Drafted 16 April, updated 21 July 2025
‘The uproar has been enormous and shows no sign of abating. The US government has suspended most development aid payments for 90 days to reassess spending. What will happen next is uncertain. President Donald Trump is threatening to completely disband the US Agency for International Development, USAID, which disburses most aid funds. He has placed the once independent agency under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arguing that it should be aligned with the government’s ‘ America first strategy ‘.
For the time being, Rubio authorised the resumption of life-saving aid for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and avian flu, but in most cases the funds remained frozen.
Until a final decision is made, all other US-funded aid projects around the world – numbering in the thousands – are on hold.
During the four years of the Biden administration, 181 countries have received a total of about USD 240 billion in development aid from the US.
The Congressional Budget Office has already projected almost USD 60 billion in foreign aid for 2025, most of it for USAID projects. In particular, countries in the Middle East, East Africa, South Asia, and Latin America have benefited from these funds’.
Going into specifics, USAID also gives a lot of it to theUkraine and to many African states that are moderate (e.g.Kenya) or in the grip of terrible wars (e.g. Sudan).But also to Gaza (in 25th place, with $1.5 billion) and Italy.
Françoise Thom, a French historian and writer, sovietologist, lecturer in contemporary history at the Sorbonne in Paris, a specialist in post-communist Russia, and author of works and political analyses on that country and its leaders, says in Le Monde:
“the list of Trump’s favours to Moscow grows every day”.
The expert explains in an interview how the Russian president manages to manipulate his US counterpart, who has aligned his speech and actions with Kremlin interests.
Thom is convinced, facts in hand, that there is a link between the Trump administration’s desire to destroy the federal state and Russia.
He adds that: ” It is said that Trump is sowing chaos in the United States. But there is a logic in this madness: most of the measures taken are in Moscow’s interest….
…Some members of the KGB and GRU did not digest the end of the communist bloc and the break-up of the USSR, which they attributed to an American plot. This core of diehards found a theorist: Alexander Dugin.”
…Of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice to head the intelligence service, Senator Mitt Romney said that “she is just parroting Russian propaganda. His treasonous lies could cost lives.” Thus, on 24 February 2022, Tulsi Gabbard retweeted the Kremlin’s argument justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine: ‘This war and suffering could have been avoided if the Biden administration and NATO had simply considered Russia’s legitimate concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO…’
Among the various favours done by Trump to Putin, to which we will return, Thom argues that : “there is also the closure of USAID, the instrument of American soft power that Moscow feared most, among other things because of the support it provided to Russian and Belarusian dissidents, not to mention aid to Ukraine”.
Founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, USAID handles the bulk of US foreign aid. Additional funds flow through the Millennium Challenge Cooperation development aid fund, which focuses on the economic development of certain developing countries.
Military support and payments to international organisations such as the UNHCR, the World Bank or the International Organisation for Migration, on the other hand, are mainly channelled through the State Department and the Department of Defence.
Republican voters are particularly critical: 72% recently rated aid as excessive.
But, besides Ukraine, this aid was crucial for Gaza and, for example, states such as Ethiopia, Egypt, South Sudan, Mozambique, Tanzania, , Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
1. The loss of funds for Gaza will increase the horror and personal war that Netanyahu is perpetrating, and which is before our eyes every day.
P.S. : The funds to Israel, were and should remain military in nature.
2. Ukraine risks being further weakened, after Trump’s volte-face.
3. In the case of African states, the United States, the suspensions, will have these effects :
– many deaths (Donald Trump with aid cuts to weaker countries puts millions of people at risk of death)
– resentment towards the USA and ‘westerners’ (in general)
– increase in Islamic extremism
– increased migration (controlled by the Russians).
If this is confirmed after the payment freeze, it will therefore be a major strategic error.
In the meantime, NGOs and developing countries are in despair and total uncertainty, not least because:
On the ongoing humanitarian disaster read also Sudan: Trump’s USAid aid cuts hit the hungry in Karthum, the bombed and famine-ridden capital; clashes between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have already caused more than 150,000 deaths in two years.
The cuts to Usaid were a point of friction between Pope Francis and Donald Trump’s government. And, in the end, they will end up favouring China and Russia.
Below an Ilyushin- the Russian 76 that I personally photographed in N’Djamena – Chad – in 2025.
