Publication date: June 24, 2026.
Prepared for: Foreign Policy Analysis.
Reference date: June 24, 2026.
Executive summary
The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, has historically been the U.S. government’s lead civilian development and humanitarian agency. Its core mission has been to administer economic development and humanitarian assistance, reduce poverty and disease, respond to crises, and advance U.S. foreign policy interests through long-term development partnerships. USAID was created in 1961 under authorities in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and Congress later codified its status as an independent establishment within the executive branch in 1998 at 22 U.S.C. § 6563. The agency’s pre-2025 public organizational model combined central, functional, and geographic bureaus with overseas missions in more than 100 countries.
Budgetarily, USAID has long sat at the center of U.S. civilian foreign assistance, drawing primarily on congressional appropriations through State–Foreign Operations accounts and, in specific crises, emergency supplemental appropriations. Official audits show total budgetary resources of roughly $51.7 billion in FY2023, $45.2 billion in FY2024, and $52.5 billion in FY2025. USAID also relied increasingly on multilateral channels: an OIG review found USAID obligations, disbursements, and in-kind contributions to public international organizations rose 282%, from $5.6 billion in FY2019 to $21.4 billion in FY2022.
Programmatically, USAID built a broad portfolio across democracy and governance, economic growth, agriculture and food security, global health, education, humanitarian response, climate, gender, and resilience. Signature platforms included USAID’s implementation roles in PEPFAR, Feed the Future, the President’s Malaria Initiative, and major humanitarian operations, often in partnership with NGOs, contractors, multilateral organizations, and local actors. Country examples before and during the recent transition underscore that breadth: direct budget support and energy resilience in Ukraine, large-scale humanitarian and governance engagement in Somalia, extensive PEPFAR programming in southern Africa, and food security and resilience work in Ethiopia and across Feed the Future countries.
The central analytical finding of this paper is that USAID’s long-run record is stronger on health and emergency response, mixed but often meaningful on food security and agricultural productivity, and much more uneven in institution-building, governance reform, and sustainability. Peer-reviewed studies link USAID interventions to large mortality reductions in low- and middle-income countries, and separate research attributes major health gains to PEPFAR and child nutrition improvements in Feed the Future countries. Yet OIG and GAO have repeatedly documented gaps in monitoring, partner oversight, data quality, local capacity development, and multilateral due diligence.
As of mid-2026, USAID is in an anomalous position. In law, the agency still exists as a statutory executive-branch entity. In practice, executive-branch actions in 2025 and 2026 moved substantial foreign assistance functions into the Department of State, put much of USAID into shutdown or closeout mode, and established new State-led structures for humanitarian response. USAID FY2025 financial statements explicitly describe an “orderly shutdown and transition of operations,” and OIG memoranda in 2026 address Eric Ueland as “Performing the Duties of Administrator and Chief Operating Officer.” Reuters also reported the creation of a new State Department Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response in March 2026.
The policy significance is large. USAID was never just a spending channel. It was the U.S. government’s principal repository of development expertise, field presence, procurement infrastructure, learning systems, and humanitarian operating know-how. Any future architecture that strips away those capabilities without replacing them risks weaker oversight, more politicized allocation, and diminished U.S. influence. By contrast, a reformed model that keeps a statutory development institution, strengthens evidence use, localizes more intelligently, and clarifies the division of labor with State, MCC, and multilateral partners would preserve strategic leverage while addressing the agency’s genuine weaknesses.
Mandate, mission, history, and legal foundation
USAID’s foundational mandate has two layers. First, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 supplied the principal statutory authority for modern U.S. development assistance. Second, USAID’s status as a distinct entity was later embedded in law through the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, codified at 22 U.S.C. § 6563, which states that “there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development.” The Federal Register, the U.S. Government Manual, Cornell’s U.S. Code text, and CRS all describe USAID as an independent federal agency that operates under the foreign policy guidance of the Secretary of State.
Historically, USAID was created during the Kennedy administration to rationalize U.S. foreign assistance and give the United States a civilian tool for long-term development diplomacy in the Cold War. Over time, its focus expanded beyond anti-communist competition to poverty reduction, humanitarian relief, public health, agricultural productivity, democratic governance, and, later, climate, digital development, and resilience. The U.S. Government Manual summarizes the pre-2025 mission succinctly: USAID sought to “eradicate extreme global poverty” and enable “resilient and democratic societies,” while working in over 100 countries across prosperity, democracy, health, food security, climate, education, conflict prevention, and disaster response.
A concise timeline helps clarify the institution’s evolution.
| Year | Milestone | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Foreign Assistance Act of 1961; USAID created under executive authority using that statutory base | Established the modern U.S. development agency and legal architecture for foreign assistance. |
| 1970s | Expansion of poverty-focused and basic human needs programming | Shifted emphasis from large infrastructure and geopolitical competition toward service delivery and poverty reduction. |
| 1998 | Congress codified USAID’s status at 22 U.S.C. § 6563 | Gave USAID a durable statutory footing as an executive-branch entity. |
| 2003 | PEPFAR launched | Made USAID a major implementing arm of the largest U.S. global HIV initiative. |
| 2004 | MCC created; USAID Administrator placed on MCC Board; USAID OIG designated MCC’s IG | Formalized a complementary but separate development compact model and governance link to USAID. |
| 2010 | Feed the Future launched | Re-centered food security, agriculture, and nutrition as signature U.S. development priorities. |
| 2011 | USAID Evaluation Policy issued | Recommitted the agency to accountability, learning, and evidence-based programming. |
| 2022 | USAID climate strategy announced | Elevated climate mitigation and adaptation as agency-wide priorities through 2030. |
| 2025 | Executive aid review, operational shutdown/transfer, and State-led reorganization | Marked the most severe disruption in USAID’s history. Rubio was appointed acting administrator in February 2025; USAID FY2025 statements describe shutdown/transition. |
| 2026 | New State Department humanitarian bureau reported | Signaled that key USAID operational functions were being absorbed into State-led structures. |
The key legal takeaway is straightforward. USAID’s statutory existence and USAID’s operational autonomy are no longer the same thing. The statute remains. The operational model has been radically altered. That distinction matters for Congress, appropriators, courts, contractors, and U.S. allies alike.
Organizational architecture, leadership, and budget
Before the 2025–2026 disruption, the clearest public map of USAID’s architecture came from the U.S. Government Manual and related official organizational materials. That structure divided the agency into central bureaus, functional bureaus, geographic bureaus, and independent offices, with overseas missions and regional platforms linked to ambassadors and geographic assistant administrators. The Government Manual notes that these public personnel and structure listings were last broadly updated in 2021, so they are best read as the last complete pre-reorganization blueprint, not a precise depiction of June 2026 operations.
Suggested organizational chart
AdministratorCentral BureausFunctional BureausGeographic BureausIndependent OfficesOverseas Missions and Regional PlatformsForeign AssistanceLegislative and Public AffairsManagementPolicy Planning and LearningDevelopment Democracy and InnovationGlobal HealthConflict Prevention and StabilizationHumanitarian AssistanceResilience and Food SecurityAfricaAsiaEurope and EurasiaLatin America and the CaribbeanMiddle EastBudget and Resource ManagementHuman CapitalSecurityGeneral CounselChief Financial OfficerShow code
This chart reflects the legacy public structure rather than the current closeout-era configuration. The Government Manual lists central bureaus, functional bureaus, geographic bureaus, and independent offices, while OIG memoranda and Reuters reporting indicate that by 2026 many responsibilities had either been terminated, transferred, or effectively re-housed under State Department oversight.
In terms of leadership, the agency’s public leadership has changed repeatedly during the reorganization. Official State Department communications reported that Secretary Marco Rubio was appointed Acting Administrator in February 2025. By early and mid-2026, multiple USAID OIG memoranda were addressed to Eric Ueland, Performing the Duties of Administrator and Chief Operating Officer, indicating a distinct closeout-era leadership arrangement.
Budgetarily, USAID depended overwhelmingly on congressional appropriations, supplemented by offsetting collections, credit financing, and special or emergency appropriations. OIG financial audits state that USAID “receives most of its funding from general Government funds administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and appropriated by Congress.” Official audits also show notable variation in total budgetary resources across recent years.
Budget trend table
| Fiscal year | Total budgetary resources | Approximate context |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | $51.7 billion | Elevated by large program accounts and crisis-era funding, including Ukraine-related support. |
| 2024 | $45.2 billion | Lower than FY2023 but still well above earlier peacetime norms. |
| 2025 | $52.5 billion | Includes shutdown-era accounting and substantial financing/transfer effects during transition. |
Suggested budget trend chart
USAID total budgetary resourcesFY2023FY2024FY2025605550454035302520151050USD billionsShow code
Those totals should be interpreted carefully. They do not map perfectly onto annual outlays or “new program money.” They include different combinations of budget authority, carryover, and financing-account treatment. Still, they show that USAID remained a very large budgetary platform even as its institutional capacity was being dismantled or transferred.
The agency’s funding sources can be summarized in four layers.
| Funding source | What it funded | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Congressional appropriations | Core development, health, humanitarian, democracy, economic support, and operating expenses | USAID receives most funding from Treasury funds appropriated by Congress. |
| Supplemental appropriations | Extraordinary crisis responses, especially Ukraine and global food insecurity | U.S. Ukraine supplementals across government totaled $174.2 billion in FY2022–FY2024; USAID managed $30.2 billion of direct budget support appropriations for Ukraine. |
| Multilateral and trust-fund channels | World Bank, U.N. agencies, and other public international organizations | USAID contributions to PIOs rose from $5.6 billion in FY2019 to $21.4 billion in FY2022; 67 PIOs received $45.9 billion over FY2019–FY2022. |
| Earmarked and interagency channels | PEPFAR, food security, multilateral earmarks, and reimbursable arrangements | OECD reports that in 2024 the United States provided $23.8 billion of gross ODA to the multilateral system, including $17.1 billion in earmarked non-core contributions. |
Program priorities and geographic footprint
USAID’s pre-shutdown portfolio was intentionally broad. The U.S. Government Manual describes work in economic prosperity, democracy and good governance, human rights, global health, food security and agriculture, environmental sustainability, education, conflict prevention and recovery, and humanitarian relief in over 100 countries. That breadth was both a strength and a chronic management challenge: the agency combined classic development assistance, crisis response, and strategic statecraft.
A practical way to understand USAID is through its major sectoral pillars.
| Sector or pillar | Core function | Illustrative evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Democracy, rights, and governance | Elections, civil society, rule of law, governance reform, anti-corruption | Government Manual describes democracy programming as a long-standing major function. |
| Economic growth and trade | Macroeconomic reform, private-sector development, trade, workforce development | Government Manual identifies broad-based growth and expanded opportunity as core aims. |
| Global health | HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, maternal and child health, nutrition, health systems | Government Manual emphasizes maternal and child health, family planning, HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis; PEPFAR is State-led but interagency and includes USAID. |
| Humanitarian assistance | Disaster response, food assistance, emergency health, protection, early recovery | USAID’s traditional role in humanitarian response is documented in the Government Manual; 2026 reforms shifted this heavily toward State. |
| Agriculture and food security | Feed the Future, resilience, nutrition, market systems, agricultural R&D | OIG identifies USAID’s REFS bureau as leading Feed the Future. |
| Climate and environment | Mitigation, adaptation, clean energy, natural resources, biodiversity | USAID’s 2022 climate strategy set 2030 goals on emissions, adaptation, and nature. |
| Education and gender | Basic education, girls’ education, women’s empowerment, gender integration | Education and gender are embedded across USAID’s country portfolios and sector guidance; they were core themes in the broader development model. |
Several flagship mechanisms gave those sectors operational coherence.
| Major program or mechanism | USAID role | Analytical importance |
|---|---|---|
| PEPFAR | Major implementing agency within a State-led interagency HIV platform | Demonstrates USAID’s sector depth and the advantages of combining diplomatic leadership with technical implementation. |
| Feed the Future | USAID-led global hunger and food security initiative | Shows how USAID used multi-country strategy, mission portfolios, and technical bureaus to pursue structural development goals. |
| President’s Malaria Initiative | USAID-led initiative with congressional appropriations and country prioritization | Illustrates both health impact ambitions and OIG concerns about strategy execution. |
| Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance model | Centralized emergency relief and crisis response | Represents USAID’s most operationally intensive, field-dependent business line before transfer into State-led structures. |
| MCC interface | Governance overlap, Board membership, and OIG oversight rather than direct subordination | Highlights the fragmented character of U.S. development architecture. |
USAID’s geographic footprint was global, but not uniform. It worked through bilateral missions, regional platforms, coordination offices, and multilateral channels, with especially large footprints in sub-Saharan Africa, conflict settings, and strategically salient middle-income partners. The agency’s country organizations operated under ambassadorial authority while reporting through geographic bureaus—an arrangement that embedded development inside broader diplomacy but also made strategy vulnerable to short-term geopolitical shifts.
A few country cases capture the range of USAID’s footprint.
| Country or region | Illustration | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Ukraine | GAO reports over $45 billion in U.S. direct budget support through the World Bank, with USAID managing $30.2 billion of appropriated direct budget support before responsibilities shifted to State in July 2025 | USAID’s ability to manage macro-fiscal support at huge scale, but also the fragility of oversight during reorganization. |
| Somalia | OIG notes the U.S. government obligated $1.2 billion to Somalia in FY2023 and $420 million in FY2024; USAID/Somalia’s democracy, stabilization, and governance portfolio exceeded $120 million | A mix of humanitarian, governance, and stabilization programming in a high-risk operating environment. |
| Ethiopia | OIG has repeatedly reviewed food security and emergency food assistance in Ethiopia | Shows USAID’s parallel tracks of humanitarian relief and longer-term resilience/agriculture work. |
| Southern Africa | PEPFAR documentation and country operational plans show USAID as a channel for GHP-USAID funds in HIV programming | Demonstrates USAID’s central role in U.S. global health delivery. |
| Philippines and Pacific | OIG reports USAID/Philippines managed over $128 million in country-specific programming in FY2024 and an expanded portfolio covering 12 Pacific Island countries and Mongolia | Captures USAID’s regional-hub model and Indo-Pacific relevance. |
Suggested map of country presence
A publication-ready map should distinguish between:
- Full bilateral missions
- Regional or platform-managed countries
- Countries served mainly through multilateral or centrally managed mechanisms
- Locations affected by 2025–2026 closures or transfers
The best underlying official map layer is still ForeignAssistance.gov, which describes itself as the U.S. government’s flagship platform for foreign assistance data and provides country-level dashboards, trends, agencies, and activity data.
Operational modalities, partnerships, and evidence on performance
USAID historically delivered through a complex mix of contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, interagency agreements, direct budget support, public international organizations, and local partner awards. The Office of Acquisition and Assistance was the central institutional hub for contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. OIG reporting also notes the agency’s increased use of fixed-amount awards, especially as localization expanded.
That delivery model created both scale and fragmentation. USAID could mobilize universities, NGOs, faith-based organizations, private firms, multilateral agencies, and local civil society into large portfolios quickly. But the price was transaction complexity, variable oversight quality, and a tendency for administrative and compliance systems to favor large international implementers over local organizations. Brookings argued that localization would remain difficult so long as Congress and agency rules continued to reward compliance-heavy procurement over genuinely different risk-sharing and capacity-building models.
The agency’s relationship with PEPFAR shows both USAID’s strengths and the interagency nature of U.S. foreign assistance. State’s Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator manages and oversees PEPFAR, but the initiative’s interagency structure includes USAID among its core operational actors. That arrangement married diplomatic control with field implementation and sectoral specialization. Similarly, Feed the Future placed USAID at the center of U.S. food security strategy, with the REFS bureau coordinating mission implementation and technical support across target countries. The MCC interface worked differently: MCC is separate from USAID, but the USAID Administrator sits on MCC’s Board, USAID’s OIG oversees MCC, and National Academies work has highlighted the operational dependence of some MCC threshold efforts on USAID country knowledge and field presence.
Monitoring and evaluation were intended to offset some of that complexity. USAID’s 2011 Evaluation Policy explicitly framed evaluation around two purposes: accountability to stakeholders and learning to improve effectiveness. ADS 201 later embedded evaluation, performance management, site visits, and collaborating-learning-adapting into the program cycle. Financially, USAID continued to receive unmodified audit opinions in FY2023, FY2024, and FY2025, which means the agency’s core financial statements were judged fairly presented even amid major institutional turbulence.
Yet the evidence base on implementation discipline is mixed. OIG found that USAID did not consistently follow through on required organizational capacity reviews for multilateral partners, did not systematically perform or track spot checks on cost-type awards to public international organizations, and often lacked clear follow-up mechanisms when partner weaknesses were identified. Other OIG work found that mission program-cycle compliance could lag badly: in the Philippines, for example, only 9 of 24 planned evaluations had been completed as of December 2023. In Egypt, OIG concluded that better use of information was needed to set performance targets and improve learning.
The strongest empirical case for USAID’s effectiveness comes from global health and some food-security programming. A 2025 peer-reviewed analysis in The Lancet found that USAID funding in low- and middle-income countries was associated with substantial reductions in all-cause mortality over two decades and estimated tens of millions of deaths averted. A separate 2024 peer-reviewed study found that PEPFAR reduced all-cause mortality across recipient countries from 2004 to 2018. And a 2019 peer-reviewed study found that Feed the Future was associated with improvements in child stunting and underweight outcomes in participating countries. Research on USAID-funded agricultural research through U.S. universities also identified meaningful welfare gains from long-run R&D investments.
Still, positive average effects do not erase the agency’s chronic operational problems. GAO found that USAID did not adequately use detailed expenditure data in overseeing Ukraine direct budget support and that reduced oversight followed the 2025 transfer of responsibilities to State. OIG has also flagged recurring internal-control issues in payroll and personnel processing, data and indicator weaknesses, and insufficient award oversight to hold implementers accountable for results. These are not marginal concerns. They go to the heart of whether a large aid agency can scale effectively without diluting accountability.
Critiques, controversies, reform agendas, and comparative context
Critiques of USAID fall into four broad baskets. The first is effectiveness and sustainability. Even sympathetic analysts have long argued that success in saving lives or meeting short-run service targets does not always translate into durable local institutions, domestic fiscal capacity, or self-sustaining reform. OIG has repeatedly treated sustainability, local capacity, monitoring quality, and measurement of long-term impact as “top management challenges.” Brookings and CSIS, from different angles, have made a similar point: USAID often had good policy aspirations, but its contracting and procurement machinery made locally led development much harder than the rhetoric implied.
The second critique is politicization. Foreign assistance has always served strategic purposes, but the January 20, 2025 executive order made alignment with presidential foreign policy the explicit organizing principle for all U.S. foreign assistance. That is not an incidental change. It formalized a sharper subordination of aid to short-term executive priorities. The resulting 2025 review, shutdown, and transfer process produced abrupt program disruptions, oversight breakdowns, litigation, and uncertainty among implementing partners. USAID’s own FY2025 statements describe an orderly shutdown, while watchdog and media reporting documented the operational costs of moving faster than oversight systems and transition planning could realistically support.
The third critique concerns aid conditionality and multilateral intermediation. Critics on both left and right argue that U.S. aid can be too political, too conditional, or too donor-driven. OIG’s 2024 review of public international organizations suggests a more technical but equally significant problem: even when USAID relied on multilaterals for reach and access, it often lacked sufficient visibility into how those organizations managed billions of dollars in U.S. funds. That weakens both accountability and the case for channeling ever larger shares of assistance through multilateral implementers without upgraded due diligence.
The fourth critique is securitization. USAID’s role in fragile states, stabilization missions, and conflict theaters often blurred the line between development, diplomacy, and security. That can be strategically useful. It can also distort incentives, shorten time horizons, and make local legitimacy harder to build. The Ukraine direct budget support case is instructive. Support was strategically vital and in many respects well justified, but it also tied USAID deeply to wartime state-support functions, dependence on World Bank mechanisms, and congressional reporting requirements usually associated with security-driven emergency policymaking. That is a vivid example of how modern aid has moved away from a clean separation between humanitarian, development, and geopolitical objectives.
Reform ideas before the 2025 rupture focused on localization, climate mainstreaming, digital transformation, private-sector partnerships, and learning systems. USAID’s climate strategy set 2030 targets for emissions mitigation, adaptation, and nature-positive outcomes. Brookings and CSIS argued that localization remained strategically and developmentally sound, but that it required less risk aversion, more direct support to local institutions, and more realistic burden-sharing with Congress and other donors. OIG’s work on development data and climate strategy, meanwhile, underscored that aspirational reform agendas fail when metrics, data quality, and internal controls are weak.
The reforms now most needed are more basic. Any future U.S. development architecture should, at minimum, preserve five capabilities that USAID historically concentrated in one place: field presence, technical expertise, acquisition and assistance systems, independent evaluation and learning, and rapid humanitarian operations. If those capabilities remain fragmented across State, ad hoc crisis units, and multilateral earmarks, the United States may still spend large sums overseas but achieve less influence and weaker accountability. That is the central institutional lesson of the 2025–2026 transition.
A comparative donor lens sharpens the point.
| Institution | Scale and model | Strategic contrast with USAID |
|---|---|---|
| USAID | Civilian bilateral development and humanitarian agency; FY2025 total budgetary resources about $52.5 billion | Historically stronger in field operations and implementation than most finance-first institutions. |
| World Bank Group | $118.5 billion in loans, grants, equity investments, and guarantees in FY2025 | Larger financially, more finance- and policy-based, less of a direct bilateral implementer. |
| U.K. FCDO | £14.1 billion ODA in calendar year 2024; integrated foreign-policy and development department | Closer than the World Bank to the new U.S. direction after mergers, but with its own record of aid-policy tension after DFID’s merger into FCDO. |
| EU institutions | OECD and Council sources indicate the EU institutions remained among the largest development providers; country programmable aid was $33.3 billion in 2024 and OECD materials report EU-institutions ODA around $27.7 billion in 2024, while the EU plus member states remained the world’s largest collective ODA provider | More rules-based, more multilateralized, and generally less operationally centralized than USAID. |
The comparative lesson is not that one model is categorically superior. It is that institutional form shapes what a donor can do well. The World Bank excels at large-scale finance and policy engagement. The EU excels at pooled, rules-heavy, multi-country programming. The FCDO model tightens diplomacy–development integration but risks subordinating development to foreign policy. USAID’s historical comparative advantage was a rare combination of money, field operations, technical depth, and emergency reach. Once those pieces are separated, they are not easy to recreate.
Key sources and limitations
Prioritized source base
| Priority | Source | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| High | USAID-related official U.S. sources including the U.S. Government Manual, Federal Register, ForeignAssistance.gov, and U.S. Code | Best basis for mission, legal status, pre-2025 organization, and country-presence infrastructure. |
| High | USAID OIG audits, inspections, oversight plans, and financial statement audits | Strongest source for budget execution, oversight weaknesses, shutdown-era documentation, and sectoral case studies. |
| High | Congressional Research Service | Best concise congressional framing of USAID’s authorities, mission, and role in foreign assistance. |
| High | GAO | Strongest independent source on Ukraine direct budget support, oversight quality, and transition-related governance issues. |
| High | OECD development cooperation profiles | Comparable donor data for the United States, United Kingdom, and EU institutions. |
| High | World Bank annual reporting | Essential comparative benchmark for scale and financing model. |
| High | Brookings and CSIS | Useful for interpretation of localization, institutional design, and strategic consequences of reform or dismantlement. |
| High | Peer-reviewed studies in The Lancet and related journals | Best current evidence on mortality effects, health outcomes, and development impact. |
Open questions and limitations
Some current details remain incomplete or unstable. Public USAID web pages were, in many cases, inaccessible or replaced by administrative-leave or transition notices during research, which means that the most detailed official organization chart available publicly is pre-2025 and should not be mistaken for a live June 2026 operating chart. Exact current staffing totals, the precise disposition of all bureau functions, and the final legal settlement of the 2025–2026 reorganization remain only partially transparent in public materials. State Department budget PDFs were also inconsistently accessible through the research interface, so this report relies more heavily than usual on OIG financial audits, CRS summaries, GAO findings, OECD profiles, and reputable official or quasi-official compilations.
On balance, the public record supports three firm conclusions. USAID remains significant in law, diminished in operation, and consequential in legacy. Its strongest historical contributions came where technical depth, field presence, and scale could be combined over time. Its weakest areas involved sustainability, measurement, and dependence on systems built for compliance rather than local ownership. The future of U.S. development policy will depend less on whether the name “USAID” survives than on whether those underlying capacities survive in coherent form.
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