A New Era in US Policy Toward Myanmar? скачать в хорошем качестве

A New Era in US Policy Toward Myanmar?

When President John F. Kennedy established the US Agency for International Development (USAID) by executive order in 1961, it was with an eye both to national self-interest and the greater global good. Addressing Congress, Kennedy acknowledged that “economic collapse” of “less-developed nations” would be “disastrous to our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity and offensive to our conscience.” Foreign aid was not a new undertaking for the US, but the context of both communist threat and a post-WWII proliferation of newly sovereign and/or economically striving nations, called for consolidation and expansion of those efforts. In making the world more prosperous and secure, the US aimed to protect itself and foster democracy. That effort persisted long after the cold war thawed, with the same mix of idealism and pragmatism, and altruism and self-preservation. USAID, and US support more broadly, has been vital to global efforts against famine, disease, dislocation, and more, saving countless lives, fostering stability, and seeding prosperity—in the process, containing threats ranging from epidemics, to transborder crime, to armed conflicts. Among Donald Trump’s first acts upon his inauguration in 2025, however, was to freeze all foreign aid for 90 days, to root out waste and fraud. Within days, efforts to shut down programs and lay off or furlough staff globally intensified, chaotically and with contested legality. The future not only of this agency—slated to be merged with the State Department, but currently in shreds—but of US foreign assistance and policy broadly remains uncertain. In few places is this dramatic shift more deeply felt than in Myanmar and along its borders. This webinar will explore both the context that made US support so vital—for its direct recipients and for the US itself—and the nature and implications of this abrupt change in US policy.