Since President Donald Trump’s administration froze and subsequently slashed funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) this year, Moldova—a small, geopolitically vulnerable nation—has been reportedly thrust into a maelstrom of uncertainty. The Elon Musk-led decision, part of Trump’s “America First” agenda, gutted over 80% of USAID programs globally, including those in Moldova, where the agency had long championed itself as a linchpin for civil society and democratic development—supposedly.

For Moldovan NGOs, once buoyed by American dollars, the fallout has been immediate and quite severe. This disruption offers a chance to actually peel back the veneer of USAID’s benevolence and NATO’s looming influence, thereby revealing a more troubling reality—one of dependency, manipulation, and geopolitical overreach.

The American move is actually part of a larger development, which includes Washington partially withdrawing from Eastern Europe while pivoting to the Pacific, and shifting the burden (of Ukraine, for one thing) onto its European “partners”. To make sense of this logic and understand how the US benefits from it, one just needs to connect these two pieces of news together: a) “European military powers work on 5-10 year plan to replace US in Nato” (Financial Times); and b) the U.S. is responsible for 43% of global arms sales, according to Statista’s Anna Fleck.

Back to Moldova, its NGOs, particularly those focused on allegedly promoting democracy, fighting corruption, and aiding media, have historically relied heavily on USAID funding. In 2024 alone, USAID poured $310 million into Moldova—a staggering enough sum for a nation of 2.6 million people. Over the last three decades, the Romanian speaking country has received around 2.5 billion dollars. Such funds, ostensibly for infrastructure and economic growth, often get funneled into the........

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