By Ruth Johnson
Elon musk is attempting to shut down USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, because he believes it is “corrupt and incompetent”. However, this agency provides support to over 120 countries worldwide, ranging from healthcare to education. Established during the Kennedy administration, USAID provides roughly 50 billion dollars a year to impoverished nations. It was set up in 1961, when former President Kennedy proclaimed to the American population:
“There is no escaping our obligations: our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of free nations – our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people, as a nation no longer dependent upon the loans from abroad that once helped us develop our own economy – and our political obligations as the single largest counter to the adversaries of freedom.”
Elon Musk has attempted to discredit USAID’s work exaggerating expenditure and villainising recipients. In reality, in 2023 only 0.6% of the American annual spending budget went to USAID. One of Musk’s misleading claims stated the agency spent “50 billion dollars on condom funding for Gaza”. In fact, the condoms did not go to the Palestinian territory of Gaza, but to the province in Mozambique called Gaza. Furthermore, in 2023 only $8 million dollars went to condom aid, and Mozambique did not receive any. Mozambique did receive 5.4 million dollars of non-condom contraceptive aid because Mozambique has the 8th highest HIV prevalence in the world.
Musk omits the strategic reasons behind USAID. It helps build foreign relations by strengthening international alliances. If a country’s economy is strong, the global market is strong, which overall helps America’s economy. It reflects the ideas that were at the core of the Kennedy administration’s and are meant to be here today – helping those in need.
Suspending USAID would have far reaching consequences, including:
- Syrians receiving humanitarian assistance (food, medical supplies and shelter
- Countering Russian and Chinese influence
- Financial support for countries hosting Ukrainian refugees, like Poland and Romania
- Ukrainian victims receiving humanitarian aid
To conclude, this shows how Elon Musk is attempting to weaponise and stigmatise empathy as part of a larger American agenda to vilify anything that contrasts the beliefs and attitudes of MAGA and encouraging isolationism.