This Is Why Conservatives Turned Against Foreign Aid

The Trump administration has now dismantled two key institutions of American soft power: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. On March 28 the administration announced that it would be reducing the staff at U.S.A.I.D., the main agency for distributing foreign aid, to about 15 positions — down from the roughly 10,000 people it employed before Donald Trump returned to the White House. In January, the administration stopped $239 million in congressional appropriations for the N.E.D., a largely government-funded nonprofit with a mission of advancing democratic change.

Both programs were creations of the Cold War that long enjoyed support from leading Republicans and Democrats, embodying the adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” But Mr. Trump’s assault on these programs indicates that this truism no longer holds. Survey data from December suggest how politicized the issue has become: Nearly 75 percent of Republicans said foreign aid should decrease, compared to only a third of Democrats.

To understand why American soft power became so politically vulnerable, it helps to understand the damage progressives did to its broad legitimacy over the past decade and a half. They did this by implicating soft-power institutions in domestic political controversies, especially on issues of sexual politics. They conflated American interests overseas with progressive priorities, using taxpayer money to advance a set of claims over which Americans strongly disagree.

As a result, Americans, far from laying aside their differences when they look abroad, now see foreign affairs as yet another arena for prosecuting domestic disputes. It’s no wonder foreign aid became a ready object of partisan attack.

Much of the right’s changing attitude toward institutions like U.S.A.I.D. can be traced to 2011, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech announcing that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” On the same day, the Obama administration issued a memo directing that all foreign aid and diplomacy be conducted in a way that promotes and protects the human rights of L.G.B.T. people.

Of course, certain elements of this project — such as opposing the brutal practice of “corrective rape” for lesbians in South Africa — are not only likely to command wide support; they are also hard to view as anything other than an honorable attempt to stop injustice. But others have a less obvious justification. How does including a third gender in the Bangladeshi census further U.S. foreign policy? What American interest is served by making it possible for people in Kosovo to change their sex on government documents?