Otto Granados Roldán
It has been predicted ad nauseam that with Trump 2.0, the international structure built up since the end of the Second World War could come to an end. It seems a gloomy and, in fact, very pessimistic forecast, but unfortunately, it is often true that, except in art, music, literature, architecture, and little else, in almost all walks of life, four years are enough to destroy what, with all its imperfections, has taken decades to build.
At times, it resembles Stefan Zweig’s world in turmoil, representing “the most terrible defeat of reason and the most fervent triumph of brutality of all those that fit in the chronicle of time”[1].
Democracy is in crisis; the ethical principles and moral values that civilized societies once aspired to as a code of conduct seem like pieces in an archaeological museum; effort, work, and merit matter little or nothing in the face of the return – modest and ailing – of a clientelist state that no longer has anything to distribute but is still limping along. The ends of education have been subverted because since nobody learns maths, science, or reading, then let’s give up these utilitarian trifles and return, like the Greeks, to the idealism of trying to form good, holy, pure and chaste people and societies which, of course, have never existed in a single form.
And that is where we are, in uncertain times, as Gramsci warned, where “the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; where old men die, long after the new have grown old; where monsters can arise and pervert reason from hellish ignorance”. The politically correct, who are abundant these days, want to intellectualize the issue and sugarcoat Trumpism 2.0 as a “transactional” style. There is no such thing, and let’s call a spade a spade: it is pure and straightforward thuggery.
That canvas threatens many things, from the Panama Canal to the Kennedy Center in Washington, which has been the emblem of culture in that great city for decades. But the teeth of the chainsaw are just beginning to turn. More devastation will come, for example, to what since the post-war period we have understood as an international system based on rules or on values such as solidarity, aid, or international cooperation, which at the end of the day were the expression of security and equilibrium policies, indeed, but also of principles that would help to shape a better world, even if we did not know what precisely that world consisted of. What we see now will produce a conceptual and political change in how these notions are interpreted and practiced in a system that no longer exists, at least as we knew it during the last century.
The origin and evolution of cooperation are well known, from the emergence of the United Nations system and its various agencies and later from different international organizations, multilateral financial institutions, and other entities specialized in regulating trade or health policies. The sequence of its emergence can be observed in three more or less clear moments. One is the years after the Second World War. Another is the start of international cooperation policies to exercise what some academics call “soft power”[2]. A third comes with the so-called latest “democratizing wave” after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the USSR, and the apparent configuration of a new world order with a hegemonic superpower and the supposed end of history.
Within this configuration, in which other regions such as Latin America and Africa did not play a leading role or have significant political and economic weight, the role of cooperation multiplied to contribute to a relatively stable nervous system oriented towards the articulation of a kind of global society. However, the arrangement has changed in various relatively opposing and uncertain directions, and in the folds of that tension, disenchantment has flourished and, therefore, criticism of the unfulfilled promises that anticipated the provision of global or shared public goods thanks to this type of cooperation.
There are many questions, and they run along different lines. Some have been formulated by Jorge G. Castañeda[3]: do rich countries have a responsibility to cooperate in developing poor countries? Will this development be “more feasible, faster and more equitable if they are democratic, respectful of human rights and honest”? Others are along the lines of gauging the actual effectiveness that cooperation has had (or not) in solving huge problems in the fields where it acts (humanitarian crises, food security, education, health, democracy, human rights), including efficiency and transparency in its execution and the cost-benefit ratio, as well as its correct use in recipient countries, accountability or the collective awareness that it is a morally and materially valuable policy for the world as a whole.
Probably, some of these aspects explain what is happening today in this field, exemplified savagely by Trump’s demolition of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the drastic cut in funds for half a dozen UN agencies (so far), some of them in key areas such as health, migration, drugs, and crime.
On the one hand, critics of international organizations[4] argue that the core of the problem is that their legitimacy “is diminishing, if not already exhausted.” But on the other hand, the mobilization of resources towards poor countries in the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America does not seem to have been sufficiently productive regarding the progress achieved[5]. In fact, many of the countries that have been receiving support funds for years appear in the worst positions in almost all the indexes (Somalia, Sudan, Nicaragua, Honduras, Libya, among others) and practically classify in the category of “failed states”.
It is also true that there have been undesirable practices within the United Nations system and international financial organizations. For example, highly bureaucratic and uncompetitive, meritocratic or transparent systems of personnel selection and promotion, especially at middle and senior levels, or the lack of clear and rigorous accountability. Or scandalous (and undignified) departures such as those of Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund and of Mauricio Claver-Carone from the Inter-American Development Bank, now rescued – with a strong whiff of vendetta, by the way – by the Trump administration.
Therefore, it seems logical that between these two extremes—the value of cooperation and these controversial practices—despotic governments such as those of Trump, Bukele, and Ortega resort to bullying tactics as a resource and a pretext to justify why they detest international cooperation or why taxpayers are skeptical about its actual social and economic profitability. Whatever happens, it will affect how other countries, agencies, and international organizations conduct their cooperation policies.
In the case of USAID, Trump has commissioned a review of its organization, functioning, and operation to decide on its future. It currently operates in 130 countries with a budget of approximately $44.2 billion in fiscal year 2024. It has more than 10,000 employees, two-thirds of whom serve abroad. According to UN data, in 2024, the US government financed around 47% of global humanitarian resources.
Throughout much of its existence, USAID has been perceived from opposing positions. Some argue that the very idea of official development assistance constitutes a wasteful expenditure of American resources and that any development support from the world’s richest country should be channeled through private investment. Others argue that its “healing nature” acts positively where perhaps no one else would. What is less clear is why it gave $68 million to an elite private organization such as the World Economic Forum, whose founder and owner has also been the subject of “numerous accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination against women and black people”[6]. Examples of such unclear or unjustified allocations have been revealed in recent weeks.
In Latin America, as Castañeda reminds us, it has also been accused of being a CIA tool. In reality, the region has received only around 1.7 billion dollars in funding, less than any other part of the world, and of this, 70 percent goes to five countries. Mexico received around 128 million dollars between 2023 and 2024. In this sense, it is pretty illustrative that Trump’s bullying tactics are so similar to those of López Obrador, who fought and attacked USAID to the point of paroxysm and formally asked the US embassy in Mexico to suspend its support for various think tanks. Indeed, USAID’s support worked in Venezuela to document the blatant electoral fraud in July 2024.
Under this common denominator, the hypothesis that those who could most benefit from the cut in cooperation funds are precisely the dictatorships in the region makes sense[7] and that if aid is suspended, democracy and human rights will be seriously affected at very critical moments.
As is often the case, bad examples spread quickly. What happens in this specific case will have consequences not only for the system of international cooperation and official development assistance but may also precipitate a far-reaching geopolitical redefinition and even encourage a conceptual rethinking of US strategic interests, with as yet quite uncertain outcomes. Let’s see.
The first question is whether this scenario means the end of so-called “soft power” because of the programs’ relative effectiveness and the lack of appropriation in the recipient countries. Back in 2005, Paul Kennedy[8] recalled, on the one hand, the complaints of American soldiers and sailors stationed in the Balkans because their thing was not peace missions but “fighting, killing and winning”, and, on the other hand, that the benefits of aid do not work in “destroyed” or “collapsed” societies without first establishing government, law and order. Over time, both considerations seem to have been proven true.
Based on bad experiences, the moral is that adequately implemented cooperation facilitates development, employment, security, and prosperity, which is good for democracy, human rights, and institutions, but also for economic growth and the expansion of open markets. As Martin Wolf points out, the combination of these factors made the US, with all the nuances one could wish for, a successful and benign hegemonic power under specific parameters. “A world with more prosperous, healthy, and stable countries is a better place to live… If the US is going to turn its back on its past wisdom, it is up to the rest of us to create a multilateral way forward while we wait for the US to finally find a way back into the light”[9].
That is the second major challenge. In politics, there are no vacuums. There are always those who fill them or at least try to. There is a double dilemma here, and it is pretty complex. On the one hand, the world is in a dire economic moment; according to World Bank analysis, not only is economic growth slowing down, but the performance of developing countries has become worrying due to stagnation in per capita income, internal conflicts, and political and institutional uncertainty. On the other, if under the bullying tactics of Trump 2.0, the US wants to be a new empire but not pay the cost of continuing to exercise that “soft power” through aid and assistance as it has done until now, who will fill the void?
Minouche Shafik, the former president of Columbia University, estimates that the flow of resources to developing countries is growing with new donors such as India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, often with geostrategic or commercial objectives[10] and with new orientations towards spending on issues such as climate change, but to the detriment of poverty reduction allocations. The other source is, of course, institutions such as the World Bank that could channel more funds to projects in education, health, and infrastructure, but they are potential targets for bullying tactics.
Can cooperation be saved by relying, as Shafik hopes, on the fact that “the ashes of the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn policies may give rise to the phoenix of a new consensus on international development”? This is difficult to say for sure. Numerous observers agree that a part of the international community, namely developed, civilized, committed countries with available resources, could structure a new support network that, to some extent, replaces the eventual withdrawal from cooperative action.
But we must also multiply the successes and learn from the mistakes. What are the priorities and why? How can cooperation be better evaluated in terms of concrete, measurable, and transparent results? How can the narrative about its importance be modernized for different audiences, some of whom had no idea about it until now? What can be done in and with countries that are probably failed states where there is no cooperation that really works but which produce migrants, drugs, environmental deterioration, hatred, and poverty? This is the pending discussion.
In short, it is critical to vigorously warn about the dangers caused by countries’, governments’, and leaders’ lack of interest and indifference to the service that cooperation can provide for strengthening democracies, freedoms, and the exercise of fundamental rights. Otherwise, as Zweig wrote in 1942, we may have reached “a crucial point: an end and a new beginning,” but without knowing exactly which is which.
[1] El mundo de ayer. Memorias de un europeo, Barcelona, Acantilado, 2011, p. 10
[2] Nye, J., “Soft Power”, Foreign Policy, 80, 1990, pp.153-171
[3] https://jorgegcastaneda.nexos.com. mx/trump-usaid-y-lopez-obrador/?_gl=1*89hdmb*_ga*MTA1MjM2NjExMC4xNjc3NTQyOTc1*_ga_M343X0P3QV*MTczOTQwNDI3OS4yMTAuMC4xNzM5NDA0MjgwLjU5LjAuMA
[4] Maren Elfert, Euan Auld, “The waning legitimacy of international organisations and their promissory visions”, in Comparative Education, Volume 60, 2024.
[5] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/paris-declaration-on-aid-effectiveness_9789264098084-en.html
[6] https://www.wsj.com/business/world-economic-forum-klaus-schwab-discrimination-harassment-de285594
[7] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article299865094.html
[8] “¿Poder duro contra poder blando”, El País, February 19, 2005.
[9] https://www.ft.com/content/3e470e39-ba59-443f-a717-78debb5edca2
[10] https://www.ft.com/content/ed29f87a-91c2-49a0-a69b-942821bd178b
Further Reading: