[Pictured: Opposition leader, Juan Guaido, shown here in 2019, was funded by USAID in an attempted political coup in Venezuela after nearly two decades of similar meddling in the country by the US government.]
By Matthew John
After appointing insufferable Nazi oligarch Elon Musk to head his newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump regime implemented massive funding cuts that have affected various federal government agencies. A lively debate has ensued regarding the nature and importance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with one side praising the institution as an indispensable, benevolent, humanitarian force and the other claiming it is deeply corrupt and brimming with radical leftists.
The truth is not somewhere in the middle, but somewhere else entirely. To paint a more accurate picture of the interests USAID serves, as well as the unique geopolitical role it has played, I have selected examples of its work in four different countries. I hope my analysis provides a useful window into an often overlooked aspect of this discourse - especially as it relates to leftist politics.
Afghanistan
The year was 1979. The United States was in the midst of the Cold War and the late Jimmy Carter was president. During the preceding years and decades, the CIA had conducted a series of successful coups against democratically elected governments in countries like Iran, Guatemala, and Chile - often using anti-communist paranoia as justification. After a socialist revolution in Afghanistan the year prior, the agency and its co-conspirators in Washington finally had an excuse to confront the Soviets more directly - albeit through rather unsavory proxies.
The plan, according to Carter’s closest adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, was to provide weapons and training to Wahhabi terrorists known as the mujahideen in order to provoke an intervention by the Soviet military. According to Brzezinski, Carter signed the first directive for aid to these Islamist extremist “freedom fighters” on July 3, 1979, and the decade-long proxy war that followed resulted in the overthrow of the socialist government in Kabul and was also a significant contributing factor in the downfall of the USSR - the world’s first socialist society.
After taking power in April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) instituted an array of socialist policies, including “land reform, growth in public services, price controls, separation of church and state, full equality for women, legalization of trade unions and a sweeping literacy campaign.” This might seem like a positive development, but not in the eyes of the U.S. empire and its capitalist agenda. In addition to the CIA’s covert support for the mujahideen’s holy war against the secular evils of increased living standards and women’s rights, USAID also played an interesting role in this conflict.
The agency reportedly spent $50 million on a “jihad literacy” program in Afghanistan, primarily during the 1980s. This effort included the publication and distribution of ultra-conservative textbooks that “tried to solidify the links between violence and religious obligation,” according to author Dana Burde. Lessons on basic math and language were accompanied by depictions of Kalashnikov rifles, grenades, ammunition, and a commitment to militancy and retribution against the Russians (who were depicted as “invaders” despite having been invited to lend military assistance by the PDPA). After consolidating power in the ‘90s, the Taliban government revised and reprinted these textbooks, and copies have even been found in Pakistan as recently as 2013.
Assisting the Taliban’s precursor with reactionary, jihadist propaganda to viciously sabotage a progressive, feminist government and its allies is a strange form of “humanitarianism.” You might even say it’s the opposite of humanitarianism. Was this just a mistake that USAID made in the distant past and has since learned from, or is there a continued pattern of this behavior?
Cuba
Two decades prior to the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan, the Cuban Revolution succeeded after years of guerrilla combat against the forces of a U.S.-backed capitalist dictator named Fulgencio Batista. Though the U.S. government was initially open to working with Fidel Castro’s new revolutionary administration, the tide quickly turned and Cuba has faced a relentless imperialist onslaught from Washington ever since. The tactics of the Yankee juggernaut have included invasion, terrorism, hundreds of assassination attempts, and a crippling economic blockade. Our friends at USAID have participated in these regime change efforts through various insidious plots.
In 2014, the Associated Press reported on a USAID plan to use HIV-prevention workshops to secretly “[recruit] a younger generation of opponents to Cuba’s Castro government.” After being exposed, the scheme proved profoundly embarrassing to the U.S. political establishment and detrimental to the reputation of Western aid organizations. But this was not the first USAID regime change plot to be exposed that year. The agency had also set up a Twitter-inspired app called ZunZuneo in 2010 in an attempt to “build a base of unsuspecting Cuban users, and then introduce rumors and misinformation to destabilize the country’s socialist government.”
More recently, USAID was caught funding rappers and other artists to, as Russiagate conspiracy theorists would say, “sow political discord” in Cuban society (but it’s okay when we do it). Thankfully, all of these tactics have failed and the Cuban Revolution lives on.
Venezuela
The Bolivarian Revolution began in 1999 when popular Venezuelan politician Hugo Chávez was inaugurated after his historic electoral victory the previous year. Chávez oversaw an extensive program of socialist policies, lifting millions out of poverty and vastly expanding participatory democracy and racial justice until his death in 2013. Five years later, Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to begin his second term in office after winning the Venezuelan presidential election in May of 2018.
On January 22, 2019, Juan Guaidó — a man whom 81% of Venezuelans had never heard of — suddenly declared himself “interim president.” Although Guaidó did not run in any presidential election, U.S. politicians and pundits quickly praised this brazen coup attempt, recognizing Guaidó’s claim to the Venezuelan presidency as legitimate. Like the efforts of U.S. imperialism in Cuba, this regime change operation has failed, as Guaidó never managed to gain popular support for his fraudulent government. He quickly became disgraced and is now under investigation by Venezuelan authorities, who recently issued an arrest warrant for the failed coup leader.
For its part, USAID provided $128 million in funding to the would-be dictator and his collaborators, and an additional $307 million to Venezuela’s right-wing political opposition more broadly, including for use in plots that were condemned by the International Red Cross and the United Nations. Reporting by the L.A. Times even revealed that $41.9 million in aid was diverted from Guatemala and Honduras and redirected to Guaidó and his fellow insurrectionists “to pay for their salaries, airfare, ‘good governance’ training, propaganda, technical assistance for holding elections and other ‘democracy-building’ projects.”
This was not the first time USAID was involved in the imperialist sabotage of Venezuela’s ongoing socialist project. During the years prior to the Guaidó debacle, the agency also played a central role in a conspiracy to meddle in Venezuela’s elections by weaponizing social media (again, it’s only bad when Russia does it).
Nicaragua
Those familiar with the Iran-Contra affair might recall the ghastly history of the U.S. government supporting far-right Nicaraguan death squads during the 1980s. Those death squads, known as the Contras, had an ultimate goal of destroying the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which had gained power through a popular revolution in 1979. The Sandinistas dedicated the first years of their governance to eradicating illiteracy, nationalizing public services, and the founding of working-class, socialist institutions like the People’s Army, the Sandinista Workers’ Confederation, the Association of Agricultural Workers, the Nicaraguan Students Union, the Federation of Health Workers, and the National Teachers’ Union.
However, just like the PDPA government in Afghanistan, the Sandinistas were met with a bloody proxy war at the hands of U.S. imperialism, resulting in a death toll of 30,000. The U.S.-backed Contra death squads “engaged in direct assassination campaigns against literacy and health care workers, engineers and anyone dedicated to rebuilding Nicaragua.” The capitalist elements in Nicaragua eventually consolidated power in 1990 and ruled the country for a decade and a half, but the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007 after Daniel Ortega was elected president.
Instead of simply funding sadistic death squads this time, Washington chose a more subtle and insidious path. Similar to their recent efforts in Cuba and Venezuela, the U.S. meddled in the politics of Nicaragua through a complex network of “aid” organizations and right-wing media outlets. One of the most notorious institutions USAID has supported is called the Chamorro Foundation, which is “run by one of the richest and most powerful family dynasties in Nicaragua.” The organization was complicit in a violent coup attempt against Ortega in 2018 and is now under investigation for money laundering.
Conclusion
This topic is far more complicated than what I have included in this article, and there are many other important analyses. I chose to focus on these specific countries in order to make a simple point: An organization that consistently engages in imperialist regime change efforts against socialist nations is entirely incompatible with the notion of humanitarianism. The ongoing project of socialism itself is inherently humanitarian and humanistic. As Michael Parenti once wrote:
“To say that ‘socialism doesn’t work’ is to overlook the fact that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.”
Despite its reputation among American liberals as a benevolent humanitarian organization, USAID is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a Trojan horse for Western imperialism — an insidious, destabilizing force that causes far more harm to the Global South than any “good” resulting from its ostensible assistance. And, despite far-right delusions about the agency in question supposedly being composed of “radical left lunatics,” its history reveals consistent and relentless opposition toward leftist movements around the world. Given its blood-drenched track record, the best humanitarianism the United States can offer developing countries is to simply leave them alone and respect their sovereignty.
