50 JULY-AUGUST 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL That famous Kennedy line was followed immediately by one not as famous, but equally important: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” This idea—that we are all in this challenge together—is symbolized by the famous handshake at the center of AID’s original logo, based on George C. Marshall’s own hand-drawing and emphasizing the partnership implied. Programmatic Carnage And now here we are in 2025. By the end of this summer, almost all of the more than 8,000 USAID staff—Foreign Service, Civil Service, and Foreign Service Nationals—are set to be fired, subject to reductions in force (RIFs). While the administration says it plans to at least retain funding for food aid, transition initiatives, and lethal infectious disease prevention and its directly related health sector strengthening, the balance of foreign assistance funding for what is known as “development assistance” is being whited out. Some 200 single-spaced pages list tens of billions of dollars of cuts to such development assistance, eliminating technical assistance, policy reform, institutional strengthening programs, training, equipment, matériel, and infrastructure funding in 100 developing countries. These investments in development that took person-centuries of professional effort—and taxpayer money already spent or committed to scope out, compete, and implement—have been torn asunder at the start or even in midstream. In the aftermath of this programmatic carnage, the United States and the world have both lost. We all lose. Five-time USAID Mission Director Jonathan Addleton wrote recently in the Pakistan daily newspaper The Nation: “As a former US Ambassador, it is difficult to imagine a world in which development assistance is not part of the diplomatic toolkit available for engaging with other countries … as a development partnership setting the stage for exponential economic growth that ultimately benefits both countries.” Yet that is the world in which we are all now living. Former CIA Officer Brian O’Neill pointed to this “strategic inversion” in an op-ed in the April 29, 2025, Atlanta JournalConstitution, writing that our adversaries are “re-calibrating based on our weakness” and “reallocating resources and rethinking their posture.” The damage to our country’s safety and security is impossible to overstate. Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) discussed the importance of USAID in an April 28, 2025, interview in The New York Times, saying: “You can spend a little bit of money on trying to solve these problems, like famine in places like Sudan or Afghanistan or other countries, or you can buy more bullets. There’s somebody that might be complaining about foreign aid today, and tomorrow, or five years from now, they’re sending their kid overseas to fight in a war that wouldn’t have otherwise happened.” As of this writing, President Trump has no new National Security Strategy to explain to Congress and to the American people the rationale for his destruction of U.S. foreign assistance. The most recent National Security Strategy was published by President Joe Biden in October 2022. Americans need to know: What national interests are at play? What are the threats? The opportunities? The risks and assumptions? Are the resources proposed adequate? What are the trade-offs? On Oct. 7, 2016, USAID members and service members from Joint Task Force Matthew delivered relief supplies to areas affected by Hurricane Matthew to Jeremie, Haiti. JTF Matthew delivered more than 10,000 pounds of supplies on its first day of operations. CAPT. TYLER HOPKINS/U.S. NAVY
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