Stop pretending USAID’s takedown was about doing development better

It has become somewhat fashionable within the development community to talk about USAID’s destruction as an opportunity to build something better. Arguments that we will see a better development system emerge include, for example, an October 2025 New York Times opinion piece by former USAID Administrator Raj Shah.

I sympathize with the impulse to look ahead and have even sought to contribute to the discussion myself. I recently signed an open letter outlining 10 recommendations for the future of U.S. foreign assistance, along with over 70 former USAID colleagues and peers. No one understood what needed fixing at USAID better than we did, and we repeatedly begged to have that conversation with political leadership. But there was simply no interest.

Let’s be clear, what happened to USAID was not about making U.S. development and humanitarian assistance “better.” Had it been, the administration would have had a plan for replacing USAID. It did not and still does not.