USAID was also one of our most lucrative levers of control. If the IMF blew up that would cause a lot of death but probably be for the better. 'The West's good will being the single point of failure is not a good structure for any organization that is supposed to help people in any real way.
Doing lots of good while advancing the US’s interests is still good even if the underlying motivation is cynical. USAID was one of the US’s best programs for soft power and actually helping people. Dismantling it without a plan on how to continue helping people is literally genocical
We didn't just use it for soft power. We literally use that money to pay cyber warfare against parties we don't like in countries that we want in our control.
The United States doesn't just give that money to countries and walk away. It gives it to the administration we want in power with the exclusive mandate that they do what we want them to do at all times otherwise the money stops. That's extortion. Not soft power.
There were also hundreds of aid workers employed by USAID who spent their lives helping people. The CIA and state department being bastards is not an argument for dismantling USAID, it’s an argument for dismantling the CIA and reigning in the state department
Millions of people dying to destroy the US’s soft power (bribing governments is soft power) is a terrible trade
Bribing governments by aiding their administrations to stay in power is also directly fucking with the people's will in those countries.
A lot of them we are in fact the cause of the problems that they have and are only giving them the lifelines we do because it entrenches our power and keeps them from being capable of building something capable of supporting themselves.
Which is a good argument for a slow pullout or reorganizing of aid priorities, not for destruction with no plan on how to help those left in the aftermath. My argument is that USAID despite its flaws is one of the few good things that the US does in the world. Could of course be better
I just personally don't believe that there is ever a world in which the CIA isn't the hand in the glove of such programs w/o ostensibly cutting the head off the snake of the permanent deep state as a whole. But yeah; obliterating USAID and keeping the CIA was intensely suboptimal.