6 lessons for the US from the UK's aid department's traumatic demise

“I learned as a young banker in the City [of London] that there is no such thing as a merger: one side wins and the other side loses,” sighed Andrew Mitchell, the former United Kingdom development minister, as he recalled the chaotic death of its dedicated aid department five years ago. The remark sums up the widespread view that the revered Department for International Development was not “merged” into the new Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office as an equal partner, but gobbled up by the U.K.’s mighty Foreign Office — or “destroyed” in the description of the ex-DFID top civil servant Mark Lowcock at the same think-tank event last October. There is a clear parallel with the breathtaking shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is being absorbed by the State Department, with its future influence unknown. So, what were the consequences of the loss of DFID, which now might be echoed on the other side of the Atlantic? 1. Expertise vanishes … and may never return Years after DFID was axed in 2020, government officials and watchdogs were still highlighting the damage from an exodus of experienced, highly skilled staff members — some of whom simply did not want to work under the new regime. One study highlighted how, as late as January 2024, a quarter of positions overseeing major programs were unfilled, a second found remaining staff members were “disempowered and demoralized,” while Mitchell said it was “like meeting people who had emerged from the rubble of a nuclear explosion” when he returned to the development brief in late 2022. 2. Objectives are twisted and resources wasted Speaking to the Institute for Government, or IfG, in October, Lowcock argued DFID’s simple objective — poverty reduction — was once again suffocated by other “objectives” such as boosting trade and geopolitical influence, threatening a return to the bad old days of the Pergau Dam scandal and tied aid, which wastes billions over and above the damage to development. “The lesson of history is if you're not super clear about having one focus for your development effort, reducing poverty, what you find is you do a terrible job on your mix of objectives,” he said, adding: “That way lies ruin.” A study in 2023 did find some successes when it came to FCDO integrating policy objectives, but they were restricted to a handful of countries and contexts. 3. Diplomacy and development are different jobs “Diplomacy requires languages and understanding of negotiating skills and trade-off management, and you're always dealing with short-term issues. Development, by contrast, is about money and project management and expertise, and often about the long term,” Lowcock explained. Mitchell pointed to France’s clear-out of terrorists from Mali, by heavily armed troops “in shiny vehicles with shiny weapons” but with no action to show local people who “wanted to educate their children” that the social improvements they craved would follow. “I don't believe DFID in its heyday would have allowed that mistake to be made,” he said. 4. A soft power totem is lost Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair recounted last year how his foreign policy had been “based on three pillars”: being the U.S.’s “strongest ally,” being a “key” player in Europe — and on having a world-leading development program. “We are weaker on all three now. I mean, the Department of International Development is gone. Its budget’s been cut,” Blair said. At the IfG event, Sarah Champion, the chair of Parliament’s International Development Committee, remembered the “anger” her committee encountered at an international gathering soon after DFID was axed. “We were seen as a country that did the right thing for the right reason, and it wasn't conditional,” she said. But no longer. 5. Don’t reorganize and cut spending at the same time The damage from DFID’s disappearance was compounded by its timing, as the U.K. slashed aid spending from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income — taking out around £4.5 billion ($5.6 billion) overnight, mainly by taking a wrecking ball to bilateral programs for the world’s poorest countries. This was a large pot of money — but it pales in comparison with the spending freeze and stop-work order imposed on the USAID, the world’s largest bilateral donor, which distributed $40 billion across more than 130 countries in 2023 and fed millions of people. 6. The permanent harm from populist anti-aid rhetoric “UK overseas aid has been treated as some giant cashpoint in the sky that arrives without any reference to UK interests,” thundered then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he axed DFID — overturning decades of U.K. leaders arguing for development spending. It was a populist ploy pinched by Billionaire Elon Musk with his far-darker branding of USAID as a “criminal organization.” “I nearly had a fit, because I saw that [remark] damaging all the good work that had been done,” Mitchell remembered. Support for aid has never recovered in the U.K., and no leading politician now speaks out for it — lacking a message with the destructive power of Johnson’s.