The Logical End Point of ‘America First’ Foreign Aid

For the past half century, the U.S. has tried to deploy foreign aid wherever it is needed most—but under the Trump administration, humanitarian projects are being evaluated by a different measure, Hana Kiros reports.

The administration’s approach to foreign aid emphasizes dealmaking and transactions over charity. The strategy may gain more resources for the U.S. in the short term, but it also risks sacrificing other goals: “The American intelligence community has long known that insurgent groups … rely on desperation, food insecurity, and hopelessness to gain recruits,” Kiros writes.

The State Department has said that the department will continue to work with partner governments for security purposes. But after U.S.-funded health and counterterrorism programs in Mozambique were cut last year, ISIS surged into the vacuum, Kiros writes.