Fall of a Sacred Cow

For decades, USAID has been less about aid and more about influence with a legacy of covert interventions, strategic funding and hidden agendas that deserve an unceremonious end.

Let’s begin with a question most media outlets are afraid to ask? Why are Donald Trump and Musk Are Right to Dismantle USAID? For one, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been draped in the sanctimonious garb of humanitarianism.

It is an organization that speaks in the language of development, democracy, and goodwill while often acting as a vehicle for strategic meddling. If Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s latest push to dismantle USAID is anything, it is not merely an assault on a bureaucratic sacred cow but the unmasking of an instrument that has, time and again, blurred the line between charity and covert geopolitical gamesmanship.

USAID was founded in 1961 during the Kennedy era, when Washington’s Cold War paranoia caused it to shape the world in its image. As the humanitarian face of American influence, it provided economic aid, infrastructure development and disaster relief. That was its surface image. Beneath that veneer, it became a vessel for nefarious operations, a financial conduit for intelligence activities and an indispensable tool in America’s ideological battles abroad.

Nowhere was this duplicity more evident than in its longstanding entanglements with the Central Intelligence Agency. Throughout the 20th century, USAID was used as a front for CIA-backed initiatives that destabilized governments deemed unfriendly to American interests. In the 1960s and 70s, its funds helped bankroll covert operations in Chile, where Salvador Allende’s socialist government was systematically undermined. It played a similar role in Guatemala, where its development programs conveniently overlapped with counterinsurgency efforts aimed at suppressing leftist movements.

Even as the Cold War ended, USAID did not shed its clandestine skin. The organization remained deeply involved in funding civil society groups that aligned with American interests while sidelining those that did not. In Cuba, for instance, USAID launched the now-infamous ZunZuneo program - a clandestine attempt to create a Cuban Twitter-like network to foment dissent against the Castro regime. More recently, it has funnelled millions into pro-democracy movements in Venezuela, conveniently coinciding with Washington’s efforts to weaken Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power.

For those who might dismiss these examples as relics of a bygone era, consider the agency’s activities in India. Ostensibly aimed at promoting economic development and public health, USAID’s funding in India has raised eyebrows for its opacity and strategic motivations. The agency has poured millions into non-governmental organizations (NGOs) under the pretext of improving civil liberties and human rights. But scratch the surface, and a different picture emerges: a well-oiled machine that selectively funds groups critical of the Indian government while ignoring those that challenge American interests in the region. From supporting environmental groups that oppose coal projects crucial to India’s energy security to funding investigative journalism initiatives that disproportionately target certain political factions, USAID’s role in India has been less about altruism and more about influence.

Critics will argue that shutting down USAID will leave a vacuum in global development efforts. They will claim that it will cede influence to China, which has aggressively expanded its Belt and Road Initiative to fund infrastructure projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But this assumes that USAID has been a force for good, rather than a Trojan horse for American interventionism. In reality, much of the world has grown increasingly wary of the organization’s motives.

What Trump and Musk have done is force a long-overdue conversation about the nature of American foreign aid. For too long, USAID has functioned under the assumption that development and soft-power projection are interchangeable. That illusion is now crumbling. And perhaps, in its place, the world might see something genuinely revolutionary - aid that is not a mask for manipulation, but a true extension of goodwill. It is about time.