When the Trump administration decided to fire 97% of USAID staff earlier this week, we silently cheered. We've been criticizing USAID and its foreign influence arm for years, and thanks to President Trump, we have been heard.
While USAID framed its mission as humanitarian aid and economic development, the agency’s vast $42 billion global footprint (as shown below) tells a different story. The scale of its operations reveals how deeply American influence has been embedded in the affairs of other nations.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has been meddling in the affairs of other nations for decades. Still, after 9/11 and President George W. Bush's shift to viewing everything through the lens of terrorism, the agency went amok—a term that has become the hallmark of every administration since. USAID became a key instrument of soft power, using communication and propaganda as its primary tools to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries.
America had begun to embrace the tactics of the Soviet-era KGB, which had a specialized department responsible for misinformation and deception, known as Service A within the First Chief Directorate (FCD). The goal was to influence operations and use psychological warfare to manipulate foreign governments, media, and public opinion.
KGB tactics employed by USAID included spreading false narratives to damage enemies, using agents of influence in politics, academia, and media, exploiting existing divisions in societies (e.g., racial tensions, political rivalries, etc.), and supporting front organizations and extremist groups to destabilize adversaries.
The first notable example of USAID's KGB-style excesses happened in Ukraine during the Maidan revolution in 2013-2014. Ukraine had come on the radar during Obama's first term. In 2008, under former president George W. Bush, America had failed to persuade other NATO countries to invite Ukraine to join the military bloc.
On June 3, 2010, under the leadership of then-President Moscow-friendly Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian Parliament had approved a bill barring the country from joining NATO.
It returned the nation to its professed goals in its Declaration of State Sovereignty of becoming a neutral state. It was a massive victory for Putin and viewed as a huge loss for the West.
In late 2013, Ukraine made headlines because of a classic ideological conflict in Kyiv. Viktor Yanukovich, with solid support from President Putin, wanted to strengthen trade relationships with Russia. But, the European Union wanted Kyiv and its liberal elite to expand trade relations with the West.
USAID used soft dollar power and, assisted by Western intelligence agencies like the CIA and MI6, engineered the Maidan Revolution. President Yanukovich ordered the police to crack down on the protests. However, after relentless pressure from the West, Yanukovich signed a deal with the opposition and fled to Russia on February 21, 2014.
On February 25, 2014, Senator Chris Murphy (D. Conn) spoke to C-SPAN, where he was almost boastful about America's interference in a foreign country. "I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office." Translation: We engineered a coup.
Sen. Murphy went on: "If, ultimately, this is a peaceful transition to a new government in Ukraine, it will be the United States on the streets of Ukraine who will be seen as a great friend in helping make that transition happen."
President Biden moved into the White House in January 2021. Within ten months, Blinken, as his Secretary of State, was at it again, bribing Zelenskyy to sign a new security agreement with America that promised weapons support, with an entire section devoted to challenging Russian aggression. Russia, at the time, had not fired a shot against Ukraine.
Two weeks from now will mark three years of conflict, which has claimed more than a million lives and consumed over $250 billion in Western aid to Ukraine. The war rages, with Russia gaining territory each day. The entire Maidan campaign has failed to achieve Western goals.
A decade later, USAID sought a repeat of the Maidan Revolution. In May 2024, the Georgian Parliament in Tbilisi secured the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, which could also have been called a Law on Transparency of USAID Influence.
All the major Western powers had lobbied hard to prevent the proposal from becoming law. The European Union threatened Georgia - which now holds a "Candidate" status to be welcomed to the E.U. at a future date - that it risks having that status withdrawn.
The Georgian Parliament ignored these threats and pushed forward with the passage of the law.
Western efforts then turned to President Salome Zourabichvili, who vetoed the law on May 18, but an override vote was imminent. The Parliament overrode the veto, at 84-4, handing a stinging defeat to the West.
An issue for the West is one of the law's provisions, which requires mass media organizations (broadcasters, print media outlets, internet domains) receiving foreign funding to be labeled as "agents of foreign influence" if such support exceeds 20% of their revenue in the previous year. So, the Voice of America and the BBC operating in Georgia could be called "agents of foreign influence." This designation is not entirely inaccurate given how these media organizations have shed their independence in recent years and pushed their governments' Deep State liberal view of world affairs. We now know that USAID was funding these news organizations, including the BBC.
Tbilisi also classified numerous other lame-sounding organizations funded by USAID - such as the Civil Society Engagement Program - as agents of foreign influence.
On October 26, Georgia went to the polls to elect members of its Parliament. Official results showed that the ruling Dream Party won, an outcome that the West disputed. According to France 24, a French television channel, a partial ballot recount confirmed the ruling party's victory. The central election commission told AFP that the recount at some 12 percent of polling stations, involving 14 percent of the vote, "didn't lead to a significant change to previously announced official results." However, the pro-Western opposition said the vote was "stolen" by the ruling party and refused to recognize its results. Anti-government demonstrations have continued nonstop since then as USAID's KGB-style misinformation campaign has been running on steroids.
In Romania, there was significant political upheaval following the first round of the presidential election, when an independent candidate, Călin Georgescu, unexpectedly led the vote. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled this result, citing alleged Russian interference, leading to widespread debate and protests. USAID's tentacles were all over the map here to spearhead an undemocratic move to prevent an undesirable outcome.
We are glad President Trump is back in charge. America should not be involved in the internal affairs of other nation-states. With USAID’s downfall, a long chapter of American meddling comes to a deserved end.
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