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.
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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.
aug 19, 2025, 12:03 am • 3 0 • view
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
aug 19, 2025, 12:19 am • 1 0 • view
Millions of people dying to destroy the US’s soft power (bribing governments is soft power) is a terrible trade
aug 19, 2025, 12:20 am • 1 0 • view
Bribing governments by aiding their administrations to stay in power is also directly fucking with the people's will in those countries.
aug 19, 2025, 12:22 am • 3 0 • view
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.
aug 19, 2025, 12:22 am • 3 0 • view
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
aug 19, 2025, 12:27 am • 1 0 • view
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.
aug 19, 2025, 12:29 am • 2 0 • view