A Dangerous Leadership Vacuum in the Global System: David Miliband

Former British foreign secretary and now humanitarian aid champion, on Trump, Ukraine and Europe.

- Ravi Velloor

For those of us who live far from Washington, the churn in view as the Trump administration sets about fulfilling what it believes to be part of its mandate — to make steep cuts to government spending and drain the bureaucratic swamp, as it were — is a distant curiosity.

Voice of America being shut down? Well, all right, but then how many of us in Singapore get our news from that portal, anyway? The Pentagon trimming its civilian workforce by 5 per cent to 8 per cent? Perhaps, its bureaucracy was indeed bloated, and needed cuts.

Same for slashing USAID. Why should — as President Donald Trump pointed out — the State Department spend taxpayer money on improving the voter turnout in India? On the face of it, the arguments for scale-backs seem convincing.

If only things were so simple. Fact is, some diversions aside, American aid meaningfully touched millions of lives worldwide. As the largest single donor of aid in the world, the US contributed 40 per cent of funds for UN humanitarian aid in 2024. It donated almost half of all global food aid and was a key contributor to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

So, any significant retrenchment on aid means havoc to the lives of millions of recipients around the world. For some, it could mean the difference between life and death.

Within Asia, the areas already affected by US aid cutbacks include some of the worst conflict spots. Think of Myanmar and Afghanistan — and farther afield from our South-east Asian home, Gaza and Syria.

One person who sees all this up close is Mr David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who now runs International Rescue Committee, the New York-based humanitarian body founded by Albert Einstein in 1933.

IRC's mission is to help survivors of conflict to recover and rebuild their lives.