The newly appointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Vivek Ramaswamy has questioned the role of American NGO’s with foreign connections. Ramaswamy a Republican politician who will be been given the charge to restructure federal governmental spending in the new look Donald Trump administration beginning its term in 2025, has been severely critical of past wayward expenditures of the US government under the Democrats. Ramaswamy reiterated that such spending represents a waste of taxpayer dollars, and the American public deserves transparency on opaque foreign aid.
In a post on X, Ramaswamy took a shot at the uncontrolled spending being done by the US government. The post Ramaswamy quoted was questioning the involvement of an American diplomat Victoria Nuland who has served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2021 to 2024. The post indicated that Nuland had been appointed to the Board of Directors of National Endowment of Democracy, the primary US funding agency for overseas NGOs involved in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. The post also questions what Nuland’s input has been in connection with recent NGO activity in the aforementioned countries.
Victoria Nuland
There have been many indications that the United States has covertly funded and backed regime changes in many countries including the ones in question. Nuland has been particularly notorious for being considered a part of such operations. Victoria Nuland, had announced her retirement in March 2024 after three and a half decades serving as a senior US foreign policy official under ten different secretaries of state.
During her career Nuland has not been just a high-level US diplomat, she has long been considered the spearhead and the golden girl of the US warmongering neoconservative and liberal interventionist movements, which in barely two decades has managed to destroy countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine and Palestine.
Nuland is also married to Robert Kagan, one of the key founders of the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, which strongly advocated aggressive US military intervention around the world. Nuland shared Kagan’s views on Russia, and pursued an obsessive anti-Russian policy, becoming one of the most vocal advocates for NATO’s eastward expansion that has resulted in Europe being at complete odds with Russia, even compromising its energy needs and completely destabilizing the economy of a number of countries.
Foreign Aid
The U.S. foreign aid spending recently surpassed a whooping $70 billion in appropriated funds for the first time in 70 years, new data shows, propelled by the foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine to aid them in their respective war efforts. That recent high isn’t the result of a slow climb, nor is it due to inflation. In constant dollars, U.S. foreign aid obligations jumped from $56.3 billion in 2021 to $70.4 billion in 2022, the latest year for which final data is available from a federal tracker. That marks an increase of more than 25%. The United States is the largest single provider of foreign aid worldwide in total dollars. Since World War II, the United States has distributed almost $4 trillion (adjusted for inflation) in foreign aid.
Donald Trump and his new look regime have been particularly critical of the past policies, especially of the Democrats to use aid as an access point to get a foothold in countries and mobilize regime change operations that have destroyed entire regions. Trump believe that such policies have not only made international relations a tedious affair, they have also ruined relations with many countries. On top of it Trump and the Republicans believe that such policies have been at the crux of USA’s economic issues where money is being spent on projects to destabilize countries while the local tax paying Americans are losing out on their hard earned money.
Ramaswamy had earlier indicated similar misgivings with the money being spent on a Pakistan owned hotel housing illegals. In this post Vivek Ramaswamy has once again echoed the ideas of the President elect. It also serves as a precursor for the upcoming Trump presidential rule. It shows that the to be formed DOGE ministry will be keeping a close eye on such deals in the future.