America’s Missing Soft Power – Grayson Logue

When it comes to non-military interventions to support people and movements pushing against repressive regimes, the administration’s options may be even more limited. In the wake of the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the ongoing reorganization of the State Department, some of the core U.S. foreign policy tools for responding to evolving political circumstances abroad are gone or severely diminished. 

In the last year, the administration has attempted to close the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency overseeing Voice of America (VOA) and funding institutions like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RFL) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) that broadcast news and information in countries lacking independent media and where governments exert control through propaganda. Trump elevated Kari Lake, a former television news anchor and failed gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, as the acting head of USAGM, and she moved to lay off more than 80 percent of the agency’s staff last year in defiance of a federal court order. Before the cuts, USAGM-supported outlets reached hundreds of millions of people in repressive countries across the globe, including Venezuela and Iran.  

The week before the June strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer, the administration briefly recalled some Farsi-speaking VOA staff to restart a news service countering the Iranian regime’s propaganda. But despite the de facto recognition of the agency’s necessary role in getting accurate information into countries like Iran, the shuttering of offices and broadcasting capacity continued throughout the fall. 

When the broadcasting need became acutely clear earlier this month following the raid capturing Maduro and the uprising in Iran, USAGM was again caught flat-footed, scrambling to bring online some of the broadcasting that the administration had spent the previous year dismantling. Lake blocked RFE/RFL from using a USAGM transmitter in Kuwait to broadcast into Iran, but she has still tried to claim success in responding to the situations in Iran and Venezuela. 

“This is exactly why U.S. international broadcasting exists. Now is the time to fully implement and resource our capabilities— including VOA Persian, Radio Farda, and the Open Technology Fund—to ensure the regime cannot cut its people off from the truth,” said Republican Rep. Michael McCaul. 

Steve Herman, a former Voice of America White House bureau chief, described the share of USAGM’s previous broadcasting and news capacity that has been restored as “a Potemkin village.” Herman noted that much of past VOA and RFA programming is still quiet, and he argued that Lake’s stewardship has already called into question the independence of the news and information the agency is putting out. VOA’s Farsi language service reportedly censored coverage of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah of Iran, who has emerged as a potential leader in the event the Islamic Republic is overthrown, though he remains a polarizing figure among many Iranians.

The administration also cut off funding to organizations working to provide internet access, Starlink terminals, and VPNs to people in Iran. “The [U.S. government’s] decision to cut funding from VPNs and other internet circumvention tools earlier in 2025 was a mistake,” Victoria Taylor, a former deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran at the State Department, argued earlier this month. “[The government] had a number of implementing partners equipped to support this work prior to the funding cut.” 

It’s unlikely that internet tools and broadcasting alone could have made the difference in the latest round of protests, but more support could have, at the very least, helped better document and communicate the extent of the atrocities going on in the regime’s crackdown. According to some estimates, as many as 30,000 people have been killed. 

USAGM’s past work has also been important in countries like Venezuela with heavy state censorship. VOA’s Venezuelan broadcasting reached millions with independent news that served as a counterweight to the Maduro regime’s propaganda campaign. “[This broadcasting] is so important because one of the main tools of the regime’s control stems from its control over broadcasting authorities,” Carrie Filipetti, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Venezuela during the first Trump administration, told The Dispatch. She cited the brief recall of VOA staff around the time of Midnight Hammer as “a huge validation of the importance of having these systems in place long term, so you’re not missing the opportunity.”

“Those are the things that we shouldn’t have to be worried about. They should all be in place so that if there is some dramatic action that happens, they’re ready to activate,” she added.  

The U.S. has long invested in a broad portfolio of programs and support to help democratic movements in repressed countries and provide critical support in moments of crisis and transition. These efforts include not only enabling internet freedom and international broadcasting but also funding local independent media, supporting civil society and opposition parties, and even bolstering nascent transition governments. 

In times of upheaval, exerting external pressure on a country via targeted military strikes is often ineffective in catalyzing enduring political change unless there’s corresponding internal pressure and the local capacity to organize and sustain that energy. Even then, shaking off an authoritarian government or moving toward a democratic transition is always challenging. The array of U.S. programs engaged in what can be understood broadly as democracy work played a long game, not anticipating immediate success but endeavoring to lay the groundwork for if and when geopolitical or local circumstances provide an opportunity for change. 

The administration has spent the past year dismantling the lion’s share of that effort.

Programs and funding focused on democracy, governance, and human rights were particularly hard hit, with the administration eliminating more than 90 percent of such USAID programs. The State Department also gutted its own Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), closing most of its regional offices overseas. 

Pro-democracy organizations within the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), including the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), lost nearly all grants from the State Department and USAID. The institutes had long enjoyed bipartisan support—including from Sen. Marco Rubio before he joined the administration as secretary of state—and worked to support civil society organizations, independent media, election monitoring, and opposition political parties in authoritarian countries. Notably, the handful of IRI and NDI grants left intact supported programs in Venezuela and Cuba.

The NED and its local partners’ work in Venezuela helped enable the success of the opposition’s 2023 primary election and significant civic engagement in the 2024 presidential election despite the Maduro regime’s repression and effective nullification of the outcome. “This effort helped Venezuelans document and expose the massive fraud that the regime orchestrated to remain in power,” the NED detailed in an impact report published last month. The fact that a democratic opposition movement has been sustained and remained relatively united is due in no small part to the NED’s work. Still, that work was interrupted for much of last year due to the government funding freeze and the administration’s withholding of money Congress appropriated for the NED.

“Investing in freedom helps solve our most pressing national security challenges, such as Venezuela and Iran,” IRI President Daniel Twining told The Dispatch. “Countries that govern themselves decently and with the consent of their people don’t produce uncontrolled mass migration, foment terrorism, or launch wars of aggression.”

For the programs left in place or transferred to the State Department from USAID, it’s unclear how many are currently operational. Former officials have noted that while USAID was an implementation agency with decades of experience in program management, procurement, and contracting, the State Department has largely been a policy institution. 

“Foreign assistance is constantly under review to ensure it meets the needs of the receiving country and our nation’s priorities,” a State Department spokesperson told The Dispatch in response to a request for updated information on what democracy programs are currently active. 

The State Department seems to still be largely in a planning and rebuilding phase. A report released last month by State’s Office of Inspector General detailed numerous challenges the department faces in planning and managing foreign assistance grants and contracts. “The Department recognizes the complexities associated with the ongoing reorganization and integration of select USAID functions,” Under Secretary for Management Jason Evans wrote in response to the report. “We are actively developing and implementing a comprehensive realignment plan.”  

A former USAID official who is familiar with the administration’s thinking on foreign assistance policy told The Dispatch that the State Department has taken steps toward recouping some capability for humanitarian assistance and global health efforts, but they haven’t seen similar movement on democracy and governance work. The source said they agreed with the administration that USAID’s work on the political front should be housed at the State Department, but added, “now that they have it in the right spot, they don’t seem to be willing to fund it.”

“You can break it down as much as you want,” the former official added. “However, at some point the president and the secretary are going to want to actually see results on certain things. So, what are the tools you have in your toolbox? If you get rid of all your tools, you’re not going to have much.” 

The State Department’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 would eliminate all funding for many of the tools the U.S. government has to promote democracy and support countries in moments of crisis and transition. The administration requested a fraction of the USAGM’s previous annual budget to facilitate an “orderly shutdown” of the agency. The requested cuts, totaling several billion, included the NED and the Democracy Fund—the account that previously funded USAID’s and the State Department’s democracy spending. 

The request also eliminated USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a particularly notable cut given the administration’s justifications for slashing aid and shaking up the State Department. After Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk decided to feed “USAID to the wood chipper,” it was clear that whatever legitimate criticisms of U.S. foreign assistance existed, the administration was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles admitted as much last year: “No rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody.” 

Rubio defended the destruction of USAID as justified because foreign assistance had drifted too far from American national interests. Programs supporting countries in efforts to improve governance and rule of law were assailed as bloated and bureaucratic boondoggles, failing to actually move the needle in support of political change that aligned with U.S. values and foreign policy goals. The secretary argued every dollar spent abroad should redound directly to U.S economic or strategic security interests. 

Plenty of former officials and foreign aid experts have contested such criticisms and what they see as a short-sighted narrowing of American interests. But accepting the secretary’s argument, if there was a single USAID office that was most directly attuned to urgent U.S. policy priorities and security goals, it was OTI. 

Created in 1994, OTI became the tip of the spear in how the U.S. responded to fast-evolving political transitions in former Soviet Republics and massive crises in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. In the decades since, OTI has worked in more than three dozen countries, doing everything from immediate disaster relief to providing technical and logistical aid to new democratic governments to supporting peace and reconciliation efforts in conflict-torn areas. The office’s work is designed to act on immediate needs and opportunities that traditional humanitarian and development assistance may not be able to respond to quickly enough or address with an eye toward political change on the ground.  

“Unlike its counterparts at USAID, its mission is neither humanitarian nor development-oriented,” the Congressional Research Service detailed in a report marking the office’s 15^th anniversary. “OTI’s activities are overtly political, based on the idea that in the midst of political crisis and instability abroad there are local agents of change whose efforts, when supported by timely and creative U.S. assistance, can tip the balance toward peaceful and democratic outcomes that advance U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

For example, OTI worked in Colombia to help lay the groundwork for peace accords in 2016 and helped boost local buy-in to the peace process. The office supported small-scale infrastructure and community resource projects in areas that were previously controlled by far-left guerrilla groups to help rebuild local trust and demonstrate that the government could actually deliver results for people. A former senior OTI official who spent more than a decade at the agency told The Dispatch that the work in Colombia provided practical assistance and development infrastructure, but in support of a clear and explicit political goal aligned with U.S. security interests in the country.  

“If you look at the countries where OTI has worked in the past—including Venezuela, including Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, the Balkans, Sudan, Mali, Niger, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Haiti”, a former senior OTI official said, “they only worked in [those countries] because it was a U.S. government national security priority.”  

“Secretary of State Rubio has said he wants foreign assistance to be driven by our foreign policy and national security priorities,” the former OTI official added. “This office was created specifically to do that.” 

The former USAID official also emphasized that OTI’s capabilities can be crucial and that the State Department “currently has zero capability” in accomplishing the kind of rapid response objectives the office used to tackle. “OTI, in whatever form they want to call it, needs to be reconstituted,” the former official said. “That’s a tool that the secretary wants to have in his toolbox.” 

Congress has recognized the need to bring back some of the democracy programs the administration has pushed to eliminate. The House passed a foreign assistance bill earlier this month that rejected some of the cuts; the Senate is expected to take up the bill this week. Overall funding for foreign assistance would be 16 percent less than the previous appropriation, a far cry from the White House’s requested 47 percent cut. The NED, the Democracy Fund, and USAGM would retain most of their previous congressional funding, but the money for OTI would remain zeroed out. 

If the bill is adopted, some observers are concerned about whether the administration will follow through and actually spend the appropriated funds. “The big unknown is whether an administration that has spent the past year rescinding and slow-walking aid dollars will be able and willing—now that it has taken the reins—to deliver on lawmakers’ intent,” analysts at the Center for Global Development, a D.C.-based think tank, wrote earlier this month. 

Regardless, it could be months or even years before the State Department restores the soft power tools the U.S. has relied on to advance its interests in Iran and Venezuela and beyond. 

“The U.S. government may find these windows that open and these local actors that have ideas that are in support of U.S. government objectives, but you need someone who can then deliver what they need,” the former OTI official said. “The point is to be ready for whatever is needed.”