- America was the anchor of the global system, and it's no longer the anchor of the global system.

And when America is absent, absent on aid, absent on diplomacy, absent on economics, the vacuum gets filled.

(lively music) - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today on the show, we are talking about a problem that's easy to ignore until it isn't, the slow collapse of the global aid system.

(lively music) - [Reporter] The mobile canteens presented by Her Majesty The Queen, and by friends in America raced to the scene of devastation to relieve the distress of those who have lost their home.

- For decades, international aid has acted like the world's emergency room.

When war breaks out, disease spreads, famine strikes, it's what keeps people alive long enough for the politics to catch up.

But right now, that emergency room is running out of doctors, medicine, and money.

The biggest shock to the system came last year when the Trump administration shut down USAID, cutting around $10 billion in annual American foreign assistance.

Other major donors, including the UK and Germany, have also pulled back between 2022 and 2025.

Global humanitarian funding fell by more than a third.

The total for 2026 on track to be even lower.

In reality, even before USAID was shuttered, the system was strained.

There has never been enough aid to help the hundreds of millions of people who desperately need it every year, but now, we are seeing the effects of a drastic drop during some major crises.

(energetic music) In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, funding cuts have forced health clinics to close sanitation programs to scale back as weakened efforts to contain a deadly Ebola virus outbreak.

In the Middle East, the war in Iran has sent the cost of food, fuel, and fertilizer skyrocketing.

And so, in places like Sudan and Somalia, where survival was already a daily struggle, what little aid was available has all but disappeared.

Here's the UN's Humanitarian Chief raising the alarm back in March.

- War doesn't stay neatly within borders or on desktop military plans.

It tears through markets, supply chains, food prices.

And when that happens, it's the most vulnerable, vulnerable people who were hit first and hardest.

- Foreign aid is often dismissed in the United States as an act of charity.

It certainly does save lives, but it's also one of the cheapest investments that governments can make in stability and national security.

When fragile states fail, the consequences don't stop at the border.

Refugees move, diseases spread, terrorism flourishes, conflict surge.

The world still needs an emergency room.

The question is whether anyone is willing to keep the lights on.

Here to discuss the long shadow cast by America's retreat from global aid, former British Foreign Secretary and current President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband.

Don't worry, I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- Welcome back to Puppet News Network's "Leaders R Readers" series, where we find out what world leaders are pretending to read.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights off.

- [Presenter] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint.

(lively music) And scale their supply chains... (lively music) With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

(gentle music) - [Presenter] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

- [Announcer] Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our community.

(energetic music) And... (energetic music) (scene change whooshing) - David Miliband, great to have you back.

- Yeah, thanks for having me.

- You just got back from Ukraine.

So I guess I really should start with that and not Kyiv.

You were actually Odesa, you were Kherson, you were a lot of places, not far from the fighting.

What are the things that surprised you?

- Well, I went to Southern Ukraine, Southeastern Ukraine, precisely to see whether the macro narrative that the war's taken a turn, that Russia's on the back foot, that Ukrainian tactics are working.

I went precisely to see, well, what's it like down in the guts of the country?

And as you say, I went along the south from Odesa to Mykolaiv, big city now, 450,000 people.

Biggest problem, rents are going up very fast.

Interesting.

But also into Kherson Oblast, quite close to the front line.

- Rents, because a whole bunch of people from occupied Southeast Ukraine have- - Yes, have moved to Mykolaiv.

And so the IDPs, the internally displaced people, when we're providing services to them, the biggest question they've got is, "How am I going to pay my rent?"

- Gotta send Mamdani in and freeze it for a couple years- - (laughs) Well- - Is one way.

- But furtherover, the brutality of the war, the scars that are visible and the scars that are invisible, but very close to the surface, are very clear.

We're there extending services to places where the State isn't reaching.

We're doing mobile health.

We're doing psychological and mental health support.

We're helping kids who, many of these kids, they've not been in education in person for six years.

They had COVID 2020.

They're now being educated online.

And so, what comes through, it's not a surprise in that sense, but never forget that while the macro position looks more favorable to Ukraine, or at least less favorable to Russia, if you're anywhere near the front line, you have got drones overhead perpetually.

You're unlikely to get a fair night's sleep.

And you're coping with the division from your loved ones, because every plane... Well, I have in my mind a village of 300 people, it was 1,000 people.

A village of 1,000 people was 3,000.

A lot of people are in Europe.

A lot of the men are serving.

- Serving.

- And so, what I think is an important reminder is that yes, there's a military battle.

Yes, there is an economic battle, which obviously Europe is now fully behind economically the Ukrainians, but there's a social infrastructure that needs to be sustained.

- If you had to choose between two, in the way that the Ukrainians that you met with feel, between "We must continue to fight at all costs," and "We must find a way to end this war at all costs," it would lean towards which of those and why?

- The first.

I mean, if you talk to anyone who suffered Russian occupation and everything from the bombardment and the brutality to a woman at a cultural center there, in every town and village, there's a community center in a way that's left over the Soviet Union, a cultural center.

She took me up to see Ukrainian costumes.

And she said, "The soldiers, they mocked us for these costumes.

They paraded around mocking us."

So there's a deep sense of the brutality of war, but there's also no surrender.

- And you know, you and I in the States do see a change in narrative, do see this all the Ukrainians are standing up, they've got the cards.

Is that feeling of "We're actually doing better," does that mean anything?

- Mm, not yet.

Not if you've got a drone overhead.

- Yeah.

- Not if you're, you know, you've not seen your daughter and your grandson because they're refugees in Europe.

Not because, it's really a long, long haul.

And interestingly, the services of ours that are in greatest demand are mental health services.

Just people said very openly, "It's a taboo before the war.

We need it now."

- I mean, in this regard, the work that you do in Ukraine is actually very analogous to the work that you do in Sudan or the work you do in Syria, all of these places.

The human consequences of this war for the people that just have had their lives completely ripped up.

Not the ones that are killed, not the ones that are fighting.

Everyone else.

- That's a really good point.

I mean, in Sudan, we're keeping people alive.

In Tawila, they've fled from Al Fashir in Darfur, water and sanitation, malnutrition treatment, some primary healthcare.

It's life-saving.

In the Ukraine context, it's life-changing because you're giving people support when they'd otherwise not be getting it, including from mobile health teams.

But there are parallels there.

The kids who have lost their parents and are being fostered and are being supported, doesn't... If you're in Sudan or if you're in Ukraine, you've lost your parents.

And so, I think that our point is always the Ukraine case is an unusual one because most wars are within states, not between states these days.

But the human consequences are very real.

And if you can't sustain the people, you can't sustain the nation.

- Now, the United States is going through a lot of debate about what role America should play in the world.

Certainly a lot of opposition to these so-called forever wars, understandably.

But also a debate over foreign aid, over American support.

This recent Rockefeller poll that shows that Americans are actually more supportive than not of foreign aid.

What, tell me what you think the state of that debate is today and why.

- Well, the state of the debate is confused, but the American heart is still beating strong.

If you ask them, "Is it part of America's job to help the most desperate people in the world survive?"

- They say yes.

- They say yes.

And they say yes whether they're Republican or Democrat.

Tragically, it's confused with... Because they think more than half of the population that 20% of the federal budget goes on foreign aid rather than the truth is, which is less than 1%.

- Well, it's 1%, yeah.

- And so, that's the state of confusion.

There's also confusion about where aid goes.

But if I say to people, "Our vaccination program in six war-torn East African countries, plus Yemen and Chad, has delivered 36 million vaccines for in the last few months, less than a dollar a shot, last year, a dollar a shot.

You can win support for that.

And I think the whole aid debate has been confused both deliberately and accidentally.

Part of our job at International Rescue Committee is to say, "Don't believe the excuse that says, "Well, we don't know what to do."

If people are malnourished, if they're abused, if they're desperate for education that's been interrupted, if they need healthcare, we've shown how to do it in a cost-effective way.

And I think that's the critical task to give people confidence that their money will be well used.

- How much has in reality been clawed back?

I mean, DOGE at the beginning of the Trump administration, which, you know, was shut down after spectacular failure some six months later.

But a lot of the announcements of closures then got reduced.

In actuality, looking a year and a half in, what is the real state of American foreign aid?

- The real state of American foreign aid is massively reduced.

I mean, America was the anchor of the global system, and it's no longer the anchor of the global system.

There's some reactive commitments being made.

We've got Ebola bouncing back in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

- And the US is providing support there.

- It is, but it's doing it having previously cut the water and sanitation latrines, healthcare support that was there with other international actors to try to contain disease.

So we're paying the price in 2026 of the cuts in 2025.

Not just those immediately affected.

I mean, in my own organization, two million clients lost access to services in 2025.

As a result, you know, Afghan kids not getting educated.

Sudanese refugees in South Sudan not getting healthcare.

Farmers in Niger are not getting support for their agricultural livelihoods.

They lost it.

- Specifically because of American cuts.

- Yeah, those were American cuts, other countries.

Other countries have cut as well.

But there's now some recognition, a dawning recognition that if you take away all but the most, quote-unquote, "Lifesaving aid," you take massive risks.

If you don't have water and sanitation, if you don't have healthcare, you're risking infection, and infection will then maraud across not just Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but into Uganda as well.

There's even a case of a doctor in France now.

So I think the State of American aid, the Government says, the US Government says, "83% of grants and contracts have been cut."

That's a measure of the number of contracts.

In terms of the actual volume of aid, we'll wait to see how much of that which has been mandated by Congress is actually spent.

But the American anchor is no longer there, whether it be on the sharpest of the sharp end, whether it be on the administration of global goods, like there was, a famine early warning system was funded by America.

And the gaps can't all be plugged by other players, some of whom are cutting their budgets as well.

Interestingly, EU not cutting its budget, and is actually looking to the period from now to 2035 to keep its budget up.

- Now, a lot of the debate in the United States on policy has said, "Well, we need to recast aid so that is in response to trade.

It's in response to investment.

It is connected to sort of real direct and tangible benefits the Americans are getting."

I've also seen backlash against that from the Zambia Government, from South Africa, from others.

Is this a real change or is this mostly hand-waving to assuage those that have been cut?

- Well, I think it's apples and pears, really.

The apples are, trade is good.

Trade should be fair.

Trade needs to be negotiated.

Trade should be of mutual benefit.

Aid is there to help those who are on the receiving end.

The clients of the aid system are not another government.

They are the people who receive healthcare education that they wouldn't otherwise get.

All of the record is, if you confuse those two, you don't get a healthy situation.

And I would say trade and aid, not trade, not aid.

For the people who need aid in Sudan today or in Gaza today, or even in Ukraine today, certainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo today, telling them to trade instead of getting aid is not going to help them.

- Now, when you see the amounts that the Americans have been providing on the ground to countries that are doing vastly better than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago.

At some point, one would say, "You've graduated beyond needing aid."

And yet, we all know that once you start a US Government Program, any government program, it can be difficult to remove it from legacy.

Same thing's true with military systems.

Have you seen a lot of that?

- Yes.

I mean, that's a good point.

One way of thinking about it, the fragile and conflict-affected states that I talk about, the Sudans of this world, 60- - They have not graduated, that's what you're getting at.

- No, no, I'm not going to say that.

60% of the world's extreme poor live in those fragile and conflict states.

They only get about 25% of the total aid budget.

So to your point, the aid is spread too thin.

The legacy systems aren't updated.

The sunsets and the timelines need to be updated.

Of course, there are countries that are middle-income, Nigeria, Ethiopia, that have parts of those countries that are in desperate need.

But I think it's a good point, and one that we make often, that we've got to focus much more of the aid budget on the most extreme poor.

That's the purpose of the aid budget after all.

And for countries that are stable, especially upper middle-income countries, they desperately need debt restructuring and debt relief.

They need a healthy trade system.

They need macroeconomic imbalances to be addressed, but there's a potential win-win there.

But don't penalize the people who desperately need aid in the search for that.

- Poorest countries in the world, poorest populations in the world, and also fastest-growing populations in the world, Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Chinese are the largest trade partners.

They're the largest investors.

They've got over a million citizens living on the ground in those countries.

Historically, they've done virtually nothing in terms of aid.

Is that charting to change?

- Not yet changing.

- Why not?

- They're still on the mutual benefit economic front.

They're not really big players on the aid front.

A bit of nuance on that.

They've announced some money for Gaza.

So there's politics.

They're very committed to the World Health Organization.

And America's obviously pulled out, allegedly, because the Chinese were too strong.

Well, this is going to make them stronger, obviously.

So there's an important Chinese role there.

But on the aid front, the Chinese are not moving in, but they can move in, and they're certainly present on the ground.

And when America's absent, absent on aid, absent on diplomacy, absence on economics, the vacuum gets filled.

And of course, I think it's the- - But you're saying the Chinese at this point are not actually thinking long-term on this issue.

- Well, they say, you've heard them, you go there.

We're still a developing country.

We're still got 200 million people in poverty ourselves.

And they say we're doing a lot through the economic cooperation that we've got.

Now, what's interesting, if you think about a country like South Sudan, next door to Sudan, there's a big Chinese interest in the oil.

The oil goes through Port Sudan, but they're left helpless given the wars that are going on in Sudan and in South Sudan.

- Now, middle powers are the other countries that, in principle, could be doing, do more, should be doing more, they don't want to be stuck just with the Americans.

They certainly don't want to be stuck just with the Chinese.

They don't suddenly trust them.

Do we start to see... Are we seeing more coordination from the Europeans, from other middle powers more broadly, to fill the growing vacuum?

- Well, we're seeing the beginnings of it.

It's quite significant that six months after his famous Davos speech, Mark Carney's now got a foreign policy and foreign aid review.

And he's asking precisely the question, "Who do we collaborate with?

How do we collaborate with them?

How do we deliver aid in a much more cost-effective and effective way?"

Europe.

Interesting.

The new financial perspective for the European Union 2028 to 2035.

People often say, "The European Union's a bit of an oil tanker."

Well, one of the benefits of being an oil tanker is you set your course, and then you've got long-term ability to drive efficiency.

The new European Union Budget proposes to a 200 billion global Europe fund, 25 billion for humanitarian aid over the seven years in Europe.

So we're beginning to see the effort by other middle powers to figure out, well, how are they going to make a distinctive contribution in this more chaotic world, where the tragedy of the commons is more and more evident?

Remember Joe Nye died just last year.

He talked about the Kindleberger Trap.

The lesson of the 1930s, if the rising powers don't step up when in the face of a declining power, you're going to suffer collectively.

That's the issue that people are wrestling with today.

- So we'll end with your neck of the woods.

And Happy 10th Anniversary to Brexit, by the way.

- Not a very happy anniversary.

- I know, but still, we got to celebrate as we can.

- "Celebrating" quotes, I think.

- Yes, the commemorate, the Brits.

- Celebrate in quotes, I think.

- The Brits, you continue.

It doesn't seem to matter if it's on the conservative side or the labor side, people are not happy with their prime ministers.

Why does governments keep falling?

- Well, I think there are structural reasons and then there are contingent reasons.

Brexit, you mentioned, is part of it.

- Structural reason.

Yeah.

- Well, Brexit is there as a drag anchor on the economic performance, but this isn't just about economics.

It's about a government system that's too centralized.

So people feel they don't have sufficient control.

It's about a series of events starting with austerity in the 2010s, then COVID, then the Ukraine War that feels like there's been a battering.

And there's also politicians being elected on vague platforms, and then not being able to deliver what was anticipated, hopes being vested in an unspecific way.

What we must now refer to as the previous labor government, the Starmer government that ran until the middle of July.

In a way, it never got its momentum going because it came into government still searching for some of the symbolic policies that were going to make a difference.

And then, it was confronted by choices that were all bad.

And that left it on the back foot for a lot of the two years.

- And so, do you think we hear a lot about the Brits reengaging with the Europeans, and yet over the last 10 years from the regulatory front, priorities have been very different.

Industrial policies, subsidies have been very different.

It would be very hard, it seems, to actually repatch what had once existed.

How much can be done to re-normalize UK relations with what had been their principal market?

- Well, I think quite a lot can be done.

Remember, to your point, 50% of UK exports of goods go to the rest of the European Union.

- Yeah.

- We're obviously an 80% services economy.

Now, there hasn't actually been that much divergence.

So the first point to say is there's quite a lot of room for the UK to make more benefit of the fact that it's aligned.

Secondly, although it's not diverged far, there's still a lot of bureaucracy because it's now two different systems.

That's holding back a lot of British business.

You can hear that from the continent as well.

There's a wider lens to this because Britain's detachment from Europe was so painful because it wasn't just an economic detachment.

It was a social detachment.

There's still issues about kids even doing school trips between urban countries and obviously, on the foreign and security front.

There's been an institutional detachment as well.

The reset that is now common ground across the Labor Party, that's something that's going to have to be pursued by the new government.

- What's something you think the Brits could actually start getting much more right than they have?

- Oh, there's loads of things.

I mean, the UK is a country of an amazing potential.

Think about universities, massive opportunity.

Think about the ideas that there are 800 potential unicorns in the UK waiting for growth capital.

That's enormous potential.

UK has a lot to offer in cooperation with Europe on the foreign security and defense policy.

I see that as the way to build trust that can then be used on the economic domain as well.

So I think the UK, don't count us out.

- So what I'm hearing from you is the Europeans need the British more.

The Brits need the Europeans more as well.

That's where we're actually going.

- Yes, that's a good way of putting it.

- Good stuff, Dave Miliband, great to see you, mate.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

(scene change whooshing) (bright music) And now, humanitarian relief may be in short supply, but comic relief, we've got you covered.

It's time for a Puppet Regime.

- Welcome back to Puppet News Network's "Leaders R Readers" series, where we find out what world leaders are pretending to read.

First up, Vladimir Putin, what's on your night table these days?

In my isolation, I am digging into Russian classic, Special Military Operation and Peace.

- I thought you'd be more into war crimes and punishment, - But that's a separate book club that I have with Netanyahu.

- Yikes, okay, next up, we have Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

- I am reading "Metamorphosis" by Kafka.

- Still trying to figure out how a person can become a cockroach.

- Don't say that word on social media.

- Surreal scenes in India.

Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela.

Girl, what are you reading?

- Don Marco Rubio.

(speaks in foreign language) He has given me permission to read "An American Son" by Marco Rubio.

(speaks in foreign language) - You have certainly been sonned by an American.

Xi Jinping, what are you reading?

- Just leaving through the "Suicide of the West."

- Whoa.

- Sorry.

I mean, "Tortoise and the Hare.

- Uh-huh.

- I always root for the tortoise.

Nice save, okay.

Last up, Donald Trump.

- Somebody gave me "Green Eggs and Ham."

Have you heard of it?

What a loser.

Okay.

In the end, he just totally folded.

Okay, he didn't need to eat the "Green Eggs and Ham."

What did he- - well, maybe he was stuck in a quagmire.

And maybe the midterms were coming up.

- Yeah, yeah, maybe.

(dramatic music) - That's our show this week.

Come back next week if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't.

If you've got an extra few billion lying around to fill the hole in the global aid budget, why don't you check us out?

Spread it around.

Look at gzeromedia.com.

(bell dings) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright music) - [Presenter] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint... (lively music) And scale their supply chains... (lively music) With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Presenter] And by, Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

- [Announcer] Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

(lively music) And... (lively music) (lively music)