Watching the new Trump administration take a sledgehammer to the international order reminds me of the old Joni Mitchell song. Only it’s not paradise being paved over, but rather all the United States’ international alliances and commitments. And while it’s not a parking lot being put up, the plan is for something infinitely more sterile and depressing: Ukrainian territory ceded to Russia in the name of ‘peace’, a Gazan ‘riviera’ given up to foreign property developers, and the smouldering ruins of forests let down by intransigence on climate change.
In the policy area I know most about, international development, the picture is just as bleak. By dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAiD), the new US regime would roll back decades of progress in HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa and halt humanitarian assistance in conflict zones around the world—to name only two examples.
The lion’s share of the blame belongs to Trump, Musk and the rag-tag band of men whose careers depend on catering to them and their egos. And some undoubtedly goes to his voters, although I suspect they’ll soon pay their own steep price. But it’s important to look also at how some of the Unites States’ fiercest critics have made the decline in the country’s multilateral engagement easier than it should have been.
Some might already have raised their eyebrows at my first sentence and asked “what international order?” During the US election campaign, one often heard the sentiment that the outcome would barely make a difference to a world accustomed to a century of American hegemony. I’ve seen some academics, virtually overnight, go from attacking Western development aid to lamenting its decline. Because it’s not only US aid budgets being cut: last year our governing coalition announced annual cuts of €2.4 billion to this sector.
Development aid (like all systems) can too often be corrupt, inefficient and hypocritical. It is certainly no paradise. But it’s made a positive difference to the lives of billions, as we’ll learn to our detriment if we let it slip away. If we let them turn the world into their parking lot.
Elsje Fourie, associate professor of Globalisation & Development Studies