Red Cross workers prepare to bury Vanisa Anifa, a 6-month-old orphaned girl who died of Ebola, at the Bigo Cemetery, in Bunia, Congo, Friday, June 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa) The Trump administration’s scramble to respond to the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa opened another round of scrutiny of the rapid dismantling of a wide swath of U.S. foreign assistance institutions, spearheaded by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, and overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. As The Hill and other news outlets have reported, the United States now faces greater risk without a coordinated international health response infrastructure that existed for just this kind of emergency.
But the complexities of the Ebola outbreak call to mind a new University of Chicago study, which noted the sharp increase in conflict in African countries that relied heavily on U.S. assistance. Specifically, the study found “an increase [in all conflict-related events] of approximately 12.3 percent, an increase in the number of battles of around 7.3 percent, and an increase in protests and riots of around 6.8 percent.” These dry statistics mask the tragic realities of communities like those in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where public health emergency responders from around the world have struggled to contain what may be history’s worst Ebola outbreak.
Their effort is made much more challenging after decades of armed conflict that have left local populations traumatized and suspicious of outsiders. Years of war have also gutted local health facilities and weakened civil society groups that typically serve as the first line of a global early warning system for the outbreak of conflicts and the diseases that typically fester alongside them.
These dangers highlight the importance of America’s modest but critical investments in conflict mitigation, violence prevention and peacebuilding, a responsibility USAID shared with other casualties of the Department of Government Efficiency, including the U.S. Institute for Peace and State Department’s Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations. This high-impact but less well-known aspect of U.S. foreign assistance, which worked hand-in-glove with disease prevention and humanitarian response, helped to save lives, alleviate suffering, and address threats overseas before they might threaten Americans at home.
As former directors of USAID’s conflict management office created in the wake of 9/11, it was our job to build out the government’s capability to identify, assess and deploy development aid to grow and protect local peacebuilders and their allies, as well as ensure that our embassies and USAID missions abroad could operate as effectively as possible in conflict zones. At their best, these efforts helped deter local disputes from seriously escalating into violent conflict, destruction and instability, which could ultimately harm Americans or draw the U.S. into endless wars.
At a minimum, our work ensured that U.S. taxpayer dollars were spent wisely, following lessons learned in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, the Balkans, Vietnam, and Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, to avoid inadvertently stoking local conflicts. Along the way, we worked with our team and others across the government to train a generation of peacebuilders to recognize conflict risk and design effective programs in response.
Sadly, as Congress turns to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion request for military spending in fiscal 2027, U.S. investments in peacebuilding and conflict management, which rarely exceeded a few billion dollars in most annual appropriations in the 21st century, are virtually non-existent.
The State Department’s regional bureaus lead our diplomatic approach but no longer benefit from targeted support to local groups, like those across Sub-Saharan Africa, who can help detect and respond to conflict, doing the slow, patient, thankless work of building trust and healing grievances before they escalate into crisis.
Addressing these challenges is well beyond the State Department’s current, limited capacity to respond to international health and humanitarian needs. Even the strongest and most lethal military in the world is incapable of doing it — which is why our peacebuilding work received consistent, enthusiastic support from warfighters and military planners alike, along with Congress.
International health threats, instability and war are not going away. Congress has a key role to play in shaping a renewed U.S. commitment to development and humanitarian response that has conflict prevention and peacebuilding at its core. Ironically, then-Sen. Rubio was once fully committed to this mission before overseeing its undoing. It is not too late to rethink a decision that has left us less strong, less safe and less able to lead in a complex world.
Elisabeth Kvitashvili, Neil Levine, Ryan McCannell and Don Chisholm each served as director of USAID’s conflict office between 2002-2024.
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