{"id":232285,"date":"2025-02-05T11:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T11:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/05\/foreign-strongmen-cheer-as-musk-dismantles-u-s-aid-agency\/"},"modified":"2025-02-05T11:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T11:22:07","slug":"foreign-strongmen-cheer-as-musk-dismantles-u-s-aid-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/05\/foreign-strongmen-cheer-as-musk-dismantles-u-s-aid-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Strongmen Cheer as Musk Dismantles U.S. Aid Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/05\/multimedia\/05putin-usaid-01-vfwb\/05putin-usaid-01-vfwb-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Foreign Strongmen Cheer as Musk Dismantles U.S. Aid Agency\" title=\"Foreign Strongmen Cheer as Musk Dismantles U.S. Aid Agency\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Humanitarian initiatives can enhance American \u201csoft power,\u201d supporters say, which can buy the United States good will and leverage in countries across the world for a comparatively small fraction of federal spending. In 2023, U.S.A.I.D. funding represented .07 percent of the U.S. federal budget. In 2021, before the war in Ukraine, it accounted for .04 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The broadside against the agency in Washington has led some to wonder if European governments or private donors will step in to pay for the threatened initiatives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian oil tycoon and Putin opponent, said in a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/khodorkovski\/9584\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">message<\/a> on Telegram on Monday that he and a fellow Russian businessman, Boris Zimin, would step in to fund \u201cRussian-language media, human rights and analytical projects, as well as humanitarian projects operating in Ukraine.\u201d<span class=\"css-8l6xbc evw5hdy0\">  <\/span>But he cautioned they wouldn\u2019t be able to help all grant recipients in full.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Zselyke Csaky, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, calculated that the United States spends about $2 billion a year on direct democracy promotion programs, including both direct State Department funds and U.S.A.I.D. grants. Europe, she said, spends about $4 billion, and would need to spend about 50 percent more to make up the difference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI find that honestly quite unlikely,\u201d Ms. Csaky said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The immediate problem, she said, is the speed of the dismantling. \u201cThis is happening right now, and I know many organizations that will need to shut down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cBy the time European countries respond,\u201d she said, \u201cthere may not be much of the ecosystem to save.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Edward Wong<!-- --> contributed reporting from Bangkok, <!-- -->Farnaz Fassihi<!-- --> from New York and <!-- -->Linda Qiu<!-- --> from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/05\/world\/europe\/usaid-russia-putin.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humanitarian initiatives can enhance American \u201csoft power,\u201d supporters say, which can buy the United States good will and leverage in countries across the world for a comparatively small fraction of federal spending. In 2023, U.S.A.I.D. funding represented .07 percent of the U.S. federal budget. In 2021, before the war in Ukraine, it accounted for .04 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/05\/multimedia\/05putin-usaid-01-vfwb\/05putin-usaid-01-vfwb-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2539,41,522,86219,2534,33,164576,181513,6039,75135,209,202,62908,221,163847,128437,76508,128440],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232287,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232285\/revisions\/232287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}