It was a moment of self-congratulation in Washington. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State under Donald Trump, stood before the cameras and announced with a satisfied look the end of USAID. The U.S. Agency for International Development, once founded by John F. Kennedy as an expression of peaceful responsibility, is history. "This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency is over," Rubio wrote on Substack - and he sounded as if he had cleared up a misunderstanding. In reality, however, he has dismantled a global safety net. One day earlier, The Lancet had published a study that could hardly have been more drastic: the dismantling of USAID and the withdrawal of the U.S. from international development aid could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030 - including more than 4.5 million children under the age of five. The scale of this decision, the authors said, was comparable to a global pandemic or a war. Only this time, it is not a natural disaster. It is politically intentional. The United States has turned its back. On fighting HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. On vaccination programs, nutrition initiatives, water projects. On its own history as a protective power that saved millions of lives over decades. USAID was the extended arm of humanitarian foreign policy, the moral backbone of a superpower that claimed to be more than just a market.
Now the motto is: trade instead of aid. Investment instead of solidarity. Efficiency instead of ethics. Development assistance - where it still exists at all - is being integrated into the State Department and subordinated to the doctrine that it must pay off. Only countries that "demonstrate the ability and willingness to help themselves" will continue to receive support. Everything else is considered sentimental, wasteful, weak. The dismantling came with the force of a domestic purge. The Department of Government Efficiency, created by Elon Musk, terminated more than 1,400 projects within a few months, blocked access, cleared out offices. Employees were informed via mass email that their services were no longer needed. Some cried. Others fell silent. The public? Was busy with other things. And yet there is resistance. In an internal farewell conference, parts of which were later released, two unusual voices spoke up: Barack Obama and George W. Bush. The Democrat and the Republican, united by the awareness that USAID was more than just an agency. Obama called it a "monumental mistake." Bush referred to PEPFAR, the HIV program launched under his administration, which 25 million people owe their lives to. "Is it not in our national interest that these people live?" he asked the room.
The singer Bono was also present. He was the surprise guest, wearing sunglasses and a cap, but his words were crystal clear. "They called you crooks. But you were the best of us." A sentence that stays. Perhaps as an epitaph for an era that still believed humanitarian action was no luxury. The State Department played it down. Studies like the one in The Lancet were exaggerated, they said. Much would continue, just more efficiently, more strategically, more market-oriented. But those searching for medicine in the camps of Giharo, Gaza, or Khartoum will not feel this rationalization. What remains is a void. A structural one, but also a moral one. USAID was not perfect. But it was there. It brought food, water, medical care, democratic infrastructure. It turned crises into processes, despair into hope. Its absence will be measurable - in epidemics, in malnutrition, in graves. Up to fourteen million people could die. And in Washington, they applaud themselves.
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