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 hands of a select elite of pro-Western activists and journalists.
When Trump’s cuts came into being organizations like Promo-LEX, which depended on USAID for 75-80% of its budget, saw projects grind to a halt. Salaries were slashed, staff laid off, and programs monitoring elections and political financing stalled. The Moldovan government, alongside these NGOs, has scrambled to secure European Union funds, but it turns out the EU’s bureaucratic inertia has left a gaping void.
On the surface, this looks like a disaster, and this is how many see the whole affair—a crippling blow to civil society in a nation already grappling with corruption. Such is the Western narrative and this is how Western propaganda would have us believe. But one just needs to dig deeper, and then the picture changes. Setting aside such wishful descriptions, it turns out USAID’s largesse wasn’t necessarily the altruistic lifeline it claims to be.
Much of its funding in fact propped up a narrow cadre of Western loyalists (I call them “westernalists”) who served as mouthpieces for the agenda of Moldova’s pro-Western President Maia Sandu while sidelining dissenting voices. Reports suggest $110 million went to “court journalists” and investigators tasked with smearing Sandu’s political rivals—hardly a democratic ideal.
A Reuter’s news report (February, 2) highlights USAID’s role in funding so-called independent media across Eastern Europe, including countries like Moldova. It notes that the funding freeze under Trump has indeed caused “chaos in the media ecosystem” in over 30 countries, which illustrates USAID’s significant financial support for media outlets.
According to The Independent, a $135 million USAID pledge was made in 2024 for “energy security” and to counter “Russian disinformation.” The short story is that USAID has invested heavily in Moldova’s media and civil society—hundreds of millions since 2020—to promote “democracy”, counter “disinformation”, and support “Western integration”.
This is similar enough to the script seen in Ukraine. In his 2022 article, University of Chicago political science John Mearsheimer (an eminent member of the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy) recalled that “the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine—beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004” were critical elements in bringing upon the ongoing crisis in the region.
What Mearsheimer described as the “West’s triple package of policies—NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion” were key factors. In writing candidly that endeavors to disseminate Western values and to “promote democracy” often involve “funding pro-Western individuals and organizations,” the academic reminds us that there is nothing “neutral” about such idealist initiatives.
Moreover, the October 2024 referendum, when Moldovans narrowly voted to enshrine EU membership in their constitution (the country currently has candidate status) was largely hailed as a triumph of Western alignment—because this is largely what it was all about. USAID and NATO cheerleaders framed it as a bulwark against “Russian meddling”, especially amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Trump’s funding cuts (and his policy foreign changes) however cast a troubling shadow over this narrative. USAID, as mentioned, had been a key player in shaping Moldova’s pro-EU trajectory, bankrolling civic education and media campaigns to sway public opinion. Without this machinery, the referendum’s momentum feels fragile—it seems less a grassroots victory than a somewhat manufactured outcome now teetering on shaky ground.
Critics of USAID have long argued its role was less about empowering Eastern Europeans and more about pulling them into NATO’s orbit—to counter Russia militarily and “encircle” it rather than a tool to foster genuine European integration. NATO’s fingerprints are subtle but unmistakable: energy security projects, cybersecurity training, and even the CyberCor Institute launched with U.S. backing smack of strategic positioning. Considering all that, the referendum, sold as a democratic choice, begins to increasingly look like a geopolitical chess move, with Moldova as a sort of pawn, from a US-led Western perspective.
While any prognosis of the overall situation screams chaos, there is also a window of opportunity, from a Moldovan point of view. Looking ahead, it is a mixed bag. In the near-term, NGOs face a brutal squeeze. Economically, Moldova’s reliance on foreign aid—exacerbated by USAID’s past privatization schemes like the 1998 Pămînt program—leaves it vulnerable to collapse, with abandoned fields and unemployed workers. Yet there’s a silver lining. The funding halt could break Moldova’s cycle of dependency, pushing NGOs and other actors to innovate and the government to prioritize domestic revenue over foreign largesse. The referendum’s pro-EU mandate might hold if Moldova pivots to authentic self-reliance rather than staying under NATO’s militarized shadow—otherwise Moldova’s political actors, now in a changed political landscape, might rethink the whole affair.
While so much is talked about an alleged “Russian threat”, NATO remains the elephant in the room. Of course any regional great power will attempt to exploit a vacuum, but the truth is that a more independent Moldova is better positioned than one tethered to USAID’s puppet strings.
Uriel Araujo, PhD, is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.