instrument. Those international values established by the U.S. are the ones that the Trump Administration has “put through the wood chipper”.

The values must be those of “strategic transactionalism”. This is my newly minted term that refers to the idea that no agreement with the U.S. can be trusted because it has shown itself to have no regard for such things. Agreements, contracts, and treaties exist only to the extent that the administration chooses to honour them. Here today, gone tomorrow.

What’s in it for me?

According to the document, “in all cases, countries would have to demonstrate high levels of “commitment” to be eligible for any U.S. assistance engagement”.

“High levels of ‘commitment’” is code in the world of crime bosses and authoritarian leaders for absolute subjugation. A country will do what it is told, when it is told—without question. Give up resources. Cede Territory. Treat some people as less worthy than others.

“Success would be measured by concrete metrics: lives saved, outbreaks of infectious diseases contained, pandemic prevented, famines averted, and measurable increases in in positive perception of the United States in emerging markets.”

The irony of this is that things like “lives saved” is exactly what was being measured before the conflagration. The new metric appears to be “measurable increases in positive perception of the United States in emerging markets”.

Rest assured, any positive perception of the U.S. is now only a form of “strategic transactionalism”. It is performative because money is still money, but anything else from the US risks bully, bluster, and betrayal.

Resistance is necessary

I complain. A lot. I am not a happy person. But you will never die wondering what I thought or where I stood. Still, complaining isn’t enough, and whinging can feel futile.

The Borg and the rising authoritarian states of the 21st century want you to believe that “resistance is futile.” It isn’t. Resistance is not only necessary; resistance is an obligation.

Small acts of everyday resistance can raise the costs of authoritarianism so high the system collapses. In the late Soviet Union, acts of passive resistance—from workers deliberately slowing down production to citizens openly defying censorship laws—contributed to the erosion of state control. These acts of everyday resistance helped to chip away at the crumbling foundations. Authoritarian regimes rely on compliance to function. When enough people withdraw their cooperation, inefficiency turns into paralysis, and paralysis into collapse. It becomes so grindingly inefficient and ineffective that it fails. The unwillingness of the people to work in the interests of an illegitimate state is that state’s undoing.

Small acts of everyday resistance need not rise to criminality. There are ways of resisting that work, that keep the pressure up, and that allow you to control your level of exposure.

The power of the authoritarian state does not lie in compliance alone. It also lies in isolation—your sense of being alone in your unhappiness. Why do you think the Chinese state is so quick to remove online complaints and hide protests? The protest is not the problem. The protest’s effect is letting others know they are not alone in their unhappiness. And if you do not feel alone, you are also more likely to engage in small acts of everyday resistance.

Work to rule is a classic form of everyday resistance. This tactic has been historically effective in labour movements, such as the bureaucratic slowdowns under oppressive regimes, where workers deliberately followed every regulation to the letter to hinder authoritarian efficiency. Do your job. To the letter. No more. No less. When only one person works to rule, they are a miserable, unhelpful arse. When large numbers of people work to rule, unhappiness shows. It is palpable. In a government department that is engaging in immoral and cruel behaviour (“within the law”), you can slow it down, throw sand in the gearbox, and make it less cruel by being less effective and less efficient.

In the U.S., ICE agents could do their jobs—badly. Administrative staff supporting ICE agents can slow things down by moving paper at an excruciatingly necessary pace. The word “expedite” should be struck from the vocabulary.

Singapore in the late ’80s and ’90s was a highly (overly) regulated society. Many would say it has persisted. But in the ’90s, chewing gum became a tool of everyday resistance. People would stick it over the door sensors on the MRT trains. The doors couldn’t close, and it would bring the system to a grinding halt. The act was small, non-specific in its target, and (back then) unidentifiable.

Posters, protests, badges, public art, and internet memes have all been used to demonstrate everyday resistance. Remembering when the state wants to forget or reimagine a truth is a powerful corrective. Archive the truth on the internet.

In a digital age, careful choices about how and when to use devices, credit cards, and online accounts can disrupt data collection and tracking. Using burner phones where you can get them, paying with cash instead of cards, and setting up anonymous online accounts are small but effective ways to limit surveillance and maintain privacy. Resistance is not about criminality; it is about the right to privacy, the freedom to think, and the quiet power of refusing to comply—to engage in cruelty. Even small acts of everyday resistance remind others they are not alone.

It is possible to resist and chew gum at the same time.

Resources:

If you want some ideas, have a look at these two.

The Nonviolent Action Database – A collection of case studies on successful resistance;
Libcom.org’s Activism & Protest section – Offers guides on organising and direct action.

Aid cruelty is not an opportunity

I have followed with genuine interest the responses of some sub-Saharan African (SSA) writers to the collapse of foreign aid in 2025. Whether they reside in SSA or enjoy a diasporic life in the Global North, they have argued that the loss may be an opportunity gifted to the Global South. While millions will die, SSA will at last be able to throw off the multi-billion dollar shackles to which it was so unwillingly chained. How awful to have been placed in the position of choosing between the “n”-word—“no”—and the “y”-word—“Yes!”—when offered money.

The tenor of the writing suggests that in making the offer of aid, countries in the Global South were stripped of agency. They could only rediscover agency when they were stripped of the money. The evil aid system by which the Global North klept [sic] them enthralled has at last been dismantled. The opportunity, long denied, has finally emerged to build health and development systems that “work for Africa”.

You will, I hope, forgive me if I do not join that cheer squad or Greek chorus.

In left-wing politics, there is an aphorism that it is better to suffer exploitation than starvation. To cheer unemployment for the liberating opportunities it provides from the excesses of exploitative capital is as short-sighted as it is stupid. That does not mean exploitation is acceptable. It is not. It must be resisted and fought. But starvation is not the solution.

If foreign aid was a shackle, its sudden removal should be freeing. But stripping away the existing system does not automatically lead to something better. Stretched governments cannot replace the wreckage of collapsed health programs overnight. What may look like liberation on paper is abandonment. A just transition requires negotiation and genuine collaboration. It requires time.

If the goal was to end aid, donor countries could have managed future aid through a phased reduction. The process could include such things as a shift to loans on beneficial terms combined with early debt management and relief. The development of capacity, systems, and infrastructure would need to be a part of it.

When you reach into the water to remove a life-jacket from a drowning man, you have not provided him with an opportunity to learn to swim, nor have you (passively) “let him die”. You have killed him. He may bob above the waves for a few minutes, even an hour. You may helpfully scan the horizon for a bit of passing flotsam for him to cling to. But when exhaustion finally overwhelms him, and he slips beneath the surface, you are a murderer.

When, with the snap of the fingers, a country closes HIV antiretroviral programs—leaving the drugs to rot and expire in warehouses and shop lots—it has not (passively) let people living with HIV/AIDS die. The donor country condemned them to death and waited.

The personal relationship with the individual drowning and the anonymous one with the hundreds of thousands of people on foreign-aid-funded antiretroviral does not change the moral calculus of the death, and it does not mitigate the callousness and wanton cruelty of the murder.

Aid programs are not light switches that donor countries can (or should) turn off on a whim. Cutting funding overnight destroys systems that took decades to build, leaving chaos in their place. The systems may not have been perfect; they may have needed greater local ownership in the design; they may have supported corruption. However, if the goal is genuine self-reliance, the responsible course is a phased, predictable transition that allows for capacity-building, infrastructure development, and systems design and refinement.

Millions have been condemned to death, others to lives of increased hardship and misery. If donor nations refuse to acknowledge their historical responsibility, then at the very least, they must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions today.

The world’s wealthiest countries’ substantial and immediate reduction in foreign aid turns their backs on the international human rights, their international obligations to support the SDG, and the obligation to leave no one behind. The United States (U.S.) led the pack when they put USAID “through the wood chipper”, but others have followed.

“The UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium have announced the largest cuts in [overseas development assistance] ODA history, and the European Commission, France and Germany are expected to follow soon. These cuts are not just minor shifts, but cliffs: at least USD 60 billion by USA and GBP 6 billion by the UK, EUR 8 billion over four years (2025-2028) by the Netherlands, and a possible EUR 20 billion by Germany.”

What is the unifying historical theme of these donor countries? Empire. They did not build their wealth on ingenuity or fair trade alone. Conquest, forced labour, and resource theft was there. They racialised the right to development. The UK drained its colonies of raw materials while imposing economic structures that prioritised British interests over local development. Belgium’s rule over the Congo was so extractive and brutal that its legacy still echoes in governance failures and economic instability today. France has reluctantly and only recently relinquished control over its former colonies, where it maintained economic dominance through ‘Françafrique’ policies that benefited Paris over Dakar.

Slashing aid is not an opportunity. It is abandonment. Do not let them disguise it as anything else. Do not allow the wealthy nations to pat themselves on the back for their cruelty. It is an outrage, and it must be named as such.

The outrage does not erase the agency of recipient countries that agreed to destructive conditionalities attached to receiving aid. It does not forgive the naked corruption that sometimes occurs. It does not excuse the capacity of poor countries to exploit their even poorer neighbours, nor the exploitation of social stratification within their societies.

But none of these realities justify the wholesale destruction of life-saving programs without a plan, without accountability, and without justice. Nations that built their wealth through exploitation cannot now walk away and abandon vulnerable countries, whether they were directly plundered by them or by others. If they do not uphold their obligations, civil society, recipient governments, and international institutions should demand an ethical transition rather than an overnight abandonment that costs millions of lives. Anything less is complicity in death.

The Great Foreign Aid Experiment

Foreign aid is bad. It’s bureaucratic, top-down, inefficient, promotes corruption and dependence, and does not get to where it’s needed. That has been the common refrain. A recent, novel addition to those complaints is that aid does not return sufficient economic value to the donor. Now, thanks to the US government’s dramatic shift in foreign aid, we have a natural experiment to test the hypothesis: no more counterfactual models, economic pontification, and ivory tower theorising. We’re going to get the data!

Inflation-adjusted global aid transfers have increased steadily from US$35 Billion in 1960 to $190 Billion in 2021. In that time, alongside broader economic and technological advancements, we have seen dramatic global improvements in infant and child mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy, and extreme poverty rates.

From 1961 to 2024, the general, global approach to foreign aid was shaped by the Kennedy administration’s passage of the Foreign Assistance Act (1961). Kennedy’s approach marked a shift from ad hoc post-WWII aid programs to a structured, long-term commitment to development. Its purpose was “[t]o promote the foreign policy, security, and general welfare of the United States by assisting peoples of the world in their efforts toward economic development and internal and external security, and for other purposes.” The bill reorganised US aid and created the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Since then, global approaches to foreign aid have evolved, especially after the Cold War, incorporating humanitarian assistance, economic development, and global health initiatives.

While approaches to foreign aid have evolved since the early 1960s, there have been persistent calls for radically restructuring aid. The general nature of the complaint has changed little. Aid is bureaucratic, top-down, inefficient, promotes corruption, and does not get to where it is needed: Bauer (Dissent on Development, 1976), Hancock (Lords of Poverty, 1989), Maren (The Road to Hell, 1997), Sogge (Give and Take, 2002), Easterly (White Man’s Burden, 2006), Moyo (Dead Aid, 2009), and Deaton (The Great Escape, 2014).

Thanks to the new Trump presidency, we will have an unexpected and dramatic test of the value of aid. He gave us a quasi-experimental (natural experiment) test. One of the many Executive Orders he signed on inauguration day was “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid”. He determined that:

“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilise world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

We can dismiss any notion of equipoise, the idea that there is some real or dramatic doubt about the direction of effect. The great bottom line (spoiler alert!): people will suffer and die.

As the modern masters of sprawling cruelty, the US Government set about withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars of aid. By the 28th of March (one month and one-week post-inauguration), the impact of the terminated funding is already affecting direct and indirect services to millions of people in low- and middle-income countries. The effects are so interconnected and global that the only real question is not “Will it be bad?” but “How bad will it be”?

Infectious diseases, big (HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria) and small (Onchocerciasis, Filariasis,…) will lose prevention, treatment and management funding. Maternal and child health services, including sexual and reproductive services, have been gutted. Multilater, UN agencies have lost funding, as have international NGOs, national NGOs, and small civil society organisations.

But perhaps we should look at the cup half full and celebrate. The grand experiment is finally here. For decades, sceptics have argued that aid is ineffective, stifles self-sufficiency, entrenches corruption, and moves the needle of human progress insufficiently far. Now, at last, we will see an aid-free world through a lens of unvarnished reality. No more speculation, no more hypothetical debates. The world’s poorest countries will become their own control group.

The beauty of the US experiment is its scope. Unlike carefully designed studies of aid effectiveness from behavioural economics labs—where researchers squabble over metrics, counterfactuals, and model assumptions—this will be a real-world, systemic demonstration.

And of course, when the numbers start rolling in—the maternal deaths, the malnutrition rates, the outbreaks of diseases once thought to be on the retreat—there will be no shortage of explanations.

There is nothing surgical about the US Government cuts to aid, nor are they simply recalibration. They have declared ideological war against the world’s most vulnerable, and we will count the consequences in human lives.

If the sceptics were right, we should see a golden age of self-reliance and local ingenuity, unshackled from the oppressive hand of foreign assistance. If they were wrong—well, the numbers will tell their own story.

Will anyone care to listen?