By PETER YOUNG

OF all the radical steps President Trump has taken precipitately since his inauguration only weeks ago, his dramatic and uncompromising action in relation to the US overseas aid programme has, arguably, been the most damaging to the most people, both at home and in overseas countries.

Most people are aware by now that he has hit the ground running in setting an agenda of massive change to redefine the role and function of the federal government. He has set in train a series of measures to reshape and transform government bureaucracy in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the board and with a view to cutting staff and expenditure.

The President is said to have had the US Agency for International Development, known as USAID, in his sights for a long time. He is quoted as saying the US foreign aid industry and bureaucracy is “antithetical to American values”. He has called it “a waste of money” and an organisation run by “radical left lunatics”, with the White House describing some of its projects as “waste and abuse”. Going even further, his so-called efficiency tsar, Elon Musk, has even described it as a criminal organisation.

So Trump is reported now to want to get rid of USAID or, at least, reorganise it to maximise its efficiency and align its operations with what he claims to be the national interest which he sees as his “America First” approach. Thus, what may be left of USAID is due to become part of the State Department, and any of its activities that cannot be absorbed within this separate body may be simply terminated.

Unsurprisingly, USAID is in considerable disarray as its activities have been frozen for 90 days while its organisation and activities are under review. Clearly, its future as an independent agency now hangs in the balance. It is said, however, that dismantlement of it would require the approval of Congress which has the authority to establish or abolish government agencies. It will also be liable to legal challenges as it appears that the courts will be the only constraint on Trump’s actions.

As a brief reminder, USAID was created by the US government under President Kennedy in 1961 and based on what was a legacy of existing development assistance that already had US staff serving in field missions in various developing countries. The latest figures - for 2023 - indicate spending on aid of $68 billion, which amounts to 0.6 percent of total US government expenditure, with the employment of some 10,000 people including in some sixty offices around the world.

The US is, by some margin, the world’s biggest spender on international development, well above the UK, for example, which in 2023 disbursed some $18 billion, putting it in fourth place. Operating as an independent body, USAID has a broad remit. With a mixture of humanitarian and developmental aid, it spends millions of dollars annually across the world in an effort to alleviate poverty, treat human diseases and respond to famines and natural disasters. It also promotes democracy building.

Although some waivers have been negotiated, Trump’s aid freeze is said to have sparked mayhem around the world, with one veteran humanitarian worker talking of an earthquake across the aid sector as it braces for the inevitable serious effect on humanitarian projects worldwide.

Millions are reported to be suffering already as US aid – including long-term projects and commitments - has, in effect, been suspended, causing confusion, disruption and apprehension with existing arrangements not being honoured so that recipients are suddenly concerned about their future and their safety.

Reportedly, one noted casualty of all this is aid to Ukraine; limiting or removing it permanently would hardly be consistent with US supply of separate military support to that beleaguered country.

From everything I have read, the president’s radical review of government spending is becoming increasingly popular among voters at home – and this will grow if the review reveals corruption within government agencies. They seem to be welcoming their new government acting decisively to take the axe to unnecessary and unjustified expenditure of their taxpayer dollars, and who can blame them for that. But others believe that there should be a proper and measured way of dealing with the traditional long-standing aid sector – and the government’s aid budget -- involving the lives and welfare of human beings across the world.

Amidst all the recent dramatic hype, there appears to have been little consideration about the reason and justification for foreign aid. Instead, most of the talk has been about the mechanics of the White House’s assault on this aid agency and the immediate effect on recipients overseas.

There is, of course, a moral dimension to foreign aid which was well articulated by former British Prime Minister David Cameron when, a few years ago, he was pushing for his own country to enshrine in domestic law a commitment to meet the UN target of spending annually 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product on foreign aid. He succeeded in achieving this in Britain, though the figure was reduced to 0.5 per cent in 2021 following the impact of COVID-19. In Cameron’s words, as human beings there is a moral obligation for better-off countries to tackle poverty and child mortality in the world and to help those suffering, particularly for reasons beyond their control.

The moral case for the better-off countries to help others, with particular attention being given to the most vulnerable, rests on the fundamental need to address human suffering wherever it is found. This means immediate help to alleviate such suffering but also working in the longer term to reduce poverty levels. It should involve assistance in dealing with immediate hunger and famines as well as other emergencies and natural disasters. It also means helping struggling poorer countries, which may also be ravaged by war, to make better provision for their own citizens.

There is also a broader dimension in that it is in the interests of donor countries to protect their own security and prosperity by helping to combat conditions around the world that may spawn terrorism and conflict – like poverty, weak institutions and corruption - by promoting economic development, good governance and transparency. So a strong aid programme is in the interests of those countries themselves. Certainly, long-term aid, in particular, should be linked to the donor country’s foreign policy objectives and Britain put this in to practice when it brought the provision of aid under the umbrella of foreign affairs by creating in 2020 the current joint department – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. This was a merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development.

Within today’s space constraints, it is only possible to touch on what is obviously an important issue. But what seems to be disturbing a growing number of people is the White House’s emphasis purely on the financial and practical aspects with little or no acknowledgement of the wider moral and human dimension of aid. A new government should surely review all official expenditure and insist on proper practice across the federal government. But many will hope that the US will not withdraw from being the world’s largest and most generous single aid power.

Liberation of Auschwitz

I had intended to write last week about the 80th anniversary on January 27 of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau but was overtaken by other topics. Auschwitz was the largest of the concentration, extermination and forced labour camps operated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. There were said to be more than twenty main such camps but also many other smaller places of incarceration.

This date has become known as the International Day of Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust of European Jews during the war. Between 1940 and 1945, more than a million Jews, religious leaders, disabled people and other innocent victims were killed – gassed or shot – at Auschwitz alone in what became the worst case of mass murder in history.

It is widely considered that the concentration camps and the unspeakable atrocities committed in them constitute one of the darkest chapters in the human story as huge numbers suffered from immense cruelty. They were stripped of their possessions, dignity and humanity before being summarily killed.

Auschwitz, which was a complex of camps in occupied Poland, has become the symbol of the holocaust. Every year, people are encouraged to make this date a day to develop educational programmes and raise awareness of the holocaust and other international genocides. Its purpose is to honour the victims of Nazism and to help prevent anything like it from ever happening again.

At the solemn ceremony two weeks ago at the camp itself survivors were joined in remembrance by world leaders and European royalty. They joined together with the people of Poland and the rest of the world in mourning the lives lost. There was also a memorial event held in London.

An estimated one thousand survivors of Auschwitz are still alive but because of their advanced age people expect that last month’s ceremony may be one of the last such gatherings of those who experienced its horrors. The oldest survivor is a woman called Rose Girone who celebrated her 113th birthday in January. Born in Poland she now lives in New York and tells a remarkable tale of resilience and survival.

Since the war and into modern times there has been a huge effort to condemn anti-Semitism and religious or racial bigotry in all its forms; not least, of course, because the manifest evils on which Nazism was based in Germany began with hatred on the ordinary streets that grew disproportionately and all too quickly.

The lessons for today’s generation must surely be learned and taken heed of so that history can never be allowed to repeat itself. All agree that there is a duty to remember the horrors that took place during that dark time of history – in the terrible realisation that there appears to be no limit to the evil humans can do to one another.

Lack of political judgement

It is all too easy for outsiders to criticise the way politicians run a country. But, judging from the UK press, the British government’s handling of the Chagos Islands issue looks to have been a case of mismanagement. From all accounts, the optics are anyway not good.

There has been much publicity recently about the heavy costs of the deal to hand over sovereignty of these islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. This includes retention of a lease on one of the islands called Diego Garcia for the UK-US military air base that is already there. Prime minister Keir Starmer is now under fire for allowing these costs allegedly to rise excessively to some $20 billion.

From all reports, there had been no compelling reason for the government to push this deal through at the moment; and, inevitably, people are comparing the large payment to Mauritius to the government’s decision, shortly after being elected last July, to cut winter fuel payments to pensioners in the UK.

This may appear to some people a somewhat weird comparison but that is surely the reality of the nature of politics. And, what makes matters worse for the British government is that the deal is anyway now mired in uncertainty after President Trump is expected to object to it on the grounds that it will give a security boost to China.

Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye. But, to this observer, the optics are indeed not very good.