The destruction of Gaza and USAID represents a dual challenge for the US

At this critical moment when an Israel-Hamas peace plan might be workable, United States policymakers who care about making America “safer and stronger” should contemplate the intersection of two dramatic 2025 events: the simultaneous destruction of Gaza and the decimation of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The first act of destruction created a reconstruction challenge of almost unfathomable proportions: more than 140 square miles of rubble, strewn with corpses, unexploded ordnance, and deadly contaminants of every kind, filled with some 2 million people facing hunger, sickness and unemployment with no functioning government or services. The second act of destruction, spawned by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, assault on USAID earlier this year, substantially dismantled the U.S. government toolkit to fix such problems. As former head of the Asia and Near East Bureau at USAID, having been on the ground in Gaza, I immediately visited the White House website to find the details of President Donald Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.” When wars end, getting rebuilding right is central to avoiding reignition of conflict and, if successful, can address underlying enmities that started the fighting in the first place. Historically, U.S. leadership in reconstruction — including mobilizing other donor resources to fund rebuilding — has been viewed as a cost-effective investment to avoid even heavier taxpayer costs for resurgent conflict. In this regard, a careful reading of Trump’s plan yields grounds for both optimism and trepidation. Obviously, the first task was to get the warring parties and regional players to sign the document. But then, personal experience in multiple war-devastated countries focused my attention on what the Trump administration's approach said — and didn’t say — about the nuts and bolts of rebuilding after the ink is dry on the peace deal. Overall, the “comprehensive plan” identifies many key reconstruction tasks, including essential pullback of combatant forces, creation of an “International Stabilization Force” for peacekeeping, rubble removal, and getting water and electricity infrastructure up and running. The plan recognizes the necessity of a transitional government for the “day-to-day running of public services.” Most experts would note as a problem the absence of any mention of schools, since out-of-school young people are potentially recruits for extremist organizations. And, while there’s a nod toward employment issues with a “special economic zone,” clearly missing is a focus on short-term job creation — critical for mid-term stability during rebuilding. The primary challenge facing Gaza reconstruction is the same tough predicament in any post-war situation: Who will actually do the work to accomplish all the identified tasks? Appointing Trump and former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair to a “Board of Peace” may provide high-level impetus. The plan’s suggested “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” sounds workable. But, who, exactly will start clearing the rubble, in order for the rest of the reconstruction effort to go forward? Who will rebuild water systems, in itself a massively complex undertaking? These questions bring me to the issue of USAID, and the attacks on the world’s former largest aid agency. Currently, this congressionally mandated federal agency, in existence since 1961, remains a legal entity, but has been substantially dismantled by the Trump administration. Approximately 95% of its workforce was fired, with only about 5% of its technical experts temporarily absorbed into the U.S. Department of State. Having worked within USAID, I’ve seen up close its performance over decades during rebuilding efforts around the globe. These range from helping reconstitute nations of the former Soviet Union, repairing damage of civil wars in El Salvador and multiple African countries, and working alongside U.S. state and defense departments in devastated locations analogous to Gaza: Lebanon, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Vietnam, and others. The results, frankly, have been mixed. Reconstruction after massive devastation from war or natural disasters — with every aspect of human society in crisis — sometimes worked well, and sometimes didn’t. One lesson we learned repeatedly in post-war situations where everything has collapsed is that our nation needs specialized teams and highly technical skills to have any chance of success in rebuilding from the war’s rubble. And it was USAID that provided those experts. The agency provided engineers, water experts, job creation specialists, educators, authorities in rebuilding destroyed government agencies, economists, and monetary policy professionals, food delivery and agricultural experts, and the thousand and one other arcane, but essential, components of rebuilding places such as Gaza that have been destroyed by war. These essential USAID technical staff — which also included local experts fluent in the language and culture of war damaged countries — have now mostly been sidelined. “Pick-up” teams of well-intentioned individuals who have never viewed piles of bricks, body parts, and unexploded 155-millimeter howitzer shells are not the way forward. My former remaining State Department colleagues, as courageous and talented as they are, have likely neither been recruited for nor trained in post-conflict reconstruction. Moreover, building on DOGE’s decimation of USAID, in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the elimination of the former Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations — the State Department’s previous headquarters for crisis response. This hard-earned lesson — that complex treaty negotiations must be followed up with even more complex rebuilding operations — was one of the key reasons USAID was created. The recognition that projecting America’s influence overseas sometimes required a focused agency with highly technical specialists was part of the reason former presidents and Congresses, of both parties, chose to sustain USAID. Warts and all, USAID provided the United States with a reconstruction toolkit, with rapid deployment capacity to places such as Gaza, that was unmatched by any institution, in the U.S. or abroad. In summary, the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” has real possibilities but, as always, the devil is in the (operational) details. The destruction of Gaza presents the U.S. with foreign policy challenges. The decimation of USAID’s capabilities is a self-inflicted wound that the Congress should revisit. History teaches that Gaza will be only the first instance where U.S. policymakers will confront a new reality: a serious mismatch between our aspirations to rebuild abroad and the now-jettisoned toolkit to actually do it.