- Hi everyone.

Steve Abubato.

We kick off the program with an in-depth interview with a scholar who understands international affairs better than most.

He's Professor Joseph Huddleston, who's Associate Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, one of our higher ed partners.

Professor, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- Let's do this, 'cause there's so many areas I wanna talk about, but one is this.

Tell folks about the exact fellowship that you had in Washington DC with the United States Senator Cory Booker's office, please.

- Sure, yeah.

I got a fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations.

They sponsor scholars to spend a year in government.

So once they awarded me that fellowship, I reached out to Senator Booker's office and, after a few discussions, decided to join their team, their foreign policy team for the year.

- Number one area I wanna talk about: USAID.

What is USAID?

What were the cuts to it and why does it matter?

- USAID stands for US Agency for International Development.

It was introduced, I think, under the Kennedy administration, basically to help development, health, medicine, those kinds of programs around the world, and ultimately to increase what we call soft power of the American government, meaning boost our reputation, do good in the world, and therefore get a diplomatic benefit from that.

Before the Trump administration, the budget was about $32 billion for the 2024 year.

The Trump administration cut that, I believe, by as much as 90%.

Not only that, they moved the entire organization into the State Department.

- Didn't they take the letters off the building and then just say, now you're not gonna have your own space.

They're now housed where?

Department of State?

- Yeah, they moved them into the State- - So hold on one second.

Sorry to interrupt, professor.

This was Elon Musk, DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.

Okay, Elon Musk not there anymore.

I don't think he has his chainsaw anymore.

With that being said, they do away with it, but then they put it in the Department of State and the Trump administration is saying, What are you talking about?

We're more efficient.

We saved money, we cut it back because America should be first.

You say what, professor?

- They didn't really save much money because a lot of the people they fired, they fired illegally.

And you know, these people were still being paid even though they were being allowed to do their work.

So that's part one.

The US government was also on the hook for a lot of contracts with what we call implementing partners.

These are nonprofits like Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, World Vision.

They do a lot of the work abroad of providing these services, and they have contracts with the US government.

So a lot of the cuts to those contracts were also, you know, not, for one, they were not backed up by Congress, 'cause Congress, you know, allotted this money to be spent on international development.

And at the end of the day, it just didn't really wind up saving a lot of money at all.

It really just devastated the lives of people in poor countries.

- Be more specific, the human cost to you, professor.

- Really hard to estimate that accurately, but here's what I'll say.

Most scholars and sort of estimates of this put at least hundreds of thousands, at least 100,000.

There's a scholar at- - Wait, a hundred thousand, what?

- I'm sorry, a hundred thousand lives lost.

- How?

- In the, because of the canceling of medication, the interruption of refugee aid programs, a really big one.

The withdrawal of efforts to eradicate HIV and AIDS, especially on the African continent.

All kinds of medical programs were just totally devastated by this.

So you have women and families all across the developing world who suddenly were without medication for treating both HIV and other diseases like cholera and hepatitis and like suddenly they run into a dead end on their medication and they're not able to continue that.

So there's just this kind of slow unraveling of health programs that's still going on in places like Sub-Saharan Africa.

- Professor, there are some watching right now who say, Steve, you are a New Jersey based production operation.

You're supposed to be talking about New Jersey, domestic issues.

There are many who say, making America great first or making America great is America first.

There are many who now question why are we even talking about this and how does it relate to anyone in New Jersey or the United States of America?

You say what, professor?

- Well, look, the Trump administration gave more money to Argentina than the entire budget of USAID for the 2024- - What was the money going to Argentina for?

- The Trump administration gave $40 billion as a basic fiscal bailout for the Argentine government.

And my understanding it was basically a political gesture.

And that was more money than this money that was going to people and organizations that are dedicated to helping people and really sort of boosting the image of the United States across the world, which has huge benefits on its own.

- How?

How does it boost... How does it, how did USAID and the work they were doing, how did that boost, is your words, America's image around the world, professor?

- Well, for one, you just get this, you this reputation building effect of communities all across Africa who get just, for example, a bag of food that says given to you by the United States government.

That's millions and millions of people for many years who've had sick, desperate situations where the US government and the American flag is showing up to help them out of a really difficult situation.

So that's just as a baseline, a really good place to start managing diplomatic exchange.

You know, the Trump administration is all about building trade relations.

Soft power is really important for having those negotiations go well.

So that's one part.

Then there's actually a more concrete part, which is security issues.

Every American should care about terrorism and counter-terrorism.

And if you have communities that suddenly find themselves in these devastating situations, that tends to be a recipe for security problems as well.

- How?

- Because communities that have high unemployment, high medical problems, no legitimacy in their government, they tend to go to extremist measures.

So extremist groups like you might have heard of Al-Shabab, you might have heard of Boko Haram, they have a really easy time or a relatively easier time recruiting from communities that have no other options.

- Okay, and by the way, Boka, say it again?

Haram?

- Boko Haram, yeah.

- Is in Nigeria.

Correct?

- Northern Nigeria and in, yeah, sort of neighboring countries.

- Okay, let me, let's do this.

And I am very, I'm incredibly provincial in so many ways.

And I know I'm not alone.

I'm very New Jersey centric and US-centric.

But again, I have work to understand how things that go on around the world are important to us, and as human beings.

And by the way, obviously, you're a Catholic institution, you're a Christian institution.

What goes on around the world matters, not just for those of us who are Catholic or Christian, but for anyone who cares about other human beings.

But I do struggle with this one.

The Sudan.

- Yeah.

- What is going on in Sudan?

Is it genocide and why should we all care, professor?

- It's definitely genocide.

The State Department sort of labeled it that at the end of the Biden administration, the Trump administration has even kept that label.

There's financial sanctions against the, some of the parties involved because of the genocide.

It started- - What is, how is the genocide taking place?

- Yeah.

So in the southwestern part of the country, there's a area called Darfur.

Some of your viewers might remember Darfur from a genocide about 20 years ago.

- That's right.

- So it's not exactly the same conflict as then, but it's a lot of the same people, a lot of the same ethnic motivations for genocide.

- Who's driving it?

Who's driving it, professor.

- So there's a rebel group called the RSF that is, that has been fighting against the Sudanese armed forces, the Army.

Now the problem is that in Sudan there's still not a legitimately elected government.

You have the army facing off against this sort of rebel group.

And they both have international sponsors and they both have committed all kinds of crimes against humanity.

But only the RSF has been accused of genocide.

- And this is our business why, doctor?

- Well, so I would say there's one level which is, you know, do we care about a human life?

Do we think there's a sort of responsibility to intervene and put pressure on parties that enable this kind of conflict?

- What about it from a strategic, because what goes on in the Middle East, what matters, what's going on between the Israelis and Hamas, Israeli government and Hamas matters, the war there, the war with Russia and Ukraine matters.

Their strategic interest.

Is there a strategic US interest in Sudan, in the Sudan?

- Not like in those other places, except that we don't want to see a domino effect of the whole region of Northeast Africa and the horn of Africa falling apart.

And this conflict is so bad and the refugee situation being created by this conflict is so bad it really could destabilize several other governments around.

And that's not even thinking about the fact that there's mass famine, mass starvation, mass crimes against humanity.

- Okay, help us on this.

By the way, we're talking to Professor Joseph Huddleston, who's Associate Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, one of our higher ed partners.

I have heard President Trump say many times, let's just fact check, no opinion, no ideology, fact check.

I have solved many, the number changes, seven, eight wars.

What does he mean?

- Oh boy.

- He's working on the next one, and I think the next one is Russia-Ukraine.

As we speak around Christmas 2025, has he ended seven, eight wars?

- No, the only one I think maybe he really, his administration actually does deserve some credit for is negotiating an end of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And he basically did that by buying people off, and making with, you know, with the US government.

The Rwandan government was involved in that.

And he basically said, look, if we can stop the fighting here, the US is going to incentivize businesses to go invest in mining and basically exploit the natural riches of that country.

And that’s the sort of basis of the negotiation.

So that one I think maybe deserves some credit for- - What about all the, do you know the other wars he's talking about?

- I mean, he's trying to try to claim credit for Gaza.

He is trying to claim credit for India and Pakistan had a few weeks where they were exchanging fire.

So, I don't think it's fair for the US government to claim any credit or for the Trump administration to claim any credit in those.

The US is involved in negotiations on the end of most conflicts, 'cause the US is a powerful player in international politics.

But the fact of the matter is that, take India and Pakistan, they negotiated, they both recognized it wasn't in their interest to continue to fight a war with each other, and they negotiated the end to that conflict themselves.

So maybe an American was in the room, but I don't think that's enough to say that we can claim all the credit for it.

- We talk to you four months from now, will the war between Ukraine and Russia be over?

- I don't think so.

- You don't?

- No.

- Professor Joseph Huddleston, who's Associate Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.

Professor, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you very much, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, We'll be right back.

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