In an age of renewed great-power competition
Democrats play for Team USA. Republicans won’t even play for their home team.
Elon Musk and his Elonjungen busted into USAID headquarters last week and illegally shuttered the foreign aid agency that for 60 years has been a key instument for projecting U.S. soft power in the world. He found and posted a list of small-dollar grants supporting mainly diversity-related projects he declared “waste and abuse,” lefty boondoggles proving that USAID had to die. The cited items amount to not even a fraction of a percent of the agency’s $40 billion budget.
On that basis, the unelected Musk declared the agency “a criminal organization” and shuttered its operations around the world.
How many quirky, objectionable line items might be found among the Pentagon’s $800 billion budget? (The public budget, that is, not the “black budget.”) A similar fraction? Similar enough and thus substantially more in dollar sums that means the Pentagon has to die?
Has anyone looked? Just asking. When was the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? Oh, never.
Politco suggests Democrats are walking into a trap by defending USAID from Musk’s predations. Foreign aid being one of taxpayers’ least favorite budget expenditures. But they needen’t defend the few projects Musk pulled out as public embarrassments. What they need to defend is the projection of U.S. soft power in an age of increasing great-power competition:
Republicans had long been proponents of exerting “soft power” — winning global hearts and minds by feeding the hungry, fostering emerging economies and getting vaccines to the most vulnerable populations. China, notably, stands ready to fill the void.
But Republicans as we knew them are extinct. They won’t care that strongmen around the world cheer the dismantling of USAID because they see it as a threat. What were once Republicans now play for Team Autocrat.
Democrats play for Team USA.