American Depravity
Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and DOGE’s demolition of USAID has had disastrous consequences for ordinary people. Their decision springs from a misplaced conviction that Americans should only concern themselves with Americans and that the United States has no obligation to the international community despite its status as the richest nation in human history. More cynically, the United States has lost an opportunity to project soft power and maintain its position as the hegemonic power in a post-Cold War world that is increasingly becoming multipolar due to the rise of China.
What happens when the United States vacates its position as the hegemonic power and guarantor of the liberal international order? One need look no further than Sudan to glimpse the horror and devastation wrought by the United States’s hasty, ill-advised decision. Once regarded as the hegemonic power because of the predominance of Harvard and Hollywood as well as its foreign commitments to spreading liberal, democratic values, the United States is now a fraudulent caricature of its former self. As China perpetrates a genocide against the Uyghurs and Russia perpetrates a genocide against the Ukrainian people, the dissolution of the liberal international order reveals what will take its place: war, genocide, and terror.
But what exactly is the liberal international order? Utilizing insights from the school of liberal institutionalism made famous by Robert Keohane and his ilk, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry coined the term in 1999. Unlike realists such as John Mearsheimer who are skeptical of international institutions, Ikenberry and the liberal institutionalists emphasize that cooperation is possible through international organization. The liberal international order, simply put, is an amalgamation of political and economic liberalism held together by American hegemony. Although criticisms from, inter alia, realism, feminism, constructivism, and postcolonialism are valid and compelling, I will continue to argue that the liberal international order is valuable for its rules-based emphasis on international law. Trump’s demolition of USAID is just one threat among many he has made to the liberal international order.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama argued that we had reached an “end of history” where liberal internationalism had triumphed over the ideologies of fascism and communism. In the light of recent far-right populist surges in the West and the decimation of USAID, Fukuyama seems to have underestimated the reactionary forces at play in the twenty-first century. Even as theorists have attempted to conceptualize a benevolent post-liberal international order, I must admit that the current future does not look promising.
Defending USAID is no easy task considering valid criticisms of it as a tool of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism. But it is nevertheless a vital one considering billions of lives were elevated out of poverty by its programs. For example, Rovina Noboi in South Sudan is struggling to care for her ill daughter in the aftermath of USAID’s demolition. If and when her daughter succumbs to her illness, it won’t be reported in the news, but it will be a preventable death caused by the United States. In fact, USAID has saved an estimated 90 million lives for the past two decades and, if the current cuts remain in place through 2030, 14 million lives could be lost. If Republican policy-makers are comfortable criticizing Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Stalin’s famines, they must also make their peace with the fact that they have killed hundreds of thousands via their demolition of USAID.
Trump, Musk, and DOGE’s austerity measures are not only limited to USAID. They also include domestic welfare cuts and defunding of health and other social service institutions. Again, what pervades Trump’s domestic and international agenda is a blatant disregard for the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people. For a president ostensibly elected for the promise of restoring power to the American worker, his tariffs and trade wars have delivered anything but. His demolition of USAID is part of a larger project to consolidate power in the executive and undermine the efficient operation of the administrative state. Despite their eventual falling out, their interventions have had and will have lasting damage.
