Let me say from the outset that I do not believe the Trump administration’s destruction of USAID flows from anything like deeply considered principles. That’s obvious, right?
However: In the context of liberals defending the goodness of international aid, it might be instructive to remember that Ivan Illich–hero to many of us on the left–famously opposed international aid. “To Hell with Good Intentions” (pdf) was an invited keynote address delivered in 1968 to a group of people promoting international aid.
By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class “American Way of Life,” since that is really the only life you know. A group like this could not have developed unless a mood in the United States had supported it - the belief that any true American must share God’s blessings with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants “develop” by spending a few months in their villages.
Again, I’m not defending anything about the Trump administration here. But it’s as good a time as any to remember the anti-colonial critique of international, capitalist development.