President Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has left Democrats reeling and knees quaking in Brussels. Normally, internal reorganisation of government agencies would not affect Europe – or much of anything, for that matter. But USAID disappearing is going to affect massively the entire continent because its elimination effectively rips the heart out of the liberal international project.

USAID, as indicated by its acronym, is supposedly responsible for sending aid around the world. When people hear about this, they immediately think of things like feeding starving children in Africa or working on HIV prevention. And it does do those things, to be clear. But it, and the State Department, have also done some rather strange things, as when they funded programmes designed to make Nepal safe for atheism. USAID also spent $1.5 million on diversity, equity, and employment workshops in Serbia; while it is somewhat unclear exactly where that meant, much of it seems to have gone to “Izadi,” a pro-LGBT group. What they exactly have done with that large amount of money is somewhat a mystery.

That was not the extent of USAID’s activities in Europe. Consider what they were up to in Moldova. A trip to the bottom of the website of Moldova’s Electoral Commission reveals a list of funders – already somewhat strange – among them being USAID. But that was not the only USAID project in Moldova. One $20 million project, the “Moldova Resilience Initiative,” was supposed to run for only one year (2022-2023) before being extended into 2026. The project was designed to “strengthen popular support for a democratic, European Moldova” by “uniting Moldovans around a shared European identity.” Why the United States was trying to Europeanise Moldova, instead of the European Union trying it, is something of a mystery.