On the first anniversary of the dismantling of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, Thomas and Aimen trace the history of the organisation and ask whether USAID’s collapse represents a failure of liberal internationalism itself, or simply the end of one particular way of organizing American power in the world.

They discuss:

Trump’s 2025 executive order and the effective end of USAID
USAID, anti-communism, and the CIA
The Clinton-era debate over whether USAID should survive at all
USAID in the War on Terror: Iraq, Afghanistan, and counterinsurgency
The Arab Spring and the shift toward NGO-mediated governance
Corruption in USAID
What the end of USAID tells us about the end of the unipolar era

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Trump vs USAID: The Rise and Fall of America’s Aid Empire