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"Meetings are held, emails are sent, phone calls are made, and something like 520,000 children die of malnutrition, diarrhea, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV." prospect.org/2026/05/22/w...

Even if you want to be entirely self interested, what do these people think happens to the local population on the radicalization front when you, just as a random example, pull $70M of funding from comprehensive health, education and welfare programs in Afghanistan?

There is also the case to be made that we lost an enormous amount of softpower thanks to this unnecessary cut since us AId was both the carrot and the stick.

I agree in general, but I think the danger of China filling our shoes is overblown, though. China lends $35 for every dollar it donates. That is not a substitute for American aid.

China is absolutely not a replacement for the aid we no longer provide, but they’re the only ones on the ground making a big show of what they’re doing, and now we’re offering nothing to counterbalance that.

The thing is, Chinese direct investment in Africa actually decreased last year by 15%, as it did the last 3 years. They seem to have soured on the whole pan-Sino-African idea. 5 years ago, I would have agreed that this was an opportunity for them in principle, and I still do, but they seem to differ