← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
The Rise and Demise of U.S.A.I.D.
00:48:16
President Trump's move to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development pleased its critics on the left and right while leaving the agency's supporters -- and many people across the world who depend on its programs -- reeling. Over the decades...
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- [00:01]
Advertiser
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Martin DeCaro
Vote history as it happens March 18, 2025 the rise and demise of USAID.
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John F. Kennedy
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves.
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Donald Trump
Upon taking office, I imposed an immediate free on all federal hiring, a freeze on all new federal regulations, and a.
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Ambassador John Andre
Freeze on all foreign aid, a series.
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Interviewer
Of decisions that could have profound consequences.
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Ambassador John Andre
On the well being of so many people.
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Interviewer
Cancellation of 83% of USAID.
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John F. Kennedy
That's the United States Agency for a National Development Program.
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Advertiser
There was also a claim that $20 million was spent on a Sesame street show created for Iraq.
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John F. Kennedy
So this is not America first. This is America in retreat and we are not going to ret from American values.
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Martin DeCaro
The U.S. agency for International Development no longer exists as we knew it. Donald Trump killed JFK's creation to fight global poverty, misery and political instability. But over the decades, critics on the right and left said the agency stuck its hands in the wrong places, meddling in the internal affairs of others. Where does the truth lie and what might replace usaid? That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:33]
Ambassador John Andre
I avoid the term soft power. I think what it really is is in the competition for influence amongst various countries. We have tools that we use and this is one of them. It's a tool for creating greater influence for the United States to promote our national interests.
- [02:54]
Martin DeCaro
In 1961, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act. It declared a principal objective of the foreign policy of the United States is the encouragement and sustained support of the people of developing countries in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development and to build the economic, political and social institutions which will improve the quality of their lives. In September that year, President Kennedy signed the bill into law, and two months later, JFK established the US Agency for International Development in an executive order, bringing multiple foreign aid organizations under one roof. Kennedy said the legislation's purpose was to give economic and social progress a boost in developing countries, but also to support worldwide collective security arrangements essential to free world defense. And, of course, that was during the Cold war. Here is JFK speaking to a group of overseas mission directors in June 1962 about the importance of their work.
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John F. Kennedy
The presence of the United States as a leading power in the free world is involved in your work directly. The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us. It permits us to exert influence for the maintenance of freedom. If we did not were not so heavily involved, our voice would not speak with such vigor. And as we do not want to send American troops to a great many areas where freedom may be under attack, we send you and you working with the people in those countries to try to work with them in developing the economic thrust of their country so that they can make a determination that they can solve their problems without resorting to totalitarian control and becoming part of the block.
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Martin DeCaro
Now, let's Skip ahead to 2025. President Donald Trump on Air Force One asked about the message he's sending to countries that depend on U.S. aid now that he's moving to shutter the agency.
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Donald Trump
The ones that have been, the few that have been legitimate in terms of getting legitimate money will probably put it through the State Department. It'll be handled by Marco Rubio, highly respected man, Secretary of State. There's no reason for usaid. When you look at the politicians that have been in there sucking the blood out of it. When you look at all of the fake deals, I mean, look, all you have to do is get a list of all of the things, things you can see by the heading, it's fake, it's fraudulent, it's probably kickbacks, where they send the money and then it gets kicked back to the person that sent it. So the ones that are good and there are not many of them, but the ones that are good and there are some will probably have that be handled by Marco Rubio in the State Department.
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Martin DeCaro
Here are some headlines. Eight countries could run out of HIV treatments due to US Aid cuts. According to the whole Tuberculosis resurgent as Trump funding cut disrupts treatment globally Johns Hopkins University says it's laying off 2,200 due to USAID funding cuts. You can find a bunch of such headlines in a simple Google search, and it is why Democratic lawmakers rallied with USAID supporters in Washington.
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John F. Kennedy
Our national interest. In fact, if you talk to American military leaders, they will tell you that aid is an essential and cost effective part of our overall foreign policy and national security strategy because aid makes us safer here as we save lives around the world.
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Martin DeCaro
But there are also programs, even if well intended, that may seem like a waste of US Taxpayer money, such as a pottery class in Morocco to help promote economic development, or money to develop a Sesame Street TV program in Iraq or a DEI theater production in Ireland. No, I am not making those up. Foreign aid has had its critics on the right and left for decades. Today, on the right, they might sound like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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Advertiser
During the four years of the Biden administration, 181 countries received approximately 240 billion in U.S. development aid, with Ukraine being the top recipient. Other top recipients include Ethiopia, Jordan, Israel and Somalia. So after hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been distributed throughout the world, has the world become safer? No. Has the world become more stable? No.
- [07:39]
Martin DeCaro
But if we look back several decades into the Cold War, we would find different criticisms. This is from foreign policy.com Though better known for administering humanitarian aid work around the world, USAID has a long history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the article says, the agency often partnered with the CIA's now shuttered office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in terror and torture techniques and encouraged official brutality, According to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report. USAID officials have always denied these accusations. But in 1973, Congress directed USAID to phase out its Public safety program, which worked with the CIA to train foreign police forces, in large part because the accusations were hurting America's public image. In writing for the New Yorker, John Lee Anderson says, when I told people that my father had worked for usaid, the inevitable knowing response was, you mean the CIA? The proximity between the two agencies was hard to deny, he Sundays. In the 60s, America often dispersed aid as credits to foreign governments, which in turn supplied the equivalent amount of local currency to the US Embassy. The funds were apportioned by the country intelligence team, which invariably included the CIA station chief. The CIA also partnered with the Office of Public Safety, he writes. An American program that trained police forces in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines and elsewhere in 1973, as mentioned, after reports emerged that its graduates had engaged in terror and torture, Congress disbanded it. And I'll share links to both of these articles in my weekly newsletter. You can sign up@historyhasithappens.com they're worth reading to understand why USAID's reputation is not as clean as some of its supporters suggest. But neither is the Agencia criminal organization today. As the mentally ill Elon Musk referred to it recently, USAID does a lot of good, or it did a lot of good. The website devex.com d e v e x.com reports that by September 30th, whatever's left of the US Agency for International Development will be dissolved and in its place, a new humanitarian assistance bureau could be embedded into the State Department. This idea, according to the article, was shared by Tim Meisberger, the head of USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, in a closed door meeting. According to several current USAID staffers, the new bureau would have four offices, the first centering on acquisitions and assistance, the second on humanitarian and food assistance, the third targeting global disaster response, and the fourth focused on global health emergencies. Ambassador John Andre hopes these critical missions are undertaken even if the agency itself never comes back. Andre now teaches about contemporary Africa and global policymaking at the LBJ School of Public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Boston. Before entering academia, he spent 33 years at the State Department, where he held a number of leadership positions. He has quite the resume. He was ambassador to Somalia, Djibouti and Mauritania. He also served as charge d'Affaires at the U.S. embassy of South Sudan, was deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Tanzania and in Sierra Leone. And before all of this, he worked for USAID in Chad after the Toyota War, which we're going to learn about. Ambassador John Andre, welcome to the podcast.
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Ambassador John Andre
Thank you for having me.
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Interviewer
Well, it's great to have you here.
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Martin DeCaro
We're going to talk about your lengthy experience as a foreign service officer and an aid worker, and the history of usaid, too. But let's begin with what's happening right now. What are your problems with the way the Trump administration has dismantled this agency?
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Expert
So, Martin, I have four main concerns. First, USAID was established by an act of Congress in 1961, the year I was born. It cannot be disestablished by an executive order, nor dismantled by supporters of the administration who have an ambiguous role in the United States government. I am appalled. The Leadership of the Legislative branch has abdicated their role. They all swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, as did the President. So that's the process.
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Ambassador John Andre
File.
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Expert
Second, I believe State, Defense and USAID, the three Ds of defense, diplomacy and development, all are in dire need of reform. Reform needs to be carried out in a deliberative manner, consulting both critics and supporters. Reform means while considering our long term national interests, dropping some functions, shifting some functions to other agencies and departments, and reinforcing other functions. The emphasis is on our long term national interests and some of these foreign aid functions are essential to our long term national interests. The Administration My third concern, the Administration's refusal to pay foreign aid contractors for work completed does reputational damage to the United States. We stand for rule of law and sanctity of contracts. Don't like these contracts, then going forward, do not enter into similar contracts and cancel pending contracts that were undertaken by the previous administration, but pay for work completed under contracts the USG has already agreed upon. My last concern, this irresponsible rhetoric when the President's supporter Elon Musk referred to USAID as a criminal organization. It's unjust, inaccurate, irresponsible and damaging to the United States. Foreign leaders hear that word criminal organization phrase from Elon Musk who clearly represents the President's intentions. That has been made clear numerous times. They hear these words. They think about this organization that has been working in their countries for decades as an integral part of the US Embassy and it causes them deep concern and it lowers their estimation of our.
- [14:11]
Ambassador John Andre
Role as a reliable partner.
- [14:13]
Expert
It lowers our influence in the world when a senior U.S. government figure undermines our presence and our activities over, as I said, decades.
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Interviewer
Is USAID as we know it dead and not coming back?
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Expert
I believe so. And in fact I'm moving on to making proposals on what a post USAID.
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Ambassador John Andre
Foreign aid program could look like.
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Expert
Part of that is divvying it up amongst the different parts of the U.S. government. And frankly, I can give an example from Global Health. I had a senior government official in one country ask me, does USAID do all of this health stuff for you Americans at home? I said no, CDC also worked in that country.
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Ambassador John Andre
He says, well what about cdc?
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Expert
And I said, yeah, CDC is the one that does this, this public health stuff for us. He said, well, we feel much better about working with CDC because we know that they're the ones that do the same thing for you. This is in terms of pepfar, which had cdc, Defense Department agencies and US amongst other pepfar was Always a multi agency effort, that kind of thinking, we want to work with the parts of the US Government performing the same functions for you domestically, I would take some of the food aid, put all that back into the Department of Agriculture rather than continue to, as I have been doing, continue to advocate for USAID to return from the dead. I think we need to look at what are the key foreign aid functions that need to be maintained and how best to maintain them.
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Ambassador John Andre
I avoid the term soft power. I think what it really is is in the competition for influence amongst various countries, we have tools that we use and this is one of them. It's a tool for creating greater influence for the United States to promote our national interests.
- [16:09]
Interviewer
When the administration basically dismantled the entire agency, you had critics saying this is long overdue. People on the left and the right who said USAID had become a tool of American empire. It's not just influence or assistance. It is now meddling in the affairs or it has been meddling in the affairs of other countries. But you also had people like yourself, you wrote or co wrote a letter to the editor at the Austin American Statesman that I'm gonna cite here in a moment. But others who had been part of the agency for a long time saying, listen, there may have been some problems over the years, but for the most part, what we're doing here, clearing landmines, vaccinating people, helping people recover from natural disasters. You wrote, dismantling US Aid would be catastrophic national security mistake by this administration, leaving the global playing field of influence to adversaries of the United States. It'll make the US Less safe and less respected around the world and contribute to both instability in already fragile states as well as make the US vulnerable to infectious diseases like bird flu and Ebola. So there's a lot in that one paragraph. Can you explain what you mean?
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Ambassador John Andre
Sure. I was ambassador three times and working in embassies over the course of 33 years. So I have seen how our defense efforts, our diplomacy efforts and our development efforts, inclusive of humanitarian response are very closely interlinked. If you take out one of the 3Ds, then the other cannot operate as well. With development no longer being at the table, we will have to reinvent some of these functions. If you like, I can give some specific examples.
- [17:51]
Interviewer
No, I want people to understand what's at stake here. So go ahead please.
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Ambassador John Andre
Let's start on the health front. Global health diseases do not respect borders. We have people moving all around our planet all the time. Americans come in contact with other peoples and bring back diseases. There have been diseases that have originated in the United States that Americans have taken elsewhere. So US Involvement in global health is a direct benefit to the American people. I don't see how anyone can dispute that. Another is the humanitarian response. A principle that I was taught as a young boy and continue to treasure is that to those who have much, much is expected. So it is just a basic moral principle. So that is what I think of with humanitarian response. If we're now not going to be there, that's a loss of certainly of influence and respect for us. If the most powerful, richest country on the planet is not there, the other countries will still be there. The country that has suffered the disaster, their people will be there. But the US will not be at that table and will not be doing its share of the response to human tragedy. That function needs to be preserved. And then the third one is the long term development. And when people look for what I call sour cherry picking, they want to find bad examples. Ignore all the good examples, just find the bad examples. They tend to look at these long term development projects. They are more easily criticized. And there are some things that can be done differently. I'm a critic of state defense and aid because I'm a patriotic American and I want to see these organizations perform as efficiently and effectively as possible. All three need reforms. And I'm sure other parts of the US Government that I'm less familiar with need as well.
- [19:45]
Interviewer
The way to reform is to systematically evaluate, assess, do an audit of these programs and come back months later with a report and get both members of both parties on board and then go in there with a scalpel. Right, and get public input. Right. Public investment, because it's a transparent process. Rather than do it the way Elon Musk is doing it. I mean, he doesn't know anything about these programs.
- [20:09]
Ambassador John Andre
Right. I would say that a happy medium here. If you go very slowly and deliberately, then all of the organizations which benefit from the USAID budget will be organizing and lobbying and so forth. You don't want to give too much time for the counter reform courses to organize, but you don't want to be so sudden and drastic that you throw the baby out with the bathwater. You're not getting rid of fat, you're getting rid of muscle, you're getting rid of vital material. We need to promote our interests outside the United States.
- [20:47]
Interviewer
So let me follow up on that because some people might be listening to this and say, why do we need this? Now I know you explain. We all have an interest in preventing diseases from spreading all over because they don't recognize borders, obviously. But there are some Americans who say, you know, enough of this. We need to focus on our own country. So I'll share a paragraph or two here. From a article in the New Yorker by John Lee Anderson. The article is mostly about the history of USAID or AID and its work with the CIA in past decades, which wasn't very popular, brought disgrace in some places on the United States. But he says more recently, the loss of soft power was quickly visible around the hemisphere. Referring to the Trump cuts, he says, I was in Colombia recently. As Trump engaged in a bullying dispute with President Gustavo Petro over the deportation of Colombian citizens, an influential friend there exclaimed, if this is how an ally treats us, we can always turn to China. That same day, Xu Jingyang, the Chinese ambassador to Colombia, released a flurry of posts celebrating a new age of comity between the two countries. We are experiencing the best moment in our diplomatic relations, he wrote. The pattern holds throughout the region, says John Lee Anderson. According to the Honduran investigative site Contra Coriente, China is rushing to take advantage of America's absence. The outlet found that in the past two decades, US aid supplied Honduras with nearly $2 billion in financial aid, much of it aimed at curbing illegal immigration to the United States. Well, that would seem to be an issue important to Trump and his followers. So how do you respond to that? So what if China fills in the gap in Colombia?
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Ambassador John Andre
I definitely believe in foreign policy dictum that countries do not have permanent friends, they have permanent interests. And smart foreign policy practitioners will be looking for every way to promote those interests, those vital interests. We shouldn't expect that because we've assisted you in the past. You're always going to be with us no matter what we do. Countries are forward looking and just as we are and look look for their best advantages. What does influence get you? I have seen in specific ways, including the competition with with China and other powers, where our influence allowed us to counter nefarious things that other countries were doing. And I probably can't get into the details of that, but we got access. We had privileged access because of other things that we were doing in the country. We could go in and say you need to be aware that this other country is doing this, that and the other which is harming us and you and so we can work quietly behind the scenes to get this done. How do we get that access just because we're the United States? It's more than that. It's because we have a active partnership with this government in doing things that they consider in their national interest. We're looking at overlapping goals, and then we can deploy that in the ways that best promote our interests, including countering those who wish us harm.
- [24:06]
Interviewer
I mean, the Honduras example I just mentioned in that paragraph is a good example, because if it's in the US Interest to prevent illegal immigration to our borders and also in the interests of these countries in Central America to stop the destabilizing effect of so much migration out of their countries, through other countries, into Mexico and on into the United States, well, cutting that money doesn't seem to make any sense. So you worked for the state department for 30 years. You had many posts in Africa, but before that you worked for USAID in Chad. I want to talk about your experience there in something or after something that was called the Toyota War. I never really known about this war until preparing to speak to you. For those who may not know, it was when Libya invaded or occupied part of northern chad in the 1980s. And it gets the name Toyota War because there were Toyota Land Cruisers and Toyota 4x4s used by the Chadian troops who were fighting the Libyans. Talk a little bit about, you don't have to go into the entire history of this relatively small war, but what you learned about usaid, what you were doing there at the end of this war and how it was resolved.
- [25:18]
Ambassador John Andre
Sure. This actually speaks well to what we were just talking about, how influence can help with other areas. So this was Gaddafi in Libya grabbing especially the Ouzu strip where there were uranium deposits. He had an active nuclear program that he later gave up. And he was expansionist. He wanted to absorb a lot of Chad. The Chadians did have the war in the Sahara with their Toyota Land Cruisers. Their tactic was that they would. Would drive rapidly around, making circles around a Soyuz tank, firing the whole time, knowing that eventually a few bullets would get into the chinks in the armor. And the turret of the. Of the tank could not turn fast enough to get these Toyota Land Cruisers.
- [26:08]
Interviewer
That's an old Soviet tank, right? The Soyuz tank, yes. Libyans were using.
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Ambassador John Andre
Okay, so Toyota Land Cruisers vs Soviet Soyuz tank and the Toyota Land Cruiser one. France and the United States directly supported the Chadians in that war against Gaddafi's invasion. Now there's something else going on, which is major oil deposits were found in Chad, and the US Company, Exxon was developing those resources. I spent a lot of time at the Exxon compound there. They had a great pool and tennis court. So we had economic interests, we had security interests. So what was my job at usaid? I was a contractor. What we were doing is helping refugees. Refugee camps were in the neighboring country of Cameroon. We're helping refugees return home to Chad after the war. The capital in Jamena was in ruins, smoking ruins. And there was a rebuilding effort. These refugees, we were, that is, my office was focused on people who had businesses before the war setting them up again. So we're talking shoemakers and tailors and mechanics. To get the country moving forward, they needed loans. So they got loans through USAID that they then paid back subsidized rates, these loans, business services, and just helping them reestablish. So this is called stabilization is the technical term for it. Post conflict stabilization. And that's what we were doing. Was it in our economic interest? We wanted a stable Chad, as this major US corporation was working with the Chadians to develop this resource. And we wanted to counter Qaddafi, who was a direct threat to the United States.
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Interviewer
So it worked out well, in your view, in the end?
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Ambassador John Andre
Yeah, I mean, Chad has had its issues and continues to have its issues. And the government was a very unpleasant government. This is the Hissan Pabrai government. So critics can always say, how could you support such a terrible leader? Well, there were specific interests that we had and there was no alternative. So critics can find fault with our not getting involved and they could find fault with our getting involved. But you often are faced with only unpleasant choices and you have to find the one that best promotes our interests.
- [28:32]
Interviewer
Sometimes it is a no win. Look back to the 1990s, for instance, when the Clinton administration did not get involved in Rwanda. That was a different situation. That's not an aid situation. That was a civil war and a genocide. But the west stood aside, got criticism for that. Later in the decade, the US did intervene NATO and the bombing of Kosovo and was criticized for doing that because that also had unintended consequences.
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John F. Kennedy
Unfortunately, the Chinese embassy was inadvertently damaged and people lost their lives and others had been injured. It was a tragic mistake. And I want to offer my sincere regret and my condolences to both the leaders and the people of China.
- [29:19]
Interviewer
I want to jump into some history here, but one more thing about your experience just to illustrate the usefulness of U.S. aid in certain places. We already talked about Chad in a forgotten war from the 1980s, but you were in Somalia more recently. Tell us a little bit about what's happening there.
- [29:35]
Ambassador John Andre
Sure. My colleagues and I at US Embassy, Mogadishu, we lived in the embassy it was an embassy and bunker. We got shelled about every. Every other month when I was there.
- [29:47]
Interviewer
This was just a couple years ago.
- [29:48]
Ambassador John Andre
Right, Right. I left in the middle of 23, and that's when I retired, middle of 23. So we had the three Ds there. Diplomacy, development and defense. We worked very closely with the combatant command that was assist Somalis. So was this all a US Effort? No. Of all of the foreign troops in Somalia fighting Al Shabaab terrorists who have killed Americans and attacked us multiple times as an Al Qaeda affiliate, of all the foreign troops that are allied with the Somali government forces, US made up 2%. 2%. We had privileged access with that 2%. We did a lot. We were deeply appreciated. The African countries had like 17,000, 17, 18,000. The European Union had a few hundred. The UK was there. And Turkey. Turkey was a major player. So this was security assistance, another form of assistance, but while I was there, had something called the Hiran uprising, which was an insurgency against the insurgency, that is, communities that had been suffering under Al Shabaab rule. They controlled territory. They rose up against Al Shabaab, and then the Somali army came in to assist them. Them. Over a third of Al Shabaab's territory was taken from them by these government forces and local forces allied with the government. When Al Shabaab was leaving, they would poison the wells, they would set all the buildings on fire, they destroy a generator, they would pull down cell phone towers where a lot of digital cash is made available to people, and then they fled. USAID and the Stabilization Office of the State Department work together with the Somali government, other donors, and with some assistance from the US military as well, to bring immediate relief to these recently liberated villages and towns. And then longer term, introducing a school, introducing law enforcement, a court, police and so forth, working with the local government to reestablish state institutions in areas that had been long misruled by this terror organization. So again, you need defense, you need diplomacy, you need development.
- [32:09]
Martin DeCaro
So the origins here of US aid.
- [32:12]
Interviewer
John Kennedy 1961 this was during the Cold War. What was the purpose of setting up this agency? In the very beginning, it was very.
- [32:20]
Ambassador John Andre
Much a part of the Cold War effort to counter the threat of the Soviets. It was also at the time when there was a wave of independence of countries that had formerly been colonies. So that was happening beginning in the late 50s, but really mostly in the first half of the 60s that you had all these brand new countries that did not have a lot of the state institutions that they needed to Govern themselves. John Kennedy didn't invent the idea of aid. Aid had been happening beforehand, but it was distributed throughout the US Government. It wasn't centralized, he thought, and the Congress agreed because they passed the legislation that it would make more sense and be more effective if you centralized and concentrated these different functions. It may be time to rethink that, but the functions themselves must be maintained.
- [33:15]
Interviewer
During his inaugural address, Kennedy reached out to what was then the third world, or as you said, the decolonizing world. And he pledged that the United States would be partners with these countries.
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John F. Kennedy
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny.
- [33:45]
Interviewer
I actually was thinking about Harry Truman's inaugural address in January of 1949 where he talked about the need to donate American influence, knowledge, technology, science to the developing world. Because like Kennedy, Truman also recognized that in the third World or the decolonizing world, they recognized that socialism would be attractive. So that the United States then need to offer an alternative. It was a recognition that in many places socialism would be attractive.
- [34:19]
John F. Kennedy
More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity possesses in knowledge and skill the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people. The United States is preeminent among the nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible.
- [35:15]
Ambassador John Andre
Yes, and the US was seen as being pro decolonization. Franklin Delano Roosevelt greatly pressured unwilling Winston Churchill, who was a committed imperialist with the Atlantic Charter to have self determination and let these countries govern themselves. The first big one being India, which was in the 40s, late 40s, and.
- [35:38]
Interviewer
Also Vietnam with the French. Who knows, if FDR had lived, maybe that would have turned out differently and saved the United States a major nightmare. Because he did not want the French to reimpose control over Vietnam.
- [35:50]
Martin DeCaro
It did.
- [35:51]
Interviewer
And Truman, then Eisenhower supported the French war against the Viet Minh, as they were called then. And then we inherited their nightmare and tried to make it work for ourselves, but go ahead.
- [36:00]
Ambassador John Andre
There was actually a fight in State Department between the Bureau of European affairs and the Bureau of East Asian affairs, the East Asian affairs pointed out a highly effective guerrilla fighter that we gave against the Japanese, you know, when Japan was occupying Vietnam, who we gave direct training and arms to. This guy named Ho Chi Minh had been reaching out and saying that he wanted our continued support after the defeat of Japan and don't let the French come back. Let us rule ourselves.
- [36:32]
Interviewer
He wrote a letter to Truman.
- [36:34]
Ambassador John Andre
I want to be George Washington.
- [36:36]
Interviewer
Yes. Now of course, Ho Chi Minh was not the nicest fella, but still it was their country. In his declaration of independence, I believe it was in 1945 or six in Hanoi, he cited Thomas Jefferson in that.
- [36:51]
Ambassador John Andre
Internal fight in State. The Bureau of European affairs won that argument and they felt that if you didn't support the pro, maintain the empire French, then their opposition, which was mostly Communist, would win. And so that was their logic. The East Asia Bureau was saying, no, this is the wave of the future. We're backing the wrong side and it's in our country's long term interests to back these other guys. And were they perfect? Absolutely not. But it was clear that this guy was an effective leader. He'd been effective against the Japanese, which is why we supported him, including with arms.
- [37:28]
Interviewer
So Kennedy's vision was for administering humanitarian aid around the world, building up US influence. But as we know, USAID also has a long history, as it is stated in a Foreign Policy article about this history, a history of engaging in intelligence work and meddling in the domestic politics of aid recipients throughout the 60s and 70s. The article states the agency often partnered with the CIA's now shuttered office of Public Safety, a department beset by allegations that it trained foreign police in terror and torture techniques and encouraged official brutality, According to a 1976 Government Accountability Office report. Some of the critics today of USAID point to this history, even more recent history when USAID tried to put together some kind of Twitter like platform to influence politics in Cuba. I think that was in like 2010.
- [38:23]
Martin DeCaro
So called Digital Bay of Pigs.
- [38:25]
Interviewer
It blew up on the United States. It didn't work at all. How do you address these concerns about nefarious behavior?
- [38:32]
Ambassador John Andre
Right. I have not seen that myself. As far as direct experience, I've heard of the incidents that you mentioned. In fact, I've seen just the opposite. To my regret, I've seen that USAID insularity. They have the idea that the development function should be separate and apart from whatever the contemporary US government policies are. Which I thought what was unfortunate. I can give you an example. We were as a US Embassy in Dar Es salaam. Tanzania was doing all we could, along with others, to stop the history of political violence in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is an autonomous archipelago, but under Tanzania, it was all hands on deck, pressuring every. All of our contacts in Zanzibar to have a unity government. While peace was always the order of the day on the mainland, Zanzibar, since its extremely violent 1964 revolution, has had this history of political violence. We wanted to end it. When the ambassador went to the USAID director, who had excellent contacts on the island, said, we want you to carry this tough message to your senior contacts just like others are doing, she just outright refused. She said, oh, that's not our function. We don't do politics. I want to save our development programs there that are going well. And so I don't want to get tangled up in this. Then ambassadors have a letter from the president saying that they are in charge of the executive branch of the US Government in their country of accreditation. And I'm not singling out this one country aid director, because I've seen that as a general aid approach in other countries. And I would consider that to be a reaction to what you're referring to, that is, they got too involved in this sort of thing at an earlier point, and so they went, I thought, too far in the other direction.
- [40:28]
Interviewer
Because there's a difference between doing what you're proposing and meddling in the affairs, especially working with the CIA, which has a horrendous and deserved horrendous reputation around the developing world. Right. I mean, there's a difference between those two things. Positive involvement and then meddling in the affairs of other countries for some other interest.
- [40:48]
Ambassador John Andre
Well, the longtime ruling party in Zanzibar considered our encouragement of a unity government also being meddling. I can assure you. I'll go back to what I said earlier, that the way you advance our interests is identifying overlapping goals. If it's something that the government, local government, wants and the US wants, and you work together and achieve that goal, you have more influence and you have greater credibility as you seek to convince that government to do other things that they didn't initially want to do. That includes seeing things more our ways and looking more seriously at our approaches. China does the same. So do other international players.
- [41:28]
Interviewer
Yeah, well, China actually doesn't make any demands on human rights. That's been one criticism of U.S. assistance. And I'm not saying I agree with this, that we want the countries, the host countries or the recipient country to do certain things when it comes to human rights. Whereas China just brings big suitcases full of money and they build infrastructure and they don't care what you're doing. In the human rights arena, sure, I.
- [41:51]
Ambassador John Andre
Believe that we are overly prescriptive at times, but we do need to stand for certain things and draw some red lines and then be firm about those red lines. There are political constituencies around very specific human rights issues which we then get ordered by the political leadership to push with other countries. Essentially what we are doing. I had a friend of mine who a Tanzanian minister of the Home Minister, which is basically internal security. He said, I'm an elected member of Parliament, I have to answer to my constituents. They want us to use our internal security resources to address this issue and this issue and this issue in priority order. You're talking about human trafficking and yes, we're all against human trafficking, but it's not one of our constituents top concerns. So you're telling us to ignore the priority order of security concerns of our citizens and instead do what a foreign power is telling us to do and choose their priorities over our own people's priorities. How is that democracy? Would you do that? Would you say, well, we're going to ignore our citizens priority concerns and we're going to do what some foreign country told us to do. Yeah, it's a good point. We'll work very well here.
- [43:06]
Interviewer
So to wrap up here, Ambassador, what the Trump administration has done to USAID as part of a bigger picture, part of a larger approach, their attitude toward the world, rejection of a set of what you might call liberal ideas post 1945 about international institutions and the US role in the world, opposition, positive role to promote human rights, etc. How would you approach that issue? That this is not just about US aid, but this is about a larger approach to world affairs.
- [43:33]
Ambassador John Andre
Right. And that is a very deep concern that I have. It's directly relevant to the classes that I'm teaching that covers that whole issue of the rules based order that was introduced mostly by the United States. It has been frayed, it's suffering serious decline that could completely destabilize the world. Are we going to go back to spheres of influence and not rules based world order? That means that all countries are going to be playing the same game. And it's an ancient game, the strongest taking out the weakest and absorbing territories. What's going on between Russia's invasion of Ukraine, There was a time when we opposed that behavior. We opposed it in Kuwait, we opposed it in Korea and that was supportive of this rules based world order. We invaded countries as well, but not with the purpose of absorbing their territory. Since 1945, since the establishment of the rules based order, we did that at earlier points in our history. So yes, that is of deep concern that if the world is going to be taking huge steps backwards into an earlier period of each one for themselves and that means much higher defense budgets everywhere and aggressive behavior everywhere be the ruination of a lot of places, a lot of countries.
- [44:49]
Interviewer
You know, I did not put my question very well. I'll just share with you something that a major historian of 20th century Europe who lives in the United Kingdom wrote me recently. He put it better. He said it is very sad as well, of course as extremely disturbing to see President Trump trashing the ideals of democratic freedom which for generations have made the usa, whatever the realities of its foreign policy, a beacon for much of the world are now being replaced by imperialistic bullying under the effective rubric not of America first, but of America only.
- [45:22]
Ambassador John Andre
As far as what approaches to use. I strongly believe in life in general, but certainly in foreign affairs under promising and over delivering. That is the way that you increase the credibility of your institutions. We haven't been doing that. We should not be overly prescriptive. Just as we would not appreciate other countries telling us what to do to the greatest finest detail, we should stand for something. I have seen US policy, US values triumph. I think there's a real tendency in the media not to report successes when things go well, it draws a big yawn and doesn't get on the paper. Being an Africanist, some of the countries that are least well known known outside Africa are the successful ones because no one talks about them. They don't make the news. But yeah, I would like to see these instruments of our influence in the world made more efficient, more effective. And that is including what we do on the humanitarian and development side, those are two very different things. And on the global health side, those are the three categories that I think of. We also of course have technical health. I remember the US Geological Service set up a volcano monitoring station on a live volcano that had in Tanzania that had farmers profiting from that very rich volcanic soil. And that was a small little effort and it got us a tremendous amount of positive respect and influence in Tanzania from what the US Geological Service does. So that's when I say technical, there's that security assistance in training and arms. Nothing wrong with that for countries that are using it to defend themselves. So there's assistance across the board. It should be applied when there is a US interest directly tied to it when we can truly have a partnership that profits both parties.
- [47:24]
John F. Kennedy
But more can be done. A World center for Health Communications under the World Health Organization could warn of epidemics and the adverse effects of certain drugs, as well as transmit the results of new experiments and new discoveries. Regional research centers could advance our common medical knowledge and train new scientists and doctors for new nations. A global system of satellites could provide communication and weather information for all corners of the Earth. A worldwide program of conservation could protect the forest and wild game preserves now in danger of extinction for all time, improve the marine harvest of food from our oceans, and prevent the contamination of air and water by industrial as well as nuclear pollution. And finally, a worldwide program of farm productivity and food distribution similar to our country's Food for Peace program. Cord now give every child the food he needs.
- [48:39]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History As It Happens. What were you doing five years ago in March 2020? You were probably doing the same thing I was doing bracing for the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. We'll look back on the pandemic.
- [48:55]
Interviewer
What did we learn? What did we get right or wrong?
- [48:58]
Martin DeCaro
With historian John Barry when we report History As It Happens, New episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
- [49:05]
Interviewer
My newsletter every Friday.
- [49:06]
Martin DeCaro
Sign up@history as it happens.com or just go to Substack and search for History as it Happens.