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Trump’s USAid crackdown and the new global order
As a partial successor to the post-war Marshall Plan, USAid is not simply a humanitarian aid programme, but is involved in projecting US power as an instrument of foreign policy, argues NICK WRIGHT

DONALD TRUMP is adding new dimensions to the culture wars that so animate his critics and supporters alike. The more-or-less abolition of USAid has thrown the US’s erstwhile allies in Europe into a tizz.

Over 12,000 USAid staff are due on gardening leave but the uncounted number of locally engaged staff — employed wherever US foreign policy interests are endangered — is possibly larger.

Trump says he wants to purge USAid of the “radical lunatics” running it and his media mouthpiece trotted out a whole series of exotic programmes which offend his sense of what is proper and permissible.

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