Will President Donald Trump end America’s corrupt foreign aid program and democracy promotion con games? Levan Akhalaia, a reporter with Georgian Public Broadcasting, and I had a lively conversation on that topic last week. Mr. Akhalaia has shown a lot of courage condemning brutal police attacks on protestors in recent times.

Below is a rough translation of the Georgian language article on our discussion, which can be read here. Here is a link to a Spotify audio version of the discussion with my voice dubbed into Georgian. And here is a link to a translation via Edge, reposted below with Akhalaia’s words italicized.

Akhalaia: U.S. President Donald Trump issued more than a hundred executive decrees on the first day of the inauguration. One of them was the temporary suspension of U.S. foreign aid. This also affected the programs of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration cited the Trump administration as the reason for checking these programs and determining whether these programs comply with U.S. interests and policies. To clarify this issue, Donald Trump instructed billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the government’s Department of Efficiency. More recently, it was also announced that funding was suspended by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). These decisions of the U.S. presidential Administration were met with dissatisfaction from some Congressmen.

There are outlined positions in the U.S. on these issues, we will introduce you today to the position of James Bovard. The Washington Post calls it a “one-man squad of truths,” is the author of eleven books, a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a counterpoint editor for the publication “American Conservative.” James Bovard has been criticizing almost all federal agencies for decades. Among them are USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Mr. James, you wrote in detail about how foreign aid serves the covert and illegal funds of corrupt regimes and U.S. government-related contractors. Now that Trump has frozen his aid, do you think it will eventually reveal where that money was actually going?

Bovard: I think members of the Trump team are doing a very good job of opening files so that Americans can see how much money has been wasted in the past and what level of corruption has caused. Looking at the past, especially in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the allocation of U.S. foreign aid to the receiving states, including Georgia and Ukraine, was often justified in fighting corruption. How did this work? Not so well, since this additional foreign money was not strictly controlled, the money was in pockets and spent on secret transactions. As a result, we received such a fact—real estate on the Mediterranean coast of France became expensive. In reality, nothing was done with this money and caused corruption in the host countries. There are many studies that show that American foreign aid has made corrupt countries more corrupt. Afghanistan is the number one example of this, but there are many other countries as well.

Akhalaia: USAID claims to support democracy, but you have documented cases in a number of articles where this organization actually undermined the election and supported political players who were in line with Washington’s interests. Do you think closing it would end such an intervention if the same tactics continue under another name?

Bovard: There were many instances where politicians in Washington claimed to stop abusing power, no longer committing the same crimes abroad. I hope so. Of course, I would be happy to see it, but I’ve heard so many promises from the 1980s…Looking at the past, Ronald Reagan had excellent rhetoric about how people should trust markets, freedom, and people to make their own decisions, but the U.S. has often intervened in support of dictators in the Reagan era and has continued to do the same ever since. I think if the Trump people can stop these aides from Jussie [inaudible] and the National Democracy Foundation, it will be a lot of progress, but I don’t know if they will be able to keep it. Federal judges, Congress, or others may stop this decision. Much of the American media is now outraged. About two years ago, when President Joe Biden was asking for the approval of a large aid package for Ukraine, one part of this package in the White House press release was $27 million to support independent media in Ukraine. I wondered how we know they are independent when the U.S. government has a receipt that says this media was sold. In principle, as soon as someone gets a large amount of money from Washington, I think they’re already out. This is how I look at media outlets here in the U.S. Public radio NPR is a good example. They have good programs, but they are very cautious when it comes to government crimes. They support the status quo. They’re quite critical of Trump, but were also very supportive of the so-called Deep State first tried to overthrow Trump.

Akhalaia: The loudest protest since the abolition of U.S. foreign aid is not heard from needy countries. These protests are heard from Washington, in particular, from the elite working on foreign policy. What does this tell us? Who actually benefited from foreign aid programs?

Bovard: Foreign policy experts have been Washington’s biggest con men. At the same time, since the Vietnam War, they have been put on a pedestal. Then there was the phrase “the best and smartest” that would lead America in the Vietnam War and show us how to defeat peasants armed with the AK-47 automatics. Ok, but the U.S. lost that war. The U.S. actually lost in Afghanistan as well. We lost in Iraq as well. We haven’t had a good result anywhere, but we still have a lot of very smart foreign policy experts here in Washington. These people lived well despite all the catastrophes they caused in the world. Many of them have a very good home here. A few years ago, they proudly waved Ukrainian flags in front of their homes. It was a sign of progressiveness and solidarity. In my opinion, most Americans opposed what Russia did by invading Ukraine, but they were not going to choose sides in a foreign conflict where both sides had their hands [tainted] swayed.

Akhalaia: In your book “Attention Deficit Democracy,” you wrote that Americans are taught to trust their government, even though the government often deceives it. Do you think the closure of USAID will eventually awaken people?

Bovard: I hope. In fact, I first wrote about it about 20 years ago. I was conducting an investigation for a conservative newspaper and had a meeting with the head of USAID, Peter McPherson, director. I sat in his office and asked questions. About three minutes later he yelled at me. A few minutes later I was kicked out of the office. I think I was asking good questions. It’s always a test: if you’re kicked out of the office, it’s okay to do something right. It is almost impossible to overestimate how absurd and futile U.S. foreign aid was. If you look at Afghanistan during President Obama’s time, USAID relied on the so-called “burn rate”—that was a measure of how much money they spent and how quickly. Obama policymakers thought they would save Afghanistan by spending a billion dollars a week or a billion dollars a day. It didn’t matter what this money was spent on; They practically threw money out of the window. This money was supposed to be intended to save women’s rights and achieve the rule of law in Afghanistan, but what the U.S. did was expand corruption at the maximum speed. It was the comprehensive corruption in the Afghan government that helped overthrow the Taliban government. U.S. politicians have tremendous blame for the fall of the government they themselves have taken to the helm since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The question is whether they learned anything from this lesson. USAID was active in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s, after the Soviet invasion. There was a report prepared by USAID on “Lessons Learned” in the 1960s and 1970s. But when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, a huge development program began, during which hundreds of billions of dollars were spent, no one in USAID bothered to read that “Lessons Learned” report. I hope that the Trump people will be able to capture the reins so we have fewer idiotic interventions that cause problems in other countries. The National Endowment for Democracy behaved very dishonestly in too many places. There is such a standard in Washington, the definition of democracy, according to which the most important test is whether U.S. allies understand it. The U.S. supported too many corrupt electoral procedures and corrupt politicians just because Washington wanted to put its people in power, and that was “close enough for government work” to democracy.

Akhalaia: However, proponents of foreign aid argue that reducing or cancelling it could destabilize fragile states and pose security risks to the US. How valuable do you think this argument is?

Bovard: It‘s about the same as seeing someone struggling with heroin addiction. A person will stop if you take heroin, yes, he will have a difficult period, but in the long run it will be much better. Even though he has a fever, trembling, and other reactions when he stops taking heroin, it is still better to stop. Much of U.S. foreign aid is heroin for foreign government governments. U.S. foreign aid makes rich people in third world countries; It does not help poor people. It’s about the same as giving a premium to prison guards, because in many parts of the world, governments are repressive. If you look at Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. government has been funding these governments for 50 or 60 years. Most of these governments have terrible indicators in terms of human rights and economics. They do not have solid property rights. Justice is not protected. So as a result, we have constant poverty. In countries where they have private property rights, contractual law is protected and state power is limited, people can make their own progress. People can live much better with this than with the intervention of the US government. It is interesting—I was reading several websites about the activities of USAID in Georgia. They issued many economic recommendations for various projects and developments. In my opinion, if these people were so smart, they would not work in government. They would not work in USAID. They would work in large corporations that effectively manage investments. If we look at what the U.S. Agency for International Development has done, I can’t remember any of the cases where they gave you a magic wand. USAID enters other countries with big money, signing many contracts with locals or local politicians. So everyone speaks [well about them], and then suddenly everything breaks down. Look at what happened in Afghanistan—how torn the U.S. media was from reality, and it lasted until the end of the government’s collapse. There was a special inspector general for reconstruction in Afghanistan, John Sopko. He was great. He testified on Capitol Hill, saying that the numbers that the U.S. government cited on the progress of women’s rights, rule of law and other issues were false. Everyone ignored him until the Taliban entered Kabul and American forces fled the airport. I hope that in the future the U.S. government will create fewer problems abroad, but US foreign aid and interventions were so unreasonable in so many places that people should be very skeptical.

Akhalaia: The Russian government has long regarded USAID as a tool for foreign interference. Now that Trump is criticizing this organization, the Russian government is asking for lists of Russians who received funding for this agency. Does the closure of USAID pour water on the Russian [reformers]?

Bovard: I don’t know how many Russians received USAID funding. I know that there is a controversial law on NGOs in Georgia. I have no problem with this law [mandating disclosure of receipt of large amounts of foreign funding], because I see here, in the U.S., so many organizations receive a lot of foreign or international funding and put them on a pedestal. There was one analytical center subsidized by the U.S. government, the “Atlantic Council.” They were very actively trying to discredit critics of the U.S. government. The Atlantic Council released a report ahead of the presidential election in October, listing people who allegedly spread Russian disinformation. I wrote an article for American Conservative where I was talking about election fraud, because in some U.S. states, voters who come to the polling station are not asked for any ID documents. Some states have a voting system where people can send a ballot without a mailing stamp after an election, and it will still be counted. Judges complained that there are very weak standards in these states. As you have seen, after the election, it took a month to count the votes in California, and in Phoenix the votes were counted for several weeks. It was a disaster. Just because I warned in that article about the threat of election fraud, the Atlantic Council, funded by the Department of State, named me as someone who spread Russian disinformation or information that could be used for Russian propaganda. However, there are indeed huge problems in many states in U.S. election laws. Another example: I have been writing for years about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. killed innocent people. There was one case 30 years ago when an FBI sniper killed a mother holding a baby in her hand. I was personally condemned by the FBI chief for my articles, but I continued to investigate and was able to expose the Federal Bureau, which proved that the FBI lied about what they did. Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Justice paid multi-million dollar compensation to the victims of the case. Maybe the same thing happens in other countries where people criticize the government, there are a lot of people who say it’s important to silence them or do worse. I don’t know exactly what the Russian angle is, I don’t know exactly what the corner [sic] of Washington or Brussels is, but people should be able to protest and condemn the government [in Georgia and everywhere else]. And it doesn’t matter what any foreign government says.

Akhalaia: Let’s go back to Trump’s decision to shut down USAID. Do you consider this a bold reform, or is it simply a political move? And if USAID  is closed, what alternative models of foreign aid could be more effective in your opinion?

Bovard: I don’t know if Trump will follow this and end up with U.S. foreign aid. If he does, I think it will be great for those recipients of this aid and great for American taxpayers as well. This will make the US government less corrupt and less interventionist. Many of our foreign interventions were corrupt. We argue that we do this for the benefit of any foreign country, but this is often complete nonsense. Instead, this is only done for US interests. I’m skeptical because there was talk of closing the U.S. International Development Agency and then moving it to the State Department. So he was just changed his address—it doesn’t actually mean anything. As for the different model of development, I think foreign direct investments can have the same benefits with much less risk of corruption, because foreign investors do not have an incentive to spend their money as USAID does. Foreign investors usually do not try to seize control over the whole country, as the National Endowment for Democracy has done in some places, and there will likely be fewer false protests on the streets.