28 February 2025
When there’s a political earthquake in Washington, the seismic waves can be felt in practically every country.
by Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Radio Svoboda
When there’s a political earthquake in Washington, the seismic waves can be felt in practically every country. That’s the way our world works – everything is too interconnected. I’m not going to argue that it’s good or bad, but that’s the situation.
The decision from the White House to freeze the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has affected a great deal of people. The agency has been operating for more than 60 years and spans hundreds of countries, supporting projects that fight poverty, provide crisis relief, encourage socio-economic development, and further democracy. Across the board, the agency supports projects that protect US interests, as all previous American administrations have understood them, regardless of party affiliation.
Are the allegations of “wastefulness and abuse” at USAID justified? Definitely, there’s some of that. Even in the best organized companies with budgets over $50 billion, there will always be loopholes for corruption and abuse. In general, free budget money is always a feeding trough, sometimes used lawfully, sometimes not. The agency’s 10,000 employees certainly tells you something.
It’s difficult to say how efficiently USAID operates without accurate and objective data, but I, for one, know a fair amount about how many American foundations work, including those that receive funding through USAID. They give, for example, grants of $10,000-$50,000 to dozens of foreign NGOs and several $1.5-2 million grants to closely affiliated organizations based in America. The choice of recipients also leaves something to be desired. For every decent project, there are a dozen empty ones used solely for absorbing funds and feeding idlers. I can’t speak for other countries, but in Russia, the expert councils of many foundations were filled with state-approved human rights activists and Kremlin-backed public figures who unanimously blocked opposition-related projects and awarded grants to toothless, useless, or outright pro-government initiatives. Experts and advisers received staggering salaries and were very afraid of clashing with the authorities, because their offices could have been shut down.
Having dealt with numerous foundations and received grants for the newspaper Express Chronicle, I personally have encountered corruption attempts, demands for kickbacks, and even outright fraud. Although in all these cases, those involved were either Russian citizens working in Moscow-based offices or our compatriots abroad. What I never encountered, however, were attempts to change our editorial policy.
Nevertheless, despite all the complications and, at times, the unfairness of the grant distribution system, many of my colleagues and I are grateful to Western foundations for their years of support for our work. Without this support, many important and necessary projects would simply never have gotten off the ground. I don’t think Russia is an exception; something similar must be happening in other countries too. The shortcomings of this system must be seen as a cost of something large and necessary.
And yes, the system needs an overhaul, and maybe even a reorganization. But what’s being done today baffles me, to be honest. All international USAID projects have been frozen for 90 days, and their fate beyond that is uncertain. Many projects have been stopped midway. How can the terms of a grant agreement be fulfilled now? How can you explain to the people who are expecting a project to help them that operations have been halted? After all, sometimes people’s health and lives are involved. What are you supposed to say to the people hired for the project? What do you do with the accountants needed for submitting regular reports and paying taxes? Why did the decision to overhaul USAID need to be made so clumsily, so arbitrarily, with absolutely no consideration of the circumstances and possible consequences?
As an example, the independent Cuban publication CubaNet, one of the oldest in the country, is in a very difficult situation. “If independent media vanishes, the regime’s lies and deceptive rhetoric will prevail, and the reality of what is happening in Cuba will be left unheard,” states an article by the well-known Cuban dissident and journalist René Gómez Manzano, published in this publication. These words could undoubtedly be applied to many projects that stand against dictators in countries around the world.
Some people ask, “Why does America need to do this? Why should the US and their president think about other countries?” The answer is simple, and it’s what I started with: everything in the world is too interconnected to ignore threats, even if they come from other parts of the world. It’s much more impactful to promptly support resistance to authoritarian tendencies than to spend money sending weapons or waging war later. The path to peaceful civil resistance is certainly not always smooth; there are many pitfalls. But military confrontation is a hundred times more difficult and terrifying than any problems that accompany establishing civil society. And it should be noted that it pays off in the end and is cheaper. If the emerging dictatorship in Russia had been stymied in a timely manner, the White House wouldn’t now have to demand that Ukraine return of hundreds of billions of dollars given in the form of weapons.
Translated by Nina dePalma
