It's a tragedy, but why were US taxpayers paying 40% of the total world aid in the first place?

The Myanmar quake is the first major disaster to suffer the brunt of Donald Trump's devastating cuts

The impact in the aftermath of this earthquake is likely to be severe. Trump's decision to shut down the US Agency for International Development was already reported to have decimated US aid operations in Myanmar. Its global impact is hard to overstate. American aid had provided 40% of developmental aid worldwide.

Let them look to their neighbors for help; China, for instance, is already in the country, and has been for years, pouring billions into Myanmar’s military to protect its mega-billions in investments. They can redirect some of that to helping save lives, rather than destroy them. And Europe? Where’s Europe?

March 4, 2025: China Steps Up Military Aid to Myanmar’s Junta

China views the military government Myanmar as the only force that can hold the country together and protect China’s economic interests there. Even as the junta loses ground, China has continued to provide military assistance, ranging from jets to unmanned systems. In this issue brief, Zachary Abuza and Nyein Nyein Thant Aung analyze China’s aid to the Myanmar military and how it has impacted the battlefield, especially the rapid increase in drone warfare over the past year by both the junta and the opposition.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi recently pledged $3 billion in assistance to the junta, to include earmarked funds for a census and “elections” as an off-ramp for the junta. The assistance will ideally give the military a seat at the table in any post-coup government and a return to what constitutes the antebellum constitution. ….

Chinese aid to the military government is not new. Until the democratic transition in 2015, China was the primary backer of the junta in military, economic, and diplomatic terms. The establishment of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor in 2018 as part of the Belt and Road Initiative solidified China’s economic dominance in the country. China has sold Myanmar’s military a range of weaponry both before and after the coup and is one of the primary sources of aviation assets and artillery. China also has been a key supplier of information technology, including jamming and interception technology, Huawei’s Smart Cities suite of CCTVs, and other tools that have assisted societal repression and weakened the NUG’s urban guerrilla operations. Since the coup, which China did not fully endorse, Beijing continued to sell an estimated $267 million in weaponry, trailing only Russia ($406 million).

Bonus material: Like the Ukrainians and the Houthis, Myanmar’s rebel forces are using cheap drones to defeat million-dollar sophisticated weapons. I hope the DOGE Boyz are looking at our own military-industrial cabal and taking note of this.

The opposition’s adroit adaptation of drones – primarily commercial models retrofitted for military use – has reshaped battlefield dynamics and prompted the SAC to adjust its drone usage. Opposition forces leverage cost-effective, widely available drones to minimize combatant risk while maximizing strategic flexibility. These platforms, though non-military grade, enable precision strikes, surveillance and swarm tactics, with operators requiring only days of training. During Operation 1027, opposition forces dropped 25,000 munitions by drone, and the Three Brotherhood Alliance swarmed remote outposts. In response, the SAC has belatedly imported, produced, and deployed a range of smaller quadcopters and hexacopters that can drop munitions, as well as Russian and Chinese-made kamikaze drones.