USAID Is in Dire Need of Reform. But Not Like This

President Donald Trump’s abrupt “pause” to all US foreign aid, alongside his adviser Elon Musk’s attack on the personnel and institutions of the United States Agency for International Development, has unleashed chaos across the globe. Many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people seem to have been deliberately left stranded without the help they were promised. That this mayhem has been launched by a US president, and greeted with relish by many of his voters, will unquestionably dent American prestige and power.

That’s a pity. Because reform and restructuring of US development assistance was long overdue. Here in India, as in much of the world, a modern approach to development assistance from Washington with a more equal partnership, and one informed by geopolitics and mutual interest, would certainly have been welcomed.