Wednesday Morning Rant

Have you heard of the nation of Timor-Leste, or East Timor? I had heard of Timor - the island - but not the tiny nation-state of Timor-Leste. This is probably because it is a fairly new country. After the Portuguese decamped in the 1970s, Indonesia claimed ownership. East Timor disagreed. Indonesia won and assumed control, but the bloody conflict continued for the next thirty years. Eventually, Indonesia went home and the nation of Timor-Leste was formally recognized in 2002.

According to the CIA World Factbook, it has a population of around 1.5 million people and a GDP of around $6 billion, falling rapidly. It produces some oil and gas and has some apparently rapidly-collapsing native industries. Around half the population is estimated to below the poverty line. Unemployment is low. About 300,000 people are between the ages of 15 and 24. It is largely Catholic and literacy is around 70%.

So what about Timor-Leste? Why does it matter? Why is the background relevant? Because Timor-Leste is the subject of some recent DOGE disclosures. Three payments totaling $43,200, for related programs. It was paid out by the US State Department to the American Councils For International Education (out of a total of $159,900 issued to that organization - on March 7). Specifically, that was issued for the purpose of providing three students from Timor-Leste with scholarships to attend an American university.

This is the "United States Timor-Leste Scholarship Program" - or USTL. This is one of the lesser expenditures of the US government. It's basically a rounding error. It is nothing compared to the ~$1.75 million the State Department handed to Howard University that same day for the purpose of using it for State Department recruiting ("to recruit diverse talent for the USG foreign service" and "to increase the representation of diverse groups in the foreign service"). But I digress. This isn't about using HBCUs as a catastrophically expensive farm system for bureaucrats.

The scholarships for Timor-Leste are small potatoes, but I am left with a question: "why?" What is the US national interest here? The program's own website makes no mention of it. They discuss what they do, what the obligations are for participants, etc., - but not where the US national interest is represented. The parent organization - The American Councils for International Education - at least makes an attempt:

American Councils strengthens international ties and connections between countries and cultures through excellence in academic, professional and cultural exchange, language acquisition, educational development, and research.
...
Through international training, cultural exchange, immersion learning, and public diplomacy, we broaden individual perspectives and foster personal and intellectual growth. On a grand scale, these efforts strengthen international and national security, build prosperity, and promote peace.

This is a tiny amount of money to a tiny country that most people have likely never heard of, to provide scholarships to a tiny number of students. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter and there are far, far bigger things to fix before the question of whether a scholarship program for three students from Timor-Leste would reasonably come to the fore. But it is illustrative as to the scope of US government spending. It's not just billions to USAID to work against US interests, it's also thousands to countless organizations like this one, that do nothing for US interests. It's just charity, except that charity is honest and this isn't. Nobody gave willingly.

I don't care about Timor-Leste, and I doubt I am alone. Cheap as this program is, what purpose is it serving? How many Americans would approve of spending $40k on scholarships for students of Timor-Leste? Half? A quarter? My bet would be that a plurality approve and a majority don't disapprove, but it all adds up and it's nothing anyone really cares about. How much money is exiting through nickles and dimes to someone's pet program at some NGO? How many of those nickles and dimes are justified? How many advance the US national interest in any quantifiable or objective way?

Thanks in part to DOGE-induced transparency, we're starting to find out - and those nickles and dimes have a way of adding up.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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