A Taliban official is right now touring Japan. Theoretically, one can find fault with Japan for indulging and ‘mainstreaming’ Islamic terrorists, but that would be pedantic if not downright silly. Taliban is now the state, the official rulers of Afghanistan, and nations will have to indulge them – whether they like it or not. Anything ‘Afghanistan’ could have a Taliban link now by virtue of them being the de-facto state, and if the Taliban sustains the power for long, they could as well become the ‘deep state’ of that nation.
Essentially, reductionist and simplistic linking can throw up inaccurate and even ridiculous conclusions like the above, and this is just the rubble of a country called Afghanistan. When it comes to the USA, one similarly needs to think a little before going all red after seeing just terms like ‘USAID’ anywhere. The US deep state is, quite literally, ‘deep’ everywhere and anyone who indulged with the US in some capacity can have some footprints.
And honestly, USAID has become synonymous with the US deep state only because Musk and Trump are talking about it. Let’s be clear that Musk and Trump aren’t dismantling the US deep state per se, they are just pissed off with some of the facets around it like USAID being the funding funnel for Democrats and its spending in areas Trump finds ‘useless’. They are basically going after the Democrat ecosystem and saving some dollars, rather than dismantling the deep state as such. The US deep state will remain, but its character will change a little, depending on how far Trump and Musk go. It will become less Woke and more Christian maybe. India doesn’t gain much as such if that’s what it is.
But it gives us the opportunity to understand the deep state (on a global level, just like ‘ecosystem’ has been understood to some extent in domestic politics) and that’s what we should mostly be bothered about. Obviously, it also leads to ridiculous assertions like everything being linked to the deep state just because ‘USAID’ is found after pressing Ctrl+F.
In fact, one has to realise that USAID scandal is not an issue in vacuum. USAID was created as an agency of the US government to achieve foreign policy objectives and its funding comes from the US State Department. It is the Congress with authorises USAID programs in foreign assistance. And therefore, when Mike Benz says that USAID does jobs which are too dirty for the CIA, it is not a clandestine cabal he speaks of – it is about elements of the US foreign policy of the US itself. It becomes important to recall here that The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is supposed to be quasi-autonomous and non-governmental, but is funded primarily by the US Congress. Carl Gershman, who was the President of the National Endowment for Democracy till 2021 is on record accepting that the recipients of NED grants are vetted and approved by the CIA.
The problem is, therefore, deeper than merely looking for USAID involvement. The problem is of US foreign policy and the clandestine manner in which several organisations work to achieve it. The USAID or the NED is, therefore, not necessarily the entirety of the “deep state”. They are the “state” which also funds “deep state” actors like George Soros, for example, who then work in a clandestine manner often to the detriment of sovereign nations. Since USAID, NED, CIA and several other US arms are connected to the government, there would be a large part of their functioning which would be legitimate to gain credibility, and others, which would be shady – like funding clandestine operatives, regime change operations, funding dubious NGOs working against the interest of independent nations etc.
USAID isn’t Taliban and they would do many things to earn legitimacy too; even the Taliban talks about women’s rights and press freedom these days. Essentially, the mere presence of USAID can’t be enough to conclude anything. Where the money went and for what the money went is most important, and one will have to go beyond mere ‘expense heads’. Spending on ‘gender equity’ could entail giving funds to build girls-only schools or to promote ‘more than two genders’ politics – one will have to figure that out and go beyond the surface.
The tentacles of the US deep state indeed are very strong in India and it doesn’t start and end with USAID. More than political (electoral), the battlefields are in the cultural and narrative domain. Actually, politics and the economy are tools or weapons to be used on that battlefield. A desired political or economic order can be sustained only when one can manipulate the thought process of people. And it’s easiest to manipulate when people are confused about their identity, history, esteem, purpose, etc. That’s what one needs to look out for – was the money being used to attack or chip away at any of these?
The first step towards fighting the deep state is to know what you have to defend. Is to know what you are. Not everyone is doing that.
