How Trump Accidentally Halted A Tool Of U.S. Regime Change

By Stopping USAID Funds, Trump Accidentally Paused American Regime Change Operations Across The World.

The Trump administration recently approved an executive order that puts “a 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance” given through USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) to all countries except for Israel and Egypt.

Much of the right has justified this move by painting USAID as a “woke” or “radical left” organization. For example, Elon Musk called the agency “A viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America”. The right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong accused the organization of being “overwhelmingly dominated by woke, diehard Democrats who vote for and promote a far left-wing agenda.”

How USAID Funds Violent Coups

The interesting part of this story is that by temporarily stopping USAID the Trump administration thinks they are stopping a “woke agency” to “own the libs”, but in reality, they are stopping an agency that is most often used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy and regime change around the world.

As Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg noted, USAID is currently being used to advance American foreign policy goals in Ukraine, Nicaragua, the Balkans, and Georgia.

Indeed USAID played a major role in the 2014 “Maidan coup” in Ukraine. Before the coup began, USAID gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as “New Citizen” which the Financial Times said, “played a big role in getting the protest up and running”.

The USAID-funded protests were eventually taken over by far-right groups such as Right Sector and Svoboda allowing the United States to overthrow the Yanukovich government and help install a more U.S.-friendly one.

The biggest irony of this story is that Trump in his last term often used USAID as a tool of his foreign policy. As Kit Klarenberg noted in the above-mentioned article

a USAID-funded Nicaraguan opposition outlet called 100% Noticias led a campaign of violent incitement throughout 2018, when a failed US-backed coup attempt left hundreds dead in the country.

Indeed, the Trump administration used a similar strategy in Nicaragua in its attempt to overthrow the country’s leader, Daniel Ortega as the Obama administration in Ukraine.

As the outlet “Global Americans” revealed, U.S. funding through the NED(National Endowment For Democracy") and USAID was paid to think tanks in Nicaragua that “laid the groundwork for insurrection” and caused the country to be “on the brink of a civic insurrection”.

Just like in Maidan, the mainstream media portrayed the U.S.-funded 2018 protests against Ortega as “peaceful pro-democracy” protests but John Perry, a reporter on the ground said that “Public buildings and the houses of government supporters” were burned down by protestors and that “shops were ransacked” by them.

There have also been reports of extreme violence against those who criticized the protests and videos of people sympathetic to the Ortega government being tortured.

The Trump administration used a similar strategy in Venezuela where Trump’s Venezuela Envoy, Elliott Abrams tried to bring “aid” to Venezuela through USAID while the administration was backing a coup and attempting to install U.S. puppet Juan Guaidó.

The Trump administration sanctioned Venezuela for not accepting the aid but in reality, they did not accept it because of Abrams’ history of backing coups in South America.

For their part, Venezuelan authorities said they intercepted arms shipments in these USAID “aid packages”

Even NPR admitted that these aid stunts were used to funnel supplies to forces wanting to overthrow the Venezuelan government writing that

The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela -- which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it. Humanitarian operations are supposed to be neutral.

That's why the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations agencies and other relief organizations have refused to collaborate with the U.S. and its allies in the Venezuelan opposition who are trying to force President Nicolas Maduro from power.

USAID Used For Foreign Interference

Aside from its role in backing violent coups such as the aforementioned ones in Ukraine, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, USAID has also been used as a tool for American political interference around the world, most recently in Romania.

For context, Romania recently had its own version of Russiagate over the candidate Călin Georgescu.

Georguescu, an opponent of NATO and the Ukraine proxy war, won the first round of Romanian elections.

However, Romania’s courts canceled the results of the election after Romanian intelligence declassified a report that claimed Călin Georgescu was benefiting from a “Russian influence” campaign.

The report gave no evidence to back this up, instead citing a TikTok campaign that favored Georgescu which they claimed was “similar to influence operations run by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Moldova”.

Later the Romanian investigative outlet “Snoop” revealed this report to be a fraud. They found that the TikTok campaign cited in the intelligence report was actually paid for by the National Liberal Party, the party opposed to Călin Georgescu.

This story is relevant because this election cancellation, based on a fraudulent report, was heavily supported by the USAID.

Independent reporter Lee Fang found that the USAID as well as the NED and U.S. State Department were the largest funders of the Romanian think tanks pushing for the election results to be overturned.

This is one of the many examples of USAID being used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. In this instance, they are funding think tanks pushing for election interference against a candidate who opposes their war in Ukraine and NATO.

A Major Blow To Empire:

I honestly don’t think Trump, Elon Musk, or any of the Trump team actually knows what USAID is used for.

In their minds, by cutting its funding, they are cutting a “woke” institution that spreads DEI around the world.

However, what they are really doing is temporarily neutering a tool that is used for violent coups and nefarious political interference against enemy states of the American empire.

Elon Musk had interestingly made similar critical comments about the NED (National Endowment For Democracy), the CIA cutout used in similar instances as USAID.

In their fight against “woke government,” the Trump team may end up accidentally dismantling some of the most vital tools for U.S. imperialism.