Trump Cracks Global Order

Not yet two months in office, Donald Trump has already cast a shadow of uncertainty over global and domestic politics.

Trump’s governing style – in which winners and losers compete in self-interested deal-making – leaves little room for diplomatic notions about allies and the common good. His zero-sum, revenge-driven worldview is an echo of the great power politics that carved up the continents more than a century ago.

In torching decades of U.S. foreign policy precedent, Trump is undermining not only the country’s longstanding allies. He is also handcuffing attempts globally to remedy the root causes of personal misery and geopolitical conflict.

Central to this development is Trump’s day-one decision to eliminate foreign aid and the agency that carries out its work.

Cutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, established during the Kennedy administration as a conduit for soft-power American influence, blindsided the world’s poorest people, especially those caught in conflict areas. 

The deprivations are being detailed by ACAPS, a Geneva-based organization that conducts humanitarian needs assessments. Its country-level reports on the fallout from the foreign aid freeze and stop-work orders underscore the importance of American aid. Healthcare services, deliveries of medicine and food, as well as water and sanitation projects are in jeopardy.

The most recent reports, published on March 13, focus on Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, each riven by civil war or rebel incursions that have displaced millions of people and precipitated water, sanitation, and health crises.

For both countries, the U.S. was the largest humanitarian donor, accounting for 68 percent of Democratic Republic of Congo’s foreign aid last year and 62 percent of its water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance. The benefits from these dollars are magnified by cooperative agreements with other donors. Those programs are also at risk, ACAPS asserts.

In DR Congo’s eastern regions, cholera is spreading in makeshift camps that shelter people who were driven from home due to attacks by the M23 rebel group. Some 32,000 cholera cases were reported in the country last year, the World Health Organization says. The waterborne disease can be prevented by proper sanitation and hygiene and access to clean water. Fighting in this area, however, has damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and residents are relying on untreated water from Lake Kivu, according to the UN humanitarian agency. Entering the rainy season, the risk of disease outbreaks is growing.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio allowed exceptions to the foreign aid freeze for “live-saving” aid, but at this point ACAPS says it is “nearly impossible” to understand where and how these waivers have been applied. Other organizations could try to fill the gap, but according to ACAPS the damage is mounting.

“Even if other responders step in or the U.S. lifts the freeze, the disruption has already limited access to essential life-saving services, affecting vulnerable communities, including people with serious health needs and those displaced by conflict.”

Cracks in the global system are mirrored at home by Trump’s heedless approach to domestic affairs.

When the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods of Los Angeles were overcome by cataclysmic fires in early January, Trump interjected his own misinformed opinions. California, he falsely claimed, was letting water flow into the Pacific Ocean rather than using it to douse fires. The reality was much different. Local reservoirs, by and large, had adequate water. Firefighters were instead constrained by urban water infrastructure that was not designed to combat megablazes at neighborhood scale, UCLA researchers explained.

Weeks later, once in office, Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release water from two reservoirs in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. Trump claimed the “beautiful” water would help Los Angeles, but in fact it was wasted. Canal systems could not move it to the city and the water was released too early in the season to be useful for downstream farmers.

The order established a pattern repeated throughout the administration’s first two months: do what it wants and dare the courts to stop it. By executive action, Trump and his aides have attempted mass firings of workers at the federal government’s climate and resource agencies. They want to shrink federally funded research that does not align with their political ideology. They do not want to pay foreign aid contractors for work already completed. They want to undo the EPA precedent that heat-trapping carbon pollution is a danger and should be regulated. All these actions are being challenged in court, or will be. 

Recklessness from the White House, meanwhile, is overshadowing consequential state and local water stories.

In Arizona, the homebuilding lobby sued the state water agency over water-use restrictions that paused new subdivisions in the Phoenix area that rely solely on local groundwater. 

In Texas, beset by water shortages in its drought-stricken southern counties, lawmakers are considering billions of dollars of investment in water supply infrastructure.

And counties in northern Virginia, a humid region laced with rivers, are debating how to satisfy the water needs of the region’s data center boom.

These and other water supply challenges are enduring features on our warming planet, even as vendettas and personal grievances fill the Trump administration’s agenda. The first months of 2025 signal more turbulence ahead. Cracks in the system are visible. It is up to other leaders to ensure they don’t reach the foundation.