2-13-25 *INTERVIEW* Nate Sibley Talks US Benefits of Foreign Aid Programs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If I told you that some things you eat, some
things you put in your mouth are good for you,
and therefore everything you put in your mouth is good
for you, you'd say, no, that's stupid. And if I
said some things you eat are bad for you, and
therefore you shouldn't eat anything at all, you'd say no,

(00:21):
that's stupid too. So now let's turn this to foreign
policy and foreign aid and foreign assistance. There are a
lot of people out there, and you can sort of
predict who they are based on their other political affiliations
and positions, who seem to believe that since some foreign

(00:43):
aid or foreign assistance or whatever you want to call
it is poorly spent wasted money, that all foreign aid
is poorly spent wasted money.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
And there are some.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Other people who seem to think that since some foreign
aid is well spent, usefully spent in America's interests, that
all foreign aid is that.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
And that's not true either.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
And right now we live in this world that is
so black and white, which is really not helpful joining
us to talk about the subtleties of foreign assistants, and
in particular the areas of foreign aid that really do
serve America's strategic interests. Nate Sibley. He is a fellow
at the Hudson Institute. He is director of the Kleptocracy

(01:30):
Initiative at the Hudson Institute. And Nate, I hope that
is where you root out kleptocracy, rather than learning how
to be a kleptocrat yourself, which which could have its
own rewards, and.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Did indeed the Anti Kleptocracy Institute, but it was felt
that was a kind of a bit of a nerdy
name for it, so it just send it up as
the Leptocracy Initiative.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
And so yeah, we got a lot of.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Funny emails and inquiries from Nigerian princes and so on.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
I can imagine.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I bet.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
All right, So why don't we jump in with my
rather long introduction, and why don't why don't you just
maybe start with an overview of how you see the
current and I mean like this week conversation about foreign aid,
foreign assistance in America, and then let's get to what
you think we need to know.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Sill, thank you so much for having on to talk
about this. So the big controversy, as as many of
your listeners will know, is over the sudden shuttering of
the US Agency for International Development, which is a subsidiary
sort of agency of the Department of State, and so
Elon Musk's DOGE team tour through. It was the first

(02:41):
target of their of their cost cutting you know, dry
efficiency drive, and you know, it was initially announced there
would be a sort of three month review of all
the programs US idea overseasse's around forty billion dollars worth
of programs, which sounds like an enormous amount of money,
and it absolutely is, and it can be used for
good or bad things, as I'm sure we'll talk about,

(03:03):
but it's important remember that it, you know, represents about
one percent of the federal federal the federal spending of
the government, what the government spends every year. So there's
a been a strange one to go for if the
idea is to sort of balance the books of the
of the US Treasury, they're bigger targets. But anyway, so
over season, around forty billion dollars worth every year, you know,
it does all the stuff that most Americans would think

(03:25):
of when they think of foreign aid, providing you know,
emergency food supplies to you know, starving people in Africa,
you know, all that stuff. But over the years, I
think there's a sense, there's a sense that I share
that it's its mission has sort of grown.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
There may have been a bit of a mission creep.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
So that's where some of the controversy you've seen over
the past week with the lot must tweeting out all
these all these sort of crazy stories about you know,
where American taxpayer dollars were going around the world, you know,
funding sort of LGPT empowerment programs in Serbia, you know,
stuff like this. The Americans have like, excuse me, how
is this any of my business, let alone, why am.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I paying for it?

Speaker 3 (03:59):
So it's a highly charged sort of thing, and it's
no surprise that it being first on the chopping block
has become a major sort of lightning rod for controversy.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Okay, so yeah, that's that's an excellent an excellent setup.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I will just add one thing it does.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
It does seem and this might be this might be
the bias of the people who are releasing the information,
but it does seem like to the extent that there
is USAID spending that seems inappropriate. It's it seems all
in furtherance of left wing goals. So it seems like

(04:35):
not only is it wasteful, but it seems like it's
highly ideological in a way that goes far beyond what
the ordinary American would support, and only in one direction,
Like I don't see a lot of stuff that people
would object.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
To because the policy is too conservative.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
You're absolutely right, and I think it reflects you know,
you know, I should say I have a lot of
criticisms of DOGE in the way it's it's conducted. This
I think a lot of people are w Washington concern
about that, and we'll get to that, I'm sure. But
you're absolutely right. So foreign assistance, foreign development, you know,
tends to attract, you know, people from a progressive background.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
You know, they think of themselves as carrying people. They
go into.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
They don't go into sort of ruthless Wall Street mergers
and acquisitions jobs that think you know, often they're more
drawn to sort of like you know, these jobs where
you go overseas and you help provide food for those
starving Africans. And so the culture at U said, I
think they are taken over whether a Republican or a
Democrat was in charge, I was increasingly that it was
just fully staffed, but basically, you know, progressive Democrats.

Speaker 4 (05:39):
That's not entirely true.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
I was on the I was on the phone yesterday
with someone who's now working on Capitol Hill who was a.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Republican you know, who recently worked at USC.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
I d.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
You gotta remember, it's been doing stuff under Republican presidents,
including President Trump in his first term. So you know,
I don't want to paint it as a sort of
as the sort of nest of whatever you know, democratic
vipers or whatever that you there's been. You know, it's
not entirely that. And the good people I've spoken with them,
they really think they're doing the right thing. But when
to call them sort of corrupt and evil, I think

(06:08):
is not correct. I think they just have different priorities,
priorities that most consertas, including myself, would often think we're
quite silly, right.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I think evil goes too far. Corrupt probably goes a
little far. I think where you might be able to
point to actual corruption and this is just such a
small time window that it might not even be a
real thing, is if there were employees there who pushed
money out of the door after Trump came in and said,
don't spend money on any of this kind of stuff anymore.

(06:36):
I don't know if corruption is exactly the right word there,
but that would be bad, all right. So now I
don't want to get drabbed, dragged into the trap that
we've seen on all the TV stations for the last
week and a half of only talking about the dumb stuff.
The main reason that I really wanted to have you
here is to talk about to help my listeners understand
the legitimate roles of foreign aid and how foreign assistance

(07:02):
is not just charity but can, in at least some circumstances,
significantly further America's interests, whether short term tactical or long
term strategic.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Sure, so it's not so again, it wasn't just you know,
food aids. You know, it's giving food to starving Africans
that US surgy was doing. And it wasn't also just
you know, giving both to LGBT initiatives in Serbia. And
there's a whole bunch of stuff that was doing in between,
which you know, was helping to make you know, the
US being more secure, earning many cases more prosperous, so

(07:39):
for example, and many of these things are actually very
closely aligned with President Trump's you know priorities for foreign policy,
and I'm a little surprised that they've just been chopped
off in this way. So the big one, for example is,
you know, take Latin America. So many programs down there
were focused on preventing you know, trying to stop the
rise of the carts, trying to stop you know, drug trafficking,

(08:03):
human trafficking. And the way they would do that, you know,
you know, provide training to law enforcement, they would provide
technology to help law ental enforcement better track you know,
things across borders. You know. So the idea was, the
idea with a lot of foreign aid isn't just to
make people feel good and feel fuzzy. What we're trying
to do is to help other countries keep their problems

(08:23):
within their borders so that they don't start crossing ours
and becoming national security risks for US. And there's another
side of things that they would often you know, involved
you know, rule of law things. So it starts that's
where it starts to get a little bit controversial, but
I would argue still very important. You know, where we
would train judges, we would train political parties, and we're
not so much political parties of the USCID.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
That's more NED. Maybe we'll talk about NED a bit
later on. That's a different organization.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
But you know, so, but building the infrastructure around having
a stronger rule of law, stronger democracy, because at the
end of the day, that makes it a lot easier
for US businesses to go over season to do business
in countries whose systems and economy function much more like ours.
The beneficiary of not doing that is China, because they,
you know, China's economy is deeply corrupt. When they go overseas,
they not only export that corruption, they exacerbate corruption problems

(09:10):
in other countries, and they co opt local leaders with
bribes and so on, and it's their state and companies
to end up getting all the contracts, and American companies
just can't compete in that environment.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, So you sort of in that last part of
your answer, you drifted toward what I.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Wanted to talk about next.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
And it's a part of it's a part of foreign
aid that is a little more machiavelian and makes me
a little queasy as far as whether it's proper use
of taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
But let's say there's.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Some country in Africa that has some strategic value, some
has some minerals, for example, a common conversation about Africa,
and they're kind of seeking some money. That feels like
an odd combination of development funds and a bribe.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
And we you know, like, if.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
You pay us enough, you know, okay, we'll develop these
minds and we'll sell you some stuff and we won't
join the other team if you pay us enough, wink wink.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
And it feels unseemly.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
But then if we don't, China will, and then China
gets their hands on the cobalt mine or whatever it
is we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
How should we think about that?

Speaker 4 (10:27):
Sure, well, you're exactly right.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
You know, with the rise of China as a rival
superpower and the methods they use overseas, they have new
scruples about simply going and bribing seizing you know, critical
minerals and other important economic assets.

Speaker 4 (10:40):
They're absolutely rucius and cut rate about this.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
The good thing is that when you know, it was
when USAD went over and offered you know, or was
you know, had a grant application made to it by
a foreign government for development purposes. Yes, you know, like
there's an interagency process and they you know, the State
Department will also look at whether it's in the US
and rest to look this. But usage itself had a
lot of internal checks and you know, processes to ensure

(11:07):
that there was vetting to make sure that the money
wouldn't be diverted to correct purposes. So it shouldn't really
have been possible, you know, to get a bribe out
of a USAID grant in practice.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
Of course, we live in the real world. The real
world is grubby.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I'm sure there's so much examples of money being siphoned
off or stuff not going where it needs to go.
That is a consequence of the world we live in.
It's not necessarily a consequence of USAID's being set up
to contribute to corruption lavseas, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, and let me just hone in on that for
just one second.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
I didn't necessarily mean an overt bribe, right, but rather,
you know, we we want a billion dollars and you know,
we're gonna use five hundred million of it for what
you want us to use it for, and we're gonna
use the other five hundred million for whatever we feel
like using it for. Right, They're not gonna call it

(11:58):
a bribe, and we're not. And it could be anything, right,
It could be a new presidential palace, it could be
money into the.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
President's Swiss bank account.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
But I'm not even going there, right, I'm just saying,
sometimes the deal comes with us having to give money
that we know doesn't benefit our strategic interest in order
to get the rest of the money doing something that
benefits our strategic interest.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, in cases like that, you know, you've got to
think about in an era of great power competition, competition
with China, competition of Russia, Iran, what is our strategic interest?
Is our strategic interest that we spend a little more,
you know on Maybe it's not something that's obviously a
core priority for the United States, but we secure that
relationship with that country, which in turn opens business opportunities,

(12:52):
It opens access to resources for the United.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
States, for our security, for our economy.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
The alternative is to do not do those deals sort
of deals, not do those you know, not be there
at all, and in which case that that country just
sentily shifts its allegiance to China. That is what we're
seeing all over the world right now.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
So in terms of a.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Strategic interest, the long term interest in the United States,
it is not to be surpassed by China, you know,
a people communist regime which wants to overthrow, you know,
the Western way of doing things and make us all
poor and miserable. So, yeah, it's not ideal. I don't
like the way that we do business in the world sometimes,
but I like the alternative far less interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, look, I agree with you. I just want to
get that out on the table.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
We're talking with Nate Sibley from the Hudson Institute. The
web site is Hudson dot org. Now, I have to
say when Donald Trump nominated Marco Rubio to be Secretary
of State, I think what I said on the air was,
I think I'll like him better as Secretary of State

(13:55):
than as a senator. He certainly has a lot of
experience in these things, and he's you know, there's a
reason he got to prove ninety nine to nothing, and
it doesn't mean he's going to be flawless.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
But I like him. I like him pretty well.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
And one of the things that he has said recently
in this ongoing USAID controversy is, you know, along the
lines I think of your mindset and mind he said
not everything that USAID does is bad or a waste
of money, and that he's going to try to sort
through that and keep the good programs going.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
And so I want to know.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
And a listener also just asked the same question, what
is the status right now of let's say some of
the good useful programs at AI at USAID are they?
Is everything on pause? And what do you think the
short to medium term looks like?

Speaker 3 (14:52):
So, you know, within within days of getting into the USAID,
the day staff put out stop work what's called stop
work on all everything that USAID does, everything that was
doing every not just the money was spending, but the
actual physical work it was doing to the extent that
I can't in which country it was. It was somewhere
in Africa. There was a funding for a clinic with

(15:13):
a bunch of you know, for for infant you know,
unwell infants, and they the staff basically had to make
a choice, do we break the law, the USID funded staff,
do we break the law to keep giving life seeming
medications to literally babies in front of us who will
die within hours if the law, if the stop work
order has not changed. So that was how dramatic and
drastic that was. I can't convey to you how unusual

(15:34):
that is and how extreme that is. What was announced
was a three month review at the end, you know,
during which all the rock would be cut out, you know,
and we would end up with a with a you know,
a sort of US the idea that was fit for
purpose at the end of it. That's not what's happened,
and that's there's still officially a review going on, but
US Idea is finished, the building is shuttered up, the

(15:56):
stop work orders are all in place. What what Secretary
we have said is that, you know, organizations with important
grants can apply for a waiver from this to so
the money can start flowing again, that life saving work
or that critical national security work can resume. What I'm
hearing behind the scenes, though, unfortunately, is that, you know,

(16:17):
because all the USA D staff have been shuttered themselves,
there's no one there to process those waivers, and that furthermore,
you know that that money goes through the treasury. The
DOSE staff at the Treasury are also messing around with
the payment system there and not necessarily even processing and
moving the money where waivers have gone through. So the
situation is basically USA D doesn't exist at the moment,

(16:40):
and the consequence of that isn't These aren't programs where
you can just turn the money off quickly and turn
it back upon and everything's fine and dandy for the
ones that we want to keep. These programs run on
extremely narrow margins. You know, you know, it's charity work.
Basically there's government money, so that people are people are
people have been furloughed in these organizations, but they've been followed.
They can only that for a week or two and

(17:00):
then they go and find other jobs if they can.
These things are all gone. So at the end of
this three months, you know, we will be left with
basically nothing and they will have to rebuild it if
they want to, from scratch.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
So it's not the way I would have done it.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
I would have you know, put by all means, freeze
on all new funding, all new grants when you come in.
Most presidents do that, and then you can conduct you
a three month review chopping you know that the fa
filly programs, the ones that don't align with the political priorities.
As you go and at the end of the three months,
you've got what you want and you know, you can
you can think about the future of USAID, whether you

(17:35):
want to move it back under fully under the State
Department or somewhere else at the end of that, and
that would have been the sensible way to proceed.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
But that's not what's happened at all.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
And the problem is, just to just to one more point,
is that doing that as well creates is going to
create a lot of potential lawsuits. So DOE says it
wants it wants to save taxpayer money, improve efficiency. All
the contractors around the world were doing work for USCID
will now be joining class action lawsuits to get the
money they are owed for contracts that were potentially unlawfully canceled.

(18:07):
You know, there's also the issue of the waste. You know,
those also says it wants to cut waste. There's five
hundred million dollars worth of food sitting around in ports
and warehouses all around the world that you, the US taxpayer,
have already paid for. There's now just probably going to
rock because there's no way of moving it because all
the stuff are gone. So that doesn't seem to me
like a good way to proceed. If you're going to

(18:28):
go around posting about being more efficient. It was a
better way to do this.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Natively is a fellow at the Hudson Institute, director of
the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative, which is really an anti
kryptocracy initiative. Nate, thank you so much for your time.
Fascinating conversation. I appreciate the work you do. Thank you, Ross.
Fascinating chat. All right, Wow, all right. I hope you'll
learned a lot there. I did very very interesting