Marco Rubio: Despite USAID Pause, Regime Change Will Continue.

I May Have Jumped The Gun In My Last Article.

In my last article I argued that through the pause on USAID, the Trump administration may accidentally be halting a major tool of U.S. foreign policy.

In the article, I highlighted past examples of USAID being used to advance American foreign policy goals in Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Romania.

I ended the article by saying:

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

However, some took a more skeptical view of this, In my comment section researcher

Jeffrey S. Kaye

and journalist

Kit Klarenberg

argued that these regime change operations will continue just more covertly through the CIA.

Similarly, journalist

Fiorella Isabel

argued that this move was largely “symbolic” and that “the work of USAID & NGOS” will “be repurposed elsewhere”.

Recent comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio prove these skeptics were likely correct.

For context, Rubio has been placed as acting director of USAID while the agency is temporarily shut down. The New York Times has said that the agency may be shut down altogether writing that:

Employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development were told overnight not to report to work on Monday because its Washington, D.C., headquarters would be closed, fueling fears that the already-hobbled agency would soon be shuttered for good.

However, Rubio has signaled that this does not mean the regime change operations done by USAID will stop. In an interview, he said

There are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy. … every dollar we spend and every program we fund will be aligned with the national interests of the United States. USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and somehow deciding that they are a global charity separate from the national interest.

In other words, Rubio is fully supportive of USAID’s regime change operations around the world and his issue is that the agency does not follow U.S. imperial orders enough.

Rubio Will Continue The Monroe Doctrine

When Rubio said “there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue” he is likely in part referring to USAID’s regime change programs in South America.

As I detailed in my previous article, USAID has been used as a tool for regime change in South America, specifically in the most targeted countries of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

As Foreign Policy Magazine documented in 2014 :

Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right.

The magazine went on to report that USAID:

covertly launched a social media platform in Cuba in 2010, hoping to create a Twitter-like service that would spark a "Cuban Spring" and potentially help bring about the collapse of the island’s Communist government.

The outlet described the USAID-funded operation as a “digital Bay of Pigs”.

The outlet also pointed out that Wikileaks cables show the U.S. government designed a plan to divide the pro-Hugo Chavez movement in Venezuela, plotting to “penetrate Chavez’s political base”, “divide Chavismo” and “Isolate Chavez internationally”.

Foreign Policy reported that “The strategy was to be carried out by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives.”

Similarly in 2018, the U.S. employed a similar strategy to overthrow the Nicaraguan government led by Sandanista, Daniel Ortega.

The outlet Global Americas wrote that American funding from USAID along with the NED (National Endowment For Democracy) to think tanks in Nicaragua “laid the groundwork for insurrection” and caused the country to be “on the brink of a civic insurrection”.

Indeed the USAID funding in Nicaragua led to a violent insurrection attempt against the government where U.S.-funded protests burned down houses of government supporters and killed, beat, and tortured those they deemed to be sympathetic to the Ortega government. FAIR media found that these opposition forces were “implicated in 52 deaths” during the violence that ensued from this coup attempt.

USAID similarly funded the 2017 opposition protests in Venezuela where journalist Abby Martin documented similar violence finding that they were responsible for 61 of the 84 deaths that occurred and attacking “factories, public transportation, socialist party offices, hospitals and clinics” along with the “childhood home of (Hugo) Chavez, government housing ministry and supreme court”.

USAID also gave 98 million dollars to the fake Venezuelan government of Juan Guaido, the fake un-elected opposition leader who the Trump administration recognized as the leader of Venezuela in a 2019 coup attempt against Nicolas Maduro.

Marco Rubio has been a strong proponent of all of these regime change operations.

He went so far as to tweet a picture of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi being murdered by NATO-backed Jihadist rebels as a threat to the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Rubio has also been a strong proponent of the starvation sanctions on Venezuela which have killed over 100,000 people and helped destroy the country's economy in hopes that it will lead to regime change.

Rubio has also called for similar starvation sanctions on Nicaragua and has called for regime change in Cuba.

By stating that “There are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue” which will “be aligned with American foreign policy”, Rubio is strongly signaling that these regime change operations will continue either when the USAID funding pause is done or through more covert means.

Back To The Good Old Days

Much of the thinking behind using USAID as a tool of American foreign policy was that if regime change operations were done out in the open under a “humanitarian” guise there would be less opposition to them.

This trend really started with the Ronald Regan administration in the 1980s where they set up the NED (National Endowment For Democracy), a CIA cutout designed to do what would previously be covert regime change operations abroad in the open.

As the late CIA whistleblower Philip Agee revealed the CIA now had “a sidekick- this National Endowment For Democracy”. Agee explained that after the CIA faced media criticism for funding groups abroad for their own geopolitical goals

In 1984 we established this National Endowment for Democracy, which is nothing but a mega conduit, and the tens of millions that are set aside for the meddling in the internal affairs of other countries goes to this conduit.

Agee revealed that after the media had exposed “a series of scandalous revelations” in 1967 that showed the CIA funding groups abroad to meddle on other countries foreign affairs, Florida Congressman Dante Fascell “proposed the establishment of an open system to finciance these overseas orginzations”.

This idea eventually became the National Endowment for Democracy, created by Ronald Regan in the 1980s.

As the Washington post reported in 1991 the purpose behind doing these operations more overtly was to take away the negative press the CIA often got when doing them covertly. The Post wrote:

They have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private -- providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, working to subvert communist rule. And, in contrast to many of the CIA's superannuated Cold Warriors, who tended to get tangled in their webs of secrecy, these overt operatives have been immensely successful.

Allen Weinstein, an NED official admitted to the Post that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”. However, the Post Noted that:

The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection

Interestingly after the pause of USAID , Elon Musk the Trump administration’s close associate has been going on a Twitter tirade against the NED as well signaling that its funding may be shut down also.

However, this does not mean that regime change operations will not continue. Musk himself has been particularly interested in regime change operations in South America, often for easier access to lithium needed for the batteries in his Tesla cars.

He was a strong supporter of the 2019 military coup against the democratically elected Bolivian government for this very reason. Musk has also been particularly interested in regime change in Venezuela and supporting the country's more U.S. friendly opposition.

Given this, along with Rubio’s comment,s there is a strong possibility that the Trump administration wants to go back to the more old school covert method of meddling in foreign countries.

Now that much more is known about the NED and USAID, it is a strong possibility that they now realize it is easier to spot these operations when done in the public eye and want to return to the more covert operations done in secret.