\n<\/p>\n
China, Russia and India have dispatched emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Myanmar. So have Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
The United States, the richest country in the world and once its most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing.<\/p>\n
Even as President Trump was dismantling<\/a> the U.S. Agency for International Development, he said that American help was on its way to Myanmar, where a 7.7-magnitude earthquake<\/a> ripped through the country\u2019s heavily populated center on Friday. More than 1,700 people were killed, according to Myanmar\u2019s military government, with the death toll expected to climb steeply as more bodies are uncovered in the rubble and rescue teams reach remote villages.<\/p>\n But a three-person U.S.A.I.D. assessment team is not expected to arrive until Wednesday, people with knowledge of the deployment efforts said. The overall American response has been slower than under normal circumstances, people who have worked on earlier disaster relief efforts as well as on aid to Myanmar said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Chinese search-and-rescue teams, complete with dogs trained to sniff out trapped people, are already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar\u2019s second-largest city and one of the places most deeply affected by the quake. China has pledged $14 million<\/a> for Myanmar quake relief, sending 126 rescue workers and six dogs, along with medical kits, drones and earthquake detectors.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing charitable and being seen as charitable serves American foreign policy,\u201d said Michael Schiffer, the assistant administrator of the U.S.A.I.D. bureau for Asia from 2022 until earlier this year. \u201cIf we don\u2019t show up and China shows up, that sends a pretty strong message.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced on its website that the United States would provide up to $2 million in aid, dispersed through humanitarian groups based in Myanmar. But many of the systems needed to funnel American aid to Myanmar have been shattered.<\/p>\n On Friday, as some employees in Washington in U.S.A.I.D.\u2019s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance were preparing a response to the earthquake, they received agencywide layoff emails<\/a>. Career diplomats working for U.S.A.I.D. and other employees had been bracing for layoffs for weeks; Trump political appointees in Washington had already fired most of the contractors working for the agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The employees who received layoff notices were told they should go home that afternoon. Some had been coordinating with aid missions in Bangkok and Manila, which handle disaster response in Asia.<\/p>\n Two of the employees in Washington had expected to move this winter to Yangon, in Myanmar, and to Bangkok to work as humanitarian assistance advisers out of the U.S. missions there. But those positions were cut. Had they not been, the two employees would have been on the ground to organize urgent responses to the earthquake.<\/p>\n