Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fed the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – the federal body responsible for foreign aid provision – through a woodchipper.
The Democrats and the liberal establishment are up in arms. But while we communists recognise Donald Trump’s cynical motives for dismantling USAID, what his funding freeze has exposed is the real nature of this ‘humanitarian’ CIA front for pushing US imperialism’s ‘soft power’.
For weeks, Musk had been foreshadowing USAID’s fate, calling it “beyond repair” and not merely an “apple with a worm in it”, but a “ball of worms”.
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.
Could gone to some great parties.
Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
Late on Friday 31 January, he sent a strike team of “cocksure young engineers” from DOGE to seize control of USAID’s computer systems and classified data. The White House confirmed Musk acted with its blessing; while Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who has been made acting head of USAID) justified the clearout on the grounds that the agency was a waste of money, and its staff were guilty of “rank insubordination”.
The Democrats have decried Musk’s “power-grab”, with New Jersey Senator Andy Kim (who previously worked for the agency) posting on social media:
“[USAID is] a foreign policy tool with bipartisan origins that is critical in this dangerous global environment. Gutting it means gutting our ability to compete and keep America safe” [our emphasis].
This is curious wording for an organisation that is supposedly humanitarian in its objectives. Such pretensions were endorsed by Vermont Senator and self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who condemned Musk’s operation:
“Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, is dismantling USAID, which feeds the poorest children on earth… This is oligarchy at its worst.”
Sanders (who also voted to confirm notorious reactionary Rubio as Secretary of State) utterly misrepresents the real purpose of USAID. He and other Democrats are defending a tool of US imperialist meddling. The sudden funding crisis faced by ‘independent media’ outlets and so-called ‘civil society’ groups in many countries is now exposing this fact.
Independent media: paid for by Uncle Sam
According to a leaked memo, USAID funded 6,200 journalists, 707 non-state news outlets and 279 media-sector civil society organisations in 2023. A statement by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) protested that axing USAID would “create a vacuum that plays into the hands of propagandists and authoritarian states” [our emphasis].
According to RSF, when USAID gives money to journalists, it is not paying for propaganda but simply promoting the “free flow of information”. It just so happens that the ‘independent’ platforms on USAID’s portfolio all push Washington’s foreign policy agenda and stir up dissent against its enemies.
For instance, 90 percent of Ukrainian media reportedly survives on grants, mostly from USAID – which begs the question of how they can be considered ‘independent’. According to ‘journalism watchdog’ Detector Media, Trump’s aid freeze has jeopardised “three decades of work and increasing threats to Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation” (our emphasis).
Similarly, Russian opposition media has been thrown into disarray. According to one such outlet (The Bell): “Most exiled Russian NGOs and media rely on grants as their major—and sometimes sole—source of funding, with a significant chunk coming from Washington.” Here we have confirmation, from the horse’s mouth, that Russia’s liberal opposition is a paid stooge of US imperialism.
USAID is also an important sponsor of the counter-revolutionary gusano press, which has now been dealt a hard blow.
For example, Miama-based CubaNet (which received $500,000 from USAID in 2024 to engage “on-island young Cubans through objective and uncensored multimedia journalism”) and Madrid-based Diario de Cuba have both been forced to publish begging letters online, seeking donations from readers to remain afloat.
Many such websites will be forced to close. The Miami Herald, a Trump-supporting Cuban exile mouthpiece, expressed its keen sense of betrayal at the attack on USAID, writing that: “Trump’s foreign aid cuts are a boon for dictators in China, Venezuela and Cuba”.
Evidently, such platforms are not opposed to propaganda per se, just the idea of the pro-US propagandists losing their market lead.
NGOs, ‘civil society’ and soft power
As an instrument of American ‘soft power’, USAID has heavily invested in ‘Non-Government Organisations’ (NGOs) over the years. These seemingly benign bodies, which emphasise ‘human rights’, ‘democracy’, and other such virtues, face collapse now that Trump has cut the puppet strings.
According to a 5 February report on the (US-state-funded) Voice of America website, USAID earmarked $211 million for Venezuela (which remains under heavy US sanctions that starve the workers and poor), including $33 million for “democracy, human rights and governance” watchdog groups.
The leader of one such group (which received 75 percent of its funding from the USA) complained that: “Trump is doing what Maduro has not been able to do – choking civil society.”
Using taxpayer dollars to build up ‘civil society’ (i.e. a base of anti-government opposition) is a longstanding imperialist policy in Latin America. That many of these ‘democratic’, middle-class, civil society groups are now plunged into crisis exposes precisely that they are, by and large, little more than vectors for US imperialist interests. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a public letter in 2023 demanding that then-US President Joe Biden pull USAID funds from subversive groups working against his government. This was not mere paranoia.
For instance, from 1996 to 2003, USAID awarded the “sustainable development” firm Chemonics International a $15 million contract to implement a “Democratic Development and Citizen Participation” programme in Bolivia, to rally support for the pro-US President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
At the same time, it sought to undermine support for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party from workers and peasants opposed to the exploitation of Bolivia’s rich mineral reserves by international corporations.
Following the 2006 victory of President Evo Morales and the MAS in Bolivia, the number of USAID-sponsored NGOs in the country tripled from 600 to 2,000 and suddenly became very interested in Bolivia’s human rights and environmental record. Morales (quite rightly) kicked USAID out in 2013 for meddling in the country’s affairs.
USAID also has its tentacles wrapped around Eastern Europe, where Western-sponsored NGOs grew like moss after the fall of the USSR. They are all now panicking at the money drying up.
For instance, the Promo-LEX Association, a ‘pro-democracy and human rights NGO’ in Moldova, claims that USAID funds account for about 75-80 percent of its projects, which include monitoring elections, political financing and parliamentary oversight to combat “Russian interference”.
Its director, Ian Manole, warned ABC that compromising its operations could lead to “[an] anti-Western government [which] could affect Moldova’s European path and… significantly destabilize the whole of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region.”
Valeriu Pasa, chairman of the Chișinău-based think-tank WatchDog, pointed out that the US benefits “from us being more democratic and developed, ensuring we don’t turn into a Russian or Chinese colony.”
In other words: please don’t stop the right kind of political interference, or we’ll end up with the wrong kind of political interference!
The capacity of NGOs to exert pressure in Eastern Europe (with the excuse of combatting ‘Russian interference’) was illustrated last year in Romania. The USAID-funded NGO Context spread a claim that Kremlin-manipulated social media posts led to the victory of Călin Georgescu (an anti-NATO populist) in the first round of last year’s presidential elections.
On the strength of these flimsy allegations, the Constitutional Court annulled the results – apparently in the name of democracy.
Many USAID-sponsored NGOs cloak their real purpose behind identity politics, professing to support women’s rights, minority rights, LGBT rights, and so on. This has now been exploited to justify the agency being gutted, with Trump pledging to eradicate “woke” spending, and Musk deriding USAID as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists [sic].”
In fact, the veneer of liberation is nothing but a Trojan horse concealing USAID’s pro-imperialist lobbying; not to mention blunting opposition to pro-US regimes by funnelling the anger of workers and radical youth towards ‘apolitical’, single-issue operations dependent on western cash, cash which invariably corrupts young activists.
As sociologist James Petras writes of the explosion of foreign NGOs in the 1980s and 1990s:
“As outside money became available, NGOs proliferated, dividing communities into warring fiefdoms fighting to get a piece of the action. Each ‘grassroots activist’ cornered a new segment of the poor (women, young people from minorities, etc.) to set up a new NGO […] When millions are losing their jobs and poverty spreads to important swaths of the population NGOs engage in preventative action: they focus on ‘survival strategies’ not general strikes; they organize soup kitchens not mass demonstrations against food hoarders and […] US imperialism.”
Charity or blackmail?
USAID’s defenders point out that the agency is responsible for 42 percent of all global aid for healthcare, water provision, infrastructure and so on, which has now been thrown into disarray. This is the justification for ‘lefts’ like Sanders in lining up with the liberals to defend USAID and its allegedly ‘benevolent’ mission. However, the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace openly states the cynical logic underpinning this ‘humanitarian’ policy:
“The idea that U.S. foreign aid has been some sort of festival of generous charity disconnected from U.S. interests is laughable. Just look at the list of the largest recipients of U.S. aid— it is no coincidence they are almost all security partners or countries of security concern.”
This is presented as a positive, pragmatic defence of the agency’s work.
Historically, USAID has been deployed as a lever to force poor, aid-dependent countries to support Washington’s agenda. For instance, a 2006 UN study proved that USAID support correlated with Security Council votes in line with US policy. And when the Yemeni regime voted at the UN against a US-led intervention in the Gulf War, US ambassador Thomas Pickering walked over to the Yemeni Ambassador and told him: “That was the most expensive ‘No’ vote you ever cast”. Immediately, USAID ceased operations and funding in Yemen.
What worries the liberal wing of imperialism is not that people will suffer as a result of USAID being cut, but that America’s enemies might benefit politically from seeking to step in to alleviate that suffering. This was spelt out in a New York Times article:
“The fallout from the aid freeze is likely to reverberate geopolitically, giving American rivals, like China, a window of opportunity to present itself as a reliable partner.”
Much of the time, USAID humanitarianism amounts to an imperialist racket. In Iraq, Afghanistan Haiti, Ethiopia and elsewhere, USAID has increasingly contracted out humanitarian projects to such ‘private sector partners’ as Coca-Cola, Bechtel and DuPont (who created the Agent Orange chemical weapon unleashed on Vietnam in the 1960s).
These crooks have absconded with billions of taxpayer dollars obtained from USAID. According to a WikiLeaks report, in 2022 only 10 percent of USAID funding stayed in the countries it was supposed to assist. The rest went right back to the USA, mostly ending up in the bank accounts of big firms in Washington.
The velvet glove and the iron fist
None of this is new, nor even especially secret. USAID was founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy “to counter influence from the former Soviet Union during the Cold War” (per the Miami Herald) and has long since been linked to the CIA.
USAID’s method of developing “civilian power” was developed intensively in Latin America in the 1960s, where US-sponsored civil society organisations (including trade unions, religious groups and women’s rights organisations) were leaned upon to keep left-wing parties out of office.
After the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, in a coup backed by the CIA, NGOs ostensibly founded to alleviate people’s suffering were used to blunt and divert radical opposition to Pinochet’s military junta.
This coincided with Operation Condor: a US-sponsored wave of right-wing terror unleashed on the left across the continent. During this period, USAID allegedly partnered with the CIA’s Office of Public Safety, which trained foreign police in torture techniques, according to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report.
USAID has remained a bastion of US ‘soft power’ in Latin America ever since. For instance, in 2010, USAID’s agents tried to foment regime change in Cuba by covertly launching a social media platform (ZunZueno), with the aim of fomenting the overthrow of the Cuban government.
The operation was a dismal failure, as was a subsequent attempt by USAID to infiltrate Cuba’s underground hip-hop community, with the Washington-based contractor Creative Associates International (with an acronym rather unsubtly similar to ‘CIA’) funding artists critical of Raul Castro’s government in the hope of sparking “social change”.
USAID also worked to undermine President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as part of Washington’s campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution.
USAID deployed its AFL-CIO–aligned Solidarity Center to organise right-wing trade union bureaucrats in support of the 2002 coup against Chavez; and a 2013 WikiLeaks report revealed a strategy, spearheaded by USAID, of “penetrating Chavez’s political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”
Many of these operations (and the aforementioned activity in Bolivia) have been conducted under USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), which formerly had a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and operated in over a dozen countries, including Haiti, Libya, Kenya, Lebanon and Sri Lanka.
In its mission statement, OTI piously states that while it “cannot create a transition or impose democracy […] it can identify and support key individuals and groups committed to peaceful, participatory reform” [our emphasis].
Or in plain English: we cannot directly topple governments and establish new ones along lines favourable to the US… but we can give money and assistance to those willing to try.
Finally, during the Syrian Civil War, USAID bankrolled the White Helmets: a ‘humanitarian’ NGO that is in reality a propaganda front that ignored the atrocities committed by the anti-Assad jihadi groups within which it was embedded, like the Al Nusra Front.
There are many other examples we could draw on to illustrate that any genuine assistance USAID provides to people suffering from war, poverty and disease is secondary and ancillary to its role as a vector of US imperialism, which in the last analysis, is chiefly responsible for this suffering to begin with.
Why has Trump done this?
Officially, only an act of Congress can wind up USAID, but the body has become a corpse. A stop-work directive has put thousands of its employees on administrative leave, with just 300 remaining. Trump suggested Congressional approval would not even be necessary as USAID was rife with “fraud” and run by “radical lunatics”.
We are under no illusions that Trump, Rubio or Musk are motivated by anti-imperialist sentiments. We should recall that during a 2019 US-backed coup in Bolivia (which is rich in lithium critical for EV batteries), Musk bragged on Twitter: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
For one thing, US government debt is eye watering. Musk has made a lot of noise about shredding federal bureaucracy to cut costs. In the bargain, he and Trump are playing to the MAGA base by shuttering USAID as a blow at ‘liberal do-gooders’.
Unlike Musk’s entirely gung-ho approach, Rubio rowed back on the aggressive rhetoric, saying that USAID projects critical to US national security and lifesaving aid would be retained under the State Department. That is to say, he understands the value of these operations to US foreign policy, especially in Latin America, and intends to preserve those programmes that are most important to US imperialism’s interests. However, he aligned with Trump and Musk’s basic position of ‘America First’:
“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions. Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
In a candid interview, he elaborated on how the changed state of the world has informed Trump’s policy:
“It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was an anomaly, it was a product of the end of the Cold War… But eventually, you were going to return back to having a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China, and to some extent Russia.”
Behind the bluster, Trump recognises the relative decline of US imperialism means it can no longer afford to either police or bankroll the world. In Trump’s mind, wasting billions on what he calls “shithole countries” clearly runs counter to his mandate.
This is one-half of the logic behind winding up USAID. The other half concerns Trump’s war on the Federal institutions that constrained his last term in office. He has learned his lesson and is decisively laying down the law. Imagine if any of the left-wing politicians and movements that erupted in the last decade were prepared to act with such determination! Their failure to channel and harness the enormous anger among American workers towards the establishment has allowed Trump to capture some of this mood, albeit in his own reactionary way.
Unlike the frock-coated liberals and reformists, we communists do not mourn USAID. Let it go to the woodchipper. It is not the job of communists to lament the liberal institutions that Trump is demolishing, but rather to fight for their overthrow in a genuine socialist revolution, not this ‘palace revolution’ by a rival wing of the ruling class as we are seeing with Trump.
