By Rod Benson
This article responds to Andrew Gawthorpe’s fine analysis of the 2026 US midterm elections. It considers the risks of military escalation and the effects of declining US foreign aid. It focuses on development assistance, the Australian context, and the Christian obligation of solidarity with the poor in the face of cuts to aid budgets.
Aftermath of the midterm elections
Donald Trump’s defeat in the November 2026 midterms may herald the remaking of American development assistance to the rest of the world. The administration dramatically reduced USAID’s role, and the State Department assumed administration of surviving awards from July 2025. A September 2026 US Government Accountability Office report found that approximately 6,780 of 7,510 USAID awards had been terminated between January 2025 and March 2026. Their cumulative obligations amounted to US$79.1 billion; that is the value recorded over the awards’ lives, not annual savings or money immediately returned to the Treasury.
The damage this has caused cannot be measured by a single budget line. Aid programmes often depend on specialised staff, local trust and continuity across many years. Abrupt cancellations may interrupt health services, food assistance, education and disaster response, while scattering expertise that is difficult to rebuild. Not every existing programme was effective, and foreign assistance requires rigorous scrutiny. Yet reform is different from indiscriminate disruption: the relevant test is whether policy changes improve outcomes for vulnerable communities and create more accountable partnerships, rather than merely reduce the number of contracts. The most revealing measure will be the condition of people and institutions left behind after those contracts end.
Humanitarian aid is also sound statecraft
Foreign assistance serves overlapping moral and strategic purposes. Vaccination, disease surveillance and stronger health systems protect people locally while reducing cross-border risks. Education and economic opportunity can support stability; emergency relief can limit the human costs of displacement and conflict. Those benefits do not make every project worthwhile or remove the risk of corruption, donor dependence and distorted priorities. They do show why governments should judge assistance by effectiveness, transparency and locally determined need, rather than assume that humanitarian expenditure is simply a dispensable concession to foreigners.
The United States is a morally sick society. The incoming Democratic majority Congress may investigate cancellations, scrutinise withheld appropriations, and seek to restore global health and relief funding. But presidential vetoes and executive control over administration will continue to limit the benefits gained by legislative reform. Even if budgets recover, skilled personnel and dependable relationships cannot be recreated overnight. Effective rebuilding should strengthen local organisations, publish clear evidence of results and provide predictable commitments. The goal should not be to reassemble every feature of the former aid system, but to recover its essential capacities while correcting its weaknesses.
Australia’s opportunity
Australia’s 2026–27 official development assistance budget is A$5.209 billion. This is A$112 million above the previous year’s estimate. More than three-quarters is directed towards the Indo-Pacific, where climate vulnerability, health needs and economic disruption make reliable partnerships particularly valuable. Australia cannot replace American assistance worldwide, but it can protect crucial regional programmes, coordinate with other donors and listen closely to Pacific and Asian governments about their priorities. DFAT itself describes a global combination of aid cuts, trade disruption and energy insecurity linked to conflict in the Middle East.
Development assistance is a long-term element of Australian statecraft. Partnerships earn legitimacy when the respective communities help define their objectives and hold donors accountable. Assistance that improves water, schools, public health or disaster resilience has value independent of whether it yields an immediate diplomatic return. The same principle calls for humility: wealthy countries should recognise how historical inequalities, environmental pressures and their own economic choices shape the needs to which aid responds.
The Uniting Church’s calling
Christian ethics adds a deeper challenge to the language of national advantage. Deuteronomy 10:18–19 places care for the stranger within the character and command of God; Isaiah 58 connects authentic worship with relief of oppression; and Jesus identifies himself with the hungry and vulnerable (Mt 25:31–46). These texts do not set a foreign-aid percentage. They do reject the proposition that the suffering of strangers is morally irrelevant when they lack political power or economic leverage.
For the Uniting Church in Australia, this concern arises from its founding theology. Paragraph 2 of the Basis of Union calls for Christian unity transcending cultural, economic, national and racial boundaries and commits the Church to relationships in Asia and the Pacific. Paragraph 3 describes the Church as a fellowship of reconciliation serving God’s renewal of creation. In March 2026, the Church’s President, Rev Charissa Suli, urged political leaders to support an immediate Middle East ceasefire. Advocacy for humanitarian protection, diplomatic restraint and dependable development partnerships belongs within that same vocation of reconciliation.
Conclusion
Christian solidarity demands emergency relief and reform of the policies that leave communities exposed to hunger, disease and displacement. The US Congress should restore funding for essential health and humanitarian programmes, require public impact assessments before major aid cancellations, and give local organisations a greater say in how assistance is designed and delivered.
At the same time, Australia should sustain the regional services most at risk while working with Pacific and Asian partners to press the White House and Congress for specific funding commitments and a public timetable for restoring interrupted programmes. The Uniting Church can bring its regional partnerships into that advocacy, urging Australian federal ministers and parliamentarians to put these demands on the agenda in Washington and report publicly on the response.
A credible commitment to peace requires governments to answer for the lives put at risk when they withdraw assistance.
Rev Dr Rod Benson lives in Sydney and writes about a range of topics from books and local history to food, faith, philosophy, ethics, research skills, and everyday life. Away from the keyboard, he enjoys cooking for friends, walking in the Australian bush, exploring a beach, discovering new restaurants, and reading philosophy, fiction and poetry. He is married to Emma and is minister of North Rocks Community Church, a Uniting Church congregation.
A companion article, “A humiliated president and the danger of war: Trump, Iran and the limits of American power,” considers the possibility of escalation in Iran and the constraints of American democracy.
Image source: The Conversation
