The United States is rapidly dismantling the world order that it built and maintained over the past 80 years. Donald Trump’s administration is demolishing America’s foreign-aid system, weakening its transatlantic alliances, and curtailing military assistance for key partners, all in the name of putting “America First.”
These decisions emerge in part from a belief that has a growing appeal today: The U.S. should fix its own problems before worrying about everyone else’s. But this view fails to recognize that America’s international relationships are indispensable to its strength and stability. In nearly 15 years working on foreign-aid efforts across continents, I’ve seen that when America withdraws from the world, the world’s problems come knocking on its door. 
Trump’s policies resemble those of some American leaders in the early 20th century who withdrew from international commitments, restricted foreign assistance, and pursued objectives mainly through threats and limited force rather than engagement and support. Both American and foreign leaders typically expended blood and treasure abroad only when they sensed a near-term payoff, or when catastrophes had already broken out. Using one’s resources to stabilize the international system and prevent bad outcomes was the exception.
The costs of this approach became clear soon enough. Even though the U.S. had the world’s largest economy and an exceptional military, the country was deeply vulnerable to international crises, including wars, epidemics, and economic tumult, all of which inflicted great harm on Americans.
Now, in fraying the international order, Trump threatens to reinstate some of the conditions that made the U.S. so unsafe a century ago. The administration claims to want to reduce wasteful spending and inefficiency. I know firsthand that these problems are real, and that effective reforms exist. But tearing down the system isn’t one of them.
Aiding other countries may seem like charity, but it protects American interests in concrete ways. Containing Ebola or Marburg outbreaks before they reach American soil, for example, is clearly preferable to addressing them once they’re already here. But even the more routine work that the U.S. has now halted—such as training nurses and supporting hospitals—ultimately makes Americans more secure. My own experiences illustrate the point.
In 2019, I worked with government officials and medical professionals in Tanzania to curb the excessive use of antibiotics, and thereby reduce the potential for drug-resistant pathogens. In a stuffy conference room four hours outside Dar es Salaam, we created a system that could help stop the next MRSA infection from emerging in Tanzania and coming to America.
During my work in Nigeria in 2016, I saw how training teachers, providing textbooks, and rehabilitating schools not only benefited locals but also promoted America’s strategic priorities. Because we conducted all of our activities with the Nigerian government, we established relationships that could be used to encourage security cooperation, combat local insurgents, and counter Chinese influence in the country.
And while working on tax reform in Tunisia in 2017, I was one small piece of an effort to ensure that the government had sufficient revenue to pay its employees and provide basic services. This wasn’t bleeding-heart altruism: The project ultimately helped equip the country’s emerging democracy to fight extremism, reduce migration that was destabilizing Europe, and pay its debts to Western creditors.
The connection between foreign assistance and U.S. national security was even clearer in Afghanistan, where I spent several months from 2010 to 2013. I was part of a team that reestablished local government offices and cooperated with officials to rebuild schools, repair roads, and improve water systems. The initiative was demanding and dangerous: Local militants attacked our workplaces and—on a day I wasn’t there—car-bombed our Kabul office. Our work benefited the local population, but that wasn’t our primary objective; we were there to convert our military’s gains into lasting security for America. As long as terrorists who opposed the West continued to find refuge in Afghanistan, the U.S. wouldn’t be safe. The Afghan government had to be rehabilitated in order to neutralize them.
America’s efforts obviously failed in Afghanistan, but that was a function of too little involvement, not too much. The U.S. had steadily withdrawn military, economic, and diplomatic support—a long, slow slide that led to the Afghan government’s collapse and our disgraceful withdrawal in 2021. We now face a similar situation in Ukraine, where the elimination of U.S. support may produce the very failure that America says it’s trying to avoid.
Even a purely self-interested America should invest in the world’s security. But it has to improve how it carries out those investments. As with any government program, America’s foreign-aid system suffers from a little fraud, some waste, and a lot of inefficiency.
Let’s start with fraud. Though I never witnessed any directly, some undoubtedly occurs, and the administration is right to want to eliminate it. But firing inspectors general is not the way to do so. These independent watchdogs minimize abuse and make sure Congress knows precisely how taxpayer money is being spent. For example, they identified billions of dollars in misdirected or poorly utilized spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. To actually root out fraud and inefficiency, the federal government must empower IGs, not remove them. Tying IG budgets to the size of the programs they oversee would ensure that their resources are commensurate with the tasks they are asked to perform, including targeting fraud.
In my experience, however, fraud is far from the biggest problem. I saw many projects fail either because they didn’t fully account for local context—in fairness, it’s difficult to hold community meetings under mortar fire—or because they didn’t have enough resources to achieve their aims. But even when projects succeed on their own terms, they don’t always advance America’s interests as clearly as they could. Every foreign-assistance effort should be linked to specific foreign-policy goals, such as decreasing the number of refugees fleeing a given country, or building up a local alternative to Chinese foreign investment. The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Reviews of recent decades have tried to unite projects with broader objectives, but they’re too cumbersome to be effective.
Simply meeting goals and advancing the national interest aren’t enough, though; America’s foreign-aid system needs to do both much more efficiently than it has in the past. I was part of several efforts that languished under review for well over a year before being canceled. Worse, some applications sat pending for so long that when they were awarded, the circumstances on the ground had changed so dramatically that the original plan had no chance of succeeding. Even when applications are assessed and approved quickly, other onerous processes stand in the way: contracting mechanisms, acquisition regulations, and compliance and reporting requirements all tend to result in lots of wasted money, time, and brainpower.
In theory, some of DOGE’s reforms might help in this regard. Subsuming USAID and other foreign-aid offices within the State Department could allow the government to make sure that more projects meet their goals and promote American priorities. One could also argue that reducing America’s foreign commitments might help the country focus on its most important interventions. The current administration, however, has given little indication that it is carrying out these reforms in good faith—or even wants to improve foreign aid in the first place.
A thoughtful version of DOGE that truly wants to create a leaner, more effective foreign-policy apparatus could use AI to accelerate and improve the many regulatory steps that slow down the provisioning of aid. AI might also help the government identify which applicants are most likely to meet their targets.
But at the moment, DOGE seems less inclined to excise waste and inefficiency than to implode the government. Its impact on American security is already coming into view—in a resurgence of tuberculosis in Kenya, for example, and a measurably growing risk of nuclear war.
By ostensibly putting itself first, America is really dragging the world back to a leaderless, atomized era that undermined its own interests. The administration can continue to disengage and watch chaos fill the void. Or it can make America safer.
