While not a direct target of its initiatives, the shuttering of Washington’s USAID network is likely to have a ripple effect in Ireland where our nation’s foreign aid programmes have become interwoven with the Democratic wing of the American establishment in the last decade.
Founded as an instrument of American regime change, news of the USAID website going offline came amid a wider shaking up in Washington’s diplomatic establishment in the weeks following the beginning of the second Trump administration.
Part of a consolidation of U.S foreign policy under the State Department, the 9,000-employee strong USAID network became a prime target of the new administration due to its left-wing bias and perception of being utilised by Democratic figures as part of weaponised humanitarianism against the Global South and Middle East.
Spearheaded by Democratic hawk and colour revolutionary extraordinaire Samantha Power USAID’s demise has some notable implications on the Department of Foreign Affairs’ and Irish Aid’s work particularly in East Africa where the Irish state partners with America ostensibly to combat world hunger.
USAID involvement in Ireland proper began with International Fund for Ireland (IFI) in the 1990s where just over half a billion euro worth of effective slush money was pumped into the post-conflict region to maintain community cohesion.
Both power and USAID played an important role in the backroom direction of Ireland’s diplomatic response to the Ukrainian invasion as many insiders complained about the co-opting of otherwise apolitical Irish NGOs by the U.S foreign policy establishment.
Perhaps where USAID and the Irish state work most in synch is in Africa managing food security and preparing the region for climate change through provisions to small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia where the Irish government was accused of backing an American takeover of the country through support of northern rebels.
Whether the Irish presence in these countries can be sustained post-USAID in a world where China and even Russia can provide more beneficial bilateral relationships arguably with less clauses awaits to be seen.
Now the Republic’s ambassador to DC a key intermediary figure in the interface between USAID and Ireland is Geraldine Byrne Nason whose time at the UN led to accusations that Ireland was subordinating itself to the whims of Democratic administrations when it came to the Global South.
Irish and U.S Democrats have a decades old relationship steeped in diaspora connections and only accelerating in the post-Good Friday Agreement world where the two seemed to be joined at the hip.
The institutional decapitation of USAID emphasises the permanency of much of the regime change currently underway. America is not retreating from the world but rather entrenching itself in the North American continent leaving Ireland at an awkward junction outside a soon-to-be erected tariff wall and straddling EU federalism with and Atlantic economy.
Devoid of a sense of purpose on the world stage and willing to exchange our foreign policy infrastructure often in the form of humanitarian aid to DC the cessation of American slush money to Ireland and various initiatives abroad is a sign the thirty year hegemony of Clinton-era liberalism is approaching some sort of end here.
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