The Trump administration has now dismantled two key institutions of American soft power: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. On March 28 the administration announced that it would be reducing the staff at U.S.A.I.D., the main agency for distributing foreign aid, to about 15 positions — down from the roughly 10,000 people it employed before Donald Trump returned to the White House. In January, the administration stopped $239 million in congressional appropriations for the N.E.D., a largely government-funded nonprofit with a mission of advancing democratic change.
Both programs were creations of the Cold War that long enjoyed support from leading Republicans and Democrats, embodying the adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” But Mr. Trump’s assault on these programs indicates that this truism no longer holds. Survey data from December suggest how politicized the issue has become: Nearly 75 percent of Republicans said foreign aid should decrease, compared to only a third of Democrats.
To understand why American soft power became so politically vulnerable, it helps to understand the damage progressives did to its broad legitimacy over the past decade and a half. They did this by implicating soft-power institutions in domestic political controversies, especially on issues of sexual politics. They conflated American interests overseas with progressive priorities, using taxpayer money to advance a set of claims over which Americans strongly disagree.
As a result, Americans, far from laying aside their differences when they look abroad, now see foreign affairs as yet another arena for prosecuting domestic disputes. It’s no wonder foreign aid became a ready object of partisan attack.
Much of the right’s changing attitude toward institutions like U.S.A.I.D. can be traced to 2011, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech announcing that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” On the same day, the Obama administration issued a memo directing that all foreign aid and diplomacy be conducted in a way that promotes and protects the human rights of L.G.B.T. people.
Of course, certain elements of this project — such as opposing the brutal practice of “corrective rape” for lesbians in South Africa — are not only likely to command wide support; they are also hard to view as anything other than an honorable attempt to stop injustice. But others have a less obvious justification. How does including a third gender in the Bangladeshi census further U.S. foreign policy? What American interest is served by making it possible for people in Kosovo to change their sex on government documents?
There are progressive arguments for these policies, which were advanced by U.S.A.I.D. But there are also arguments against them, from those who insist on the importance of sex differences. Domestically, these policy debates could be engaged in democratically, in the political arena. Overseas, though, they were settled by administrative fiat even as the U.S. foreign policy apparatus claimed to be advancing democratic values.
For conservatives, nothing symbolized this short-circuiting of debate so much as the decision to fly rainbow flags at U.S. embassies during Pride month. This practice, which began in 2011 during Barack Obama’s presidency, suggested that America’s formidable foreign-policy apparatus was being employed to support gay rights when, for example, 45 percent of the country opposed gay marriage.
Whatever Cold War-era fondness conservatives still had for foreign aid quickly vanished. In 2011, after Ms. Clinton’s speech, Rick Perry, then the governor of Texas, said that support for L.G.B.T. rights abroad was “not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.” He promised to zero out foreign aid if he were to become president. The 2012 G.O.P. platform called for “limiting foreign aid” while faulting the Obama administration for attempting to promote “the homosexual rights agenda” overseas.
It might seem surprising to develop an animus to foreign aid because of sexual politics, but sexual politics crystallize many central social and philosophical issues — the purpose and place of sexual intercourse, what it is to be human and the role of the family in the task of procreation. Americans have long agreed that U.S. foreign policy should advance freedom and oppose tyranny. The problem is that they have starkly opposed views of what “freedom” means.
Consider how progressives discuss the war in Ukraine. When liberals like Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland celebrate support for Ukraine in part as an effort to fight “anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-trans hatred,” they imply that the reason to oppose Russia is not just its unlawful invasion of another country but also its failure to embrace a progressive understanding of sexuality. Even if one agrees with Mr. Raskin’s views on trans rights, there is something awkward about suggesting that it is worth going to war for a cause that many citizens of the United States do not support.
Once foreign aid was politicized, it started to look to conservatives less like a tool for advancing American interests abroad and more like a patronage network for the ideologically aligned. While the sums were often small, there was a cumulative effect: $70,884 in Ireland for a musical event celebrating diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, $32,000 in Peru for a comic “featuring an L.G.B.T.Q.+ hero to address social and mental health issues,” $19,808 in Montenegro for gay-straight alliance clubs. Fair or not, the overall impression was of a system designed to sustain a global network of progressive groups with taxpayer dollars.
It is understandable that progressives have sought to use American soft power to advance their idea of freedom. But styling oneself as an apostle of freedom opposed only by the unenlightened is an invitation to ignore the verdicts of democracy. Any party that uses American power to promote a controversial idea of freedom invites backlash, at home and abroad.
#Opinion #Conservatives #Turned #Foreign #Aid
