Trump’s plan to shutdown USAID would lead to rise in conflict and insecurity, expert says

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00:00For more on this, Rosa Friedman joins us on the program. She's a professor of Law,

00:03Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading in England.

00:07Thank you very much for joining us, professor. So can you please start by giving us an idea of

00:12the scale of programs that is to be affected by these USAID cuts? What, in your view,

00:18is its most important work? USAID takes the less than 1% of the GDP from the United States and

00:28delivers programs in 120 of 193 countries around the world. It's about 42% of global development

00:36aid that goes to these types of programs, whether they are clinics for women to give birth,

00:42schools, in particular, focus on girls' education, child safeguarding, healthcare,

00:47including retrovirals and drugs to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, vaccinations and

00:54much, much more. What we see within those programs is that they are there to boost

01:00local economies, to help educate the next generation, particularly within global South

01:06countries, and to help to develop areas where previously there's been instability or conflict

01:13or chaos. And so there will be a huge impact within these programs, but also, as you said,

01:18a huge impact within the United States for the number of workers who have suddenly found

01:22themselves laid off without any sort of employment protections that we might expect to have in

01:28European countries. So what do you expect to be the most immediate consequences than those that

01:34will be or were already felt the quickest? I mean, in the immediacy, these will be the

01:41consequences around health and around water and sanitation. We will see a rise in preventable

01:46diseases that could have been prevented through vaccinations, through things like providing

01:52tablets to purify water and prevent the spread of cholera. We'll see a rise in the number of HIV

01:57and AIDS cases over the coming years as a direct result of this. But we'll also see, as we always

02:05do, an impact on children and specifically on girls. There will be girls who are forced out

02:09of education when families have to decide whether to educate their boy children or girl children.

02:15There will be a massive impact on child safeguarding, on preventing sexual exploitation

02:19and abuse and trafficking and physical abuse and forced labor of children, because child

02:25safeguarding is at the heart of all of development work. But if there's no funding for it, then it

02:30very quickly falls by the wayside. And we will see a rise of insecurity around the world. Development

02:35aid is not there as charity. It is a way of redistributing the wealth of the world and of

02:41coming to terms with the colonial harms that have been caused over many, many centuries,

02:46particularly in global South countries. It is a way to prevent conflict and insecurity and

02:51radicalization and a way to ensure stability and economic prosperity in communities that

02:57would otherwise be prone to those types of conflicts and crises. USAID is, of course,

03:06also an instrument of soft power. Do you think that it has had, I mean, you touched upon it

03:11briefly there, but do you really think that it's had that big of an influence in that sense from a

03:17soft power perspective? And how might other powers step in to fill the gap that's left in its absence?

03:23What will that look like? And do you think it will be all negative? USAID has been part of the soft

03:30power of the United States around the world for many decades. And we know that countries like

03:35China have stepped in on development in things like building roads, building trains, building

03:41buildings and banks, placing their own janitors into those buildings, whether they're janitors

03:46or whether they're agents of the state is up to your viewers to decide. But countries like that

03:51will step in further. But the aid that they provide will not be the kind of development

03:56with human rights that we expect from the United States and from European Union countries.

04:01Instead, they will provide that aid to governments to decide what they will do with it. And it is

04:06unlikely that those governments will prioritise people with disability, children, the most

04:11marginalised groups in their countries, and instead will probably use that money for infrastructure,

04:16thus leaving those poor and marginalised communities to fend for themselves. So this

04:20will have a big blow on the ground and an immediate impact to people. But it will also have a big blow

04:26to geopolitical shifts of power, with more countries looking to BRICS and also to European

04:33states. But let's remember that when Trump did this in his first presidency, the European Union

04:39looked very different. It was much more progressive. Canada was much more stable and was much more able

04:45and willing to step in and help to fund these programmes. We're seeing a shift to the right

04:50across Europe. And it's unlikely that some of those countries will now step in to provide

04:55funding to keep these programmes going. So, Professor Friedman, USAID was, of course,

05:00established by Congress as an independent agency, which means at least from a legal perspective,

05:06technically, only Congress can fully dissolve it. It doesn't look like there's that much pushback,

05:11really, from Congress for now. So do you think that these moves will face legal obstacles?

05:16What permanent damage, to put it otherwise, can the Trump administration do to USAID?

05:23Well, it seems unlikely that President Trump and his current administration care very much

05:28about legal challenges. What we're watching play out in front of us is some form of fascism.

05:34The president and the people around him are completely ignoring the laws and the

05:39constitution in the country and simply issuing executive orders that go far beyond their powers.

05:44And because they are doing this day after day, they're causing such chaos that it becomes very

05:48difficult for Congress to step in or for the judiciary to have the time to step in to challenge

05:53these orders. What we can only hope for is that the Republican Party will take a look at what's

05:59going on and say this goes so far beyond the rule of law that it looks like fascism is creeping into

06:06this administration. Well, not really creeping into, it's marching across Washington and that

06:12it is time to step in and rein in President Trump. Whether or not he can be reined in is another

06:17matter. We've also have seen that there are a number of people who were released from the 6th

06:22of January insurrections who are now surrounding President Trump. And if they were to get any more

06:29power within his administration, there'll be questions whether the police and the army will

06:33support his presidency. And as we know, where there is fascism, it needs to have the police

06:39and army supporting it. It's incredibly unfortunate that we are talking about the United States,

06:43the so-called leader of the free world in this way. But what we've seen over the past 10 days

06:48is completely shocking. As a final question for you, Professor Friedman, I think a lot of

06:53Americans and even people abroad, for that matter, were quite surprised about the extent to which

06:58some communities are dependent on USAID. Do you think that the move by the Trump administration

07:03to gut it could actually just simply encourage leaders in countries where this aid is being

07:08distributed to be more efficient with their own resources, especially if you consider that some

07:13of the countries that benefit most from USAID money are amongst the wealthiest in terms of

07:20natural resources on the planet? These countries might be the wealthiest in terms of natural

07:25resources, but we're talking about centuries and centuries of those countries being subjugated

07:30and oppressed and having those natural resources taken away. We're talking about supporting

07:34countries to transition to democracies and to address corruption. If we simply remove the aid

07:40from the ground, the governments in these countries aren't going to just provide that

07:45aid to those communities. What it will create is a sense of crisis and instability, which will lead

07:52to more conflicts around the world. This aid, as I said, isn't going out as charity. It's going out

07:57largely to keep the world stable and secure, largely to support economic prosperity and growth

08:04so that there are transitions to democracies in these states and so that they become fully

08:08self-supporting in time. But you can't redress the harms of many centuries in just a matter of

08:13decades. Rosa Friedman, with that we'll have to conclude. Thank you so very much for coming on

08:19the show today. Thank you.

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