Fund cuts will hurt US and its allies
Proposal to slash 30% from the State Department and foreign assistance budget signals an American retreat from its commitment to building a better, safer world
Former US secretary of state
65 million people displaced, there have never been more people fleeing war and instability since the Second World War. The famines engulfing families in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria and Somalia put more than 20 million people at risk of starvation — further destabilising regions already under threat from Daesh (the selfproclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levnat), Al Qaida, Boko Haram and Al Shabab.
Not ‘America first’
Do we really want to slash the US State Department and the USAID at such a perilous moment? The American answer has always been no. Yet, this budget proposal has forced us to ask what America’s role in the world is and what kind of nation do Americans seek it to be. The US president’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has described these cuts as “not a reflection of the president’s policies regarding an attitude towards state”. But how is a 32 per cent cut to America’s civilian programmes overseas anything but a clear expression of policy?
With 95 per cent of the world’s consumers outside America’s borders, it’s not “America first” to surrender the field to an ambitious China rapidly expanding its influence, building highways and railroads across Africa and Asia. China is far from slashing its development budget. Instead, it’s growing — by more than 780 per cent in Africa alone since 2003.
Since the release of its initial budget request in March, the US administration has started to demonstrate a more strategic foreign policy approach. This is welcome, but it will take far more than a strike against Syria, a harder line on Russia, increased pressure on North Korea and deeper engagement with China to steer American foreign policy. It also takes the resources to underwrite it.
America is great when it is the country that the world admires — a beacon of hope and a principled people who are generous, fair and caring. That’s the American way. If America is still that nation, then it must continue to devote this small but strategic 1 per cent of its federal budget to this mission.
Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and USAID do: Prevent the wars that America can avoid, so that it fights only the ones it must. For all American service members and citizens, it’s an investment we must make.