AN AUTOPSY OF AMERICAN ALTRUISM

Name: AN AUTOPSY OF AMERICAN ALTRUISM | The Rise and Fall of USAID
Brand: Darwin Books, an Imprint of Sterling Analytics Media
Price: 9.49 EUR
Availability: OnlineOnly

The Rise and Fall of USAID

Bosco Mutarambirwa(Autor*in)

Darwin Books, an Imprint of Sterling Analytics Media (Verlag)

1. Auflage

Erschienen am 26. November 2025

540 Seiten

E-Book

ePUB mit Wasserzeichen-DRM

Systemvoraussetzungen

979-8-9936653-9-9 (ISBN)

9,49 €inkl. 7% MwSt.

Systemvoraussetzungen

für ePUB mit Wasserzeichen-DRM

E-Book Einzellizenz

Als Download verfügbar

Beschreibung

For more than six decades, USAID served as the outward expression of American goodwill and global leadership. Created in the optimistic fervor of the early Cold War, the agency promised partnership, stability, and development to nations struggling with poverty, conflict, and institutional collapse. Yet behind the soaring language of altruism lay a more complicated reality-one shaped by political agendas, competing bureaucracies, strategic interests, and the shifting tides of U.S. foreign policy. As American influence expanded and contracted around the world, USAID became both a tool of national strategy and a mirror of America's evolving identity.

An Autopsy of American Altruism offers the most comprehensive and unflinching examination to date of how USAID rose to prominence, how it functioned, and how it ultimately unraveled. Bosco Mutarambirwa traces the agency's arc from its founding under President Kennedy through its heyday in the 20th century to its fragmentation in the decades following 9/11. Drawing on global historical context, development economics, and geopolitical analysis, he reveals how misaligned incentives, ideological battles, and recurring waves of policy experimentation slowly eroded the agency's effectiveness.

From Vietnam's nation-building failures to Afghanistan's reconstruction nightmares, from Latin America's political crosswinds to Africa's ambitious development experiments, USAID's history is inseparable from the broader history of American power. Mutarambirwa shows how aid projects were frequently shaped less by local needs and more by Washington priorities; how competing visions within the U.S. government created chronic instability; and how global rivals-including China, Russia, the Gulf states, and emerging regional powers-exploited America's inconsistencies to expand their influence.

As new development models took hold across the Global South and traditional Western institutions struggled to adapt, USAID found itself increasingly adrift. Its identity blurred, its credibility weakened, and its strategic purpose questioned not only abroad but within the U.S. foreign policy establishment itself. The result, Mutarambirwa argues, was an agency unable to reconcile its founding ideals with the realities of a multipolar world.

Urgent, deeply researched, and written with clarity and analytical depth, An Autopsy of American Altruism is more than the story of one agency's failure. It is a lens on the transformation of American global power and the limits of what development assistance can achieve when strategy, politics, and values collide. For policymakers, scholars, development practitioners, and citizens seeking to understand the future of U.S. leadership, this book provides a rare and essential guide to the past, present, and uncertain road ahead.

Weitere Details

Person

Inhalt

INTRODUCTION - THE ANATOMY OF AN EMPIRE THAT CALLED ITSELF GOOD ............... 17

PART I - THE ORIGIN OF THE MISSION ......... 23

CHAPTER 1 - THE INVENTION OF ALTRUISM ......... 25

CHAPTER 2 - THE SEDUCTIVE FALLACY: WHY RECOVERY FAILED TO TRANSLATE TO DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................ 39

CHAPTER 3 - THE CHAOS BEFORE USAID: POINT FOUR AND THE FRAGMENTED AID MACHINE ............. 53

CHAPTER 4 - KENNEDY'S VISION: THE BIRTH OF USAID .................................................................................. 79

CHAPTER 5 - THE THREE FAILURES: VIETNAM (STRATEGIC), LATIN AMERICA (POLITICAL), AFRICA (MARKET) .......................................................................... 103

PART II - MATURITY, CONTRADICTIONS, AND EMPIRE (1970-2001) ................................................. 149

CHAPTER 6 - THE GOSPEL OF REPORTS: WHEN PURPOSE BECAME PROCESS .......................................... 151

CHAPTER 7 - LESSONS UNLEARNED: THE 1970S CRISES USAID COULDN'T MANAGE ........................... 177

CHAPTER 8 - THE REAGAN REORIENTATION: AID AS IDEOLOGY ................................................................... 205

CHAPTER 9 - DEPENDENCY, DISSENT, AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH PUSHES BACK ..................................... 235

PART III - COLLAPSE (2001-2025) ....................... 273

CHAPTER 10 - THE GREEN CARD AND THE GUN: USAID AS JUNIOR PARTNER TO THE MILITARY ....... 275

CHAPTER 11 - THE AUTHORITARIAN TURN AND THE CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY ........................................... 311

CHAPTER 12 - DEATH BY INDIFFERENCE: USAID'S QUIET UNDOING ............................................................. 343

MUTARAMBIRWA

xiv

PART IV - AMERICA'S RECKONING ................. 361

CHAPTER 13 - AMERICA WITHOUT ITS BENEVOLENT MASK ........................................................ 363

CHAPTER 14 - THE FAILURE OF ENGINEERED MORALITY .......................................................................... 387

CHAPTER 15 - SEARCHING FOR A NEW AMERICAN IDENTITY AFTER USAID ............................................... 413

PART V - THE POST-AID WORLD ...................... 431

CHAPTER 16 - A WORLD WITHOUT CUSTODIANS .............................................................................................. 433

CHAPTER 17 - DIGNITY BEYOND DEPENDENCY 460

CHAPTER 18 - THE LEGACY OF AN EMPIRE THAT CALLED ITSELF GOOD .................................................... 479

EPILOGUE - THE ECHO OF EMPIRES ........... 499

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................... 509

APPENDIX XII - 2025 DISMANTLING DECREE..................................................................................... 517

APPENDIX XIII - GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES: COMPARATIVE OVERVIEW ............ 519

APPENDIX XIV - GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT BUDGETS & REACH (COMPARATIVE TABLE) . 521

APPENDIX XV - REGIONAL VACUUM ANALYSIS (POST-USAID) .......................................................... 523

Systemvoraussetzungen

Als PDF speichern Als Link merken