ABSTRACT
In the few months since I have written the preface and the new chapters for this 2nd edition, my object of research has seen some dramatic changes, which deserve to be mentioned and reflected upon in this afterword. I am referring to the de-facto dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after the inauguration of President Trump in January 2025. The USA has been by far the largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the past decades (although in relation to its GDP it has been among the less generous). In February 2025, the Trump administration announced the elimination of more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and 60 billion US$ in assistance (Knickmeyer et al. 2025). Almost the entire direct-hire staff of USAID was placed on leave. There were waivers for military financing of Israel and Egypt, for emergency food assistance and emergency humanitarian aid. Also, the USA stopped funding and withdrew from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) (amidst what is seen as a potential genocide by the International Court of Justice), the UN Human Rights Council and all organisations that support abortions or provide related information, while funding for other UN agencies is being reviewed (Haug et al. 2025: 8). Furthermore, the Minister Counselor to the UN Economic and Social Council of the new government announced that the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ‘advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans’ (Heartney 2025). Together with the plans to forcibly align any remaining aid with US national security and economic interests, this amounts to a ‘seismic shift in how the US approaches global development’, in the words of Sumner and Klingebiel (2025).
