“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.” – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States
Indeed, the belief that freedom is worth dying for is central to our American culture. From a young age, we are taught about the pilgrims, who braved a vast ocean to make a new life for themselves in a new world in their own way. We are taught of the revolution, where the Patriots fought to be free from the rule of England and defeated the British Empire. In every story, liberty is an ultimate good in itself– a way of life that you would trade your life to maintain. “We the people,” reads the constitution, “in Order to form a more perfect Union […] secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” It is a founding principle of our country that we should work to protect freedom so that our children may enjoy its blessing. A tolerable (even comfortable) existence under the yolk is not worth accepting.
Even as America has grown into a global power with hundreds of military bases spanning nearly every country on the globe, the idea that freedom should be promoted has largely been the status-quo of American foreign policy. Until now.
“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
“Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
“Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
The above is an excerpt of Donald Trump’s “REEVALUATING AND REALIGNING UNITED STATES FOREIGN AID” executive order from January 20th, 2025. In this excerpt, we find an assessment of the USA that is at once craven and aggrandizing. The order is aggrandizing, because in Sec. 2. it demands that foreign assistance programs align not with the principles of our constitution and the people it serves– but the capital “P” President of United States and *his* foreign policy interests. The order is craven because it says that the help America has been providing to the globe for the past 85 years since the conclusion of WWII has destabilized peace. In fact, Trump claims that the food assistance, medical treatment including AIDS medicine and prevention, and free educational programming that the US has worked to provide to the world for decades has been “in many cases antithetical to American values.” Since when has peace and harmony been worth abandoning people in need of help? When has it been an American value to let people suffer so as not to upset the tyrannical peace of a dictator’s kingdom? Why must the foreign policy of a single President override the enduring project of successive generations of Americans willing to fight and die for freedom? By this I mean to say that I disagree with Trump on all fronts: *his* American foreign policy is not god’s word. He does not have a right to steer the machine to his own policy interests. Policy belongs to congress. And it is evident that foreign aid delivered to the most downtrodden corners of the world does far more to promote peace than simply allowing rulers to rule their countries in solitude.
Of course, it is a crude joke that the executive order claims that “world peace” is in the cards for Trump at all, he who has bombed his way up and down the middle east, who strings along a war of attrition in Ukraine, who builds prisons in far away jungles for prisoners that will never go to trial, and whose weapons power the armies of despots from South America to Africa to Afganistan. The so called “foreign aid industry” that Trump despises apparently needs to be dismantled while that other government sponsored bureaucracy, the all-powerful military industrial complex that churns out war grows bigger every day. USAID has been dismantled. The Peace Corps is in the process of being torn apart. Voice of America is shuttering. Radio Free Asia has been defunded. All while the budget for American contracts with industrial weapons manufacturing and resource extraction grows by trillions.
Make no mistake– Trump’s foreign policy is one of the appeasement of dictators. God forbid a radio broadcast from the United States upset the sensibilities of the Martial Law government of Myanmar! God forbid Xi Jingping be offended by his characterization as a dictator on a small English radio broadcast from the Pacific! Xi merely suspended term limits in his country and has overseen all branches of his government with absolute authority for 13 or so years now… In the name of peace and harmony, Trump has ordered that federal agencies speak of other nations neutrally in regards to their political systems. Marco Rubio has written an order to the state department that its public communications “should avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” Trump has conceded that the American system, freedom and democracy itself, is not worth fighting for.
As Trump’s America shrinks back from Democracy abroad, it embraces authoritarians. Namely, Vladimir Putin, the ruler of Russia for over 21 years, former KGB operative, a leader who directed his Wagner Company to pillage African countries for gold while arming warlords to commit genocides, perpetrator of the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been allowed to walk free on American soil this week and ride in the president’s own limousine. They shook hands, smiled, talked in private, refused to answer questions, cracked jokes like old friends, and then parted ways without a deal.
It has been leaked that Trump has briefed the European Union that he intends to back a plan by Putin to exchange the Donbas region of Ukraine to secure a peace deal. Peace. Ten years since Russia’s last advance into Crimea. Not a drop of American blood spilt. Chamberlain went home after his meeting with Hitler declaring “Peace in our time!” America, of course, is a country that has never lost its own territory. America has only ever won wars and grown bigger. For the president of the USA to ask Ukraine to give up the fight against the Russian Empire has got to be the greatest hypocrisy ever uttered a senile old president. Would we accept a peace deal to trade Maine and parts of New Hampshire for peace? I don’t think so. I think Canada would have to kill us all first.
As the story goes, Fascism is the reverberation of imperial cruelty back to the homeland. The values of an empire toward its colonies inevitably comes back home to torment the citizens of the empire. As Trump works to devalue democracy abroad, it is difficult to ignore that his real aim is to eventually devalue democracy at home. Already, the will of congress has taken a second seat to the president’s policy interests. Already, due process is ignored while agents nab citizens off the streets for social media posts. Already, the state of Texas has had its district maps so mangled as to grant 5 extra Republican seats in an already Republican skewed state. Is freedom not sacred here? Is the tree of liberty not watered with the blood of tyrants? What is this??
A murderous dictator gets the red carpet treatment while hard working Americans are jailed without a trial. What secret thing did Putin have to share with Trump? So secret that they had to be alone together in-person to discuss it.
An unrelated word from our secretary-
SECRETARY RUBIO: “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas. It’s a combination of visas. They’re visitors to the country. If they’re taking activities that are counter to our foreign – to our national interest, to our foreign policy, we’ll revoke the visa.”
QUESTION: “Are all of those related to pro-Palestinian protests or (inaudible)?”
SECRETARY RUBIO: “I’m trying to remember – there’s a lot of them now, because I’ve gone through every one of them. I think there might be a few that are not, that are related to other groups that are – of people – we’ve also identified – but this actually is – it should be automatically revoked.”
QUESTION: “And what does it mean when you say against the foreign policy of the United States?”
SECRETARY RUBIO: “It runs counter to our foreign – that’s how we issue visas coming in. I think about it this way. If we knew this information – my standard: If we knew this information about them before we gave them a visa, would we have allowed them in? And if the answer is no, then we revoke the visa.”
One thing is for sure: members of the Trump administration are incapable of answering questions directly or concisely. After years of shitting on the Biden stutter, the Trump administration has found itself no more capable communicating with the American public when the questions get heavy.
It’s not easy spinning pretty lines from bullshit!