US initiatives that promote democracy abroad

Chicago (AP)-Grew up in the former Soviet Union, Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez 'father and grandparents would listen Voice of America Pressed the radio with his ears and tried to catch words through the government's radio.

The news service financed by the United States was largely helped to understand what happened on the other side of the iron curtain before moving to the USA in the 1970s.

“It was a window in another world,” said Spivakovsky Gonzalez. “They saw it as a kind of beacon of freedom. They could imagine a different world than those in which they lived.”

As Spivakovsky-Gonzalez and his family heard about it Attempts by President Donald Trump To dismantle the US agency for global media – the agency that monitors VoaPresent Radio -free Europe And Radio -free Asia – he said it was a “belly beat”.

The first months of the second Trump government have the American efforts to promote democracy abroad and to promote the information wall of the authoritarian governments by programs that had been maintained by the presidents of both political parties for decades.

The new administration has decimated the agency for global media, restructured The Ministry of Foreign Affairs To eliminate a global democracy office and to push them out US agency for international developmentThe only last year started an initiative to try to stop democratic deficit around the world. Overall, the movements represent a cut from the US role in the spread of democracy beyond its limits.

Experts say anti -democratic trends around the world.

“The United States were historically the leading power in the worldwide distribution of democracy. Despite various administrations that have so far remained the case,” said Staffan Lindberg, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Aim at a broad swath of the initiatives of democracy and civil society

David Salvo, Managing Director of Allianz for securing democracy in the German Marshall Fund, said that the promotion of democracy abroad has been a “pillar of American foreign policy” in the past 50 years in order to ensure more stable, peaceful relationships with other countries, to reduce the risk of conflicts and war and to promote economic cooperation.

But under Trump's early actions, the democracy programs were aimed at by the Foreign Ministry and aimed USAIDThe A had started New Global Democracy Initiative At the end of the presidency of democrat Joe Biden. The finance department stopped financing to the National Foundation for Democracyand Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said in April He would hire an office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the mission had to “build democratic, safe, stable and fair societies”.

The Financing Curves have the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Elective Systems and US -Terminative Organizations that have been working for decades to “bring in resources in environments so that civil society and democratic actors can try to make changes to the better”, also by increasing unstable democracies against autocrats, said Salvo.

Whether global democracy programs are worth a financing, central to a hearing on Thursday, that of a subcommittee for foreign matters in US house as Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., Retired, repeatedly asked how to “ensure that our capital return is really high”.

According to the PEW Research Center, around 1.2% of the federal budget went to foreign aid in the 2023 financial year.

“I understand that the committee is interested in how we can improve … and return to the basics,” Tom Malinowski, a former democratic congress member from New Jersey and deputy foreign minister for democracy, human rights and work under President Barack Obama, said the legislator. “The problem is that the administration currently eliminates the basics.”

Uzra Zeya, who initially leads the international non-profit human rights after serving in the Biden State Department, said that it was “heartbreaking and alarming” to remove its democracy and human rights programs essentially.

“The potential long -term effects are devastating for national security and prosperity,” she said.

Reduction of messaging pipelines for freedom

For more than 80 years, the VOA and its associated sales outlets have transmitted messages worldwide, including more than 427 million people in 49 languages ​​per week in 49 languages ​​per week 2024 Internal report. The broadcaster began during the Second World War to provide German news, even when the Nazis officials tried to die his signals. The Soviet Union and China tried to silence their programs during the Cold War. The Iranian and North Korean governments have also tried to block Access to VoA decades.

But the most successful attempt to silence the VOA was its own government. It was effectively closed in March An executive order.

Lisa Brakel, a 66-year-old librarian in Temperance, Michigan, said Voa was a “main support” when she was a music teacher in Kuwait in the 1980s. She and her colleagues heard together in the apartment complex in which the American teachers were housed, and used it to stay up to date with us.

“When I saw the news, I thought:” No, you can't close it. Too many people depend on it, “said Brakel.” As a librarian, all cuts to free access to information concern me. “

The US competitors will probably encourage reductions

The future of the transmitter stays in the flow After a Federal Court of Appeals held a judgment, that would have his disassembly turned around. This was only a day after journalists had been communicated that they would soon return to work after being in the air for almost two months. Even if you are allowed to return, it is not clear that the mission would be the same. The Trump administration last week approved The conservative and strong Pro-Trump media network from OAN from VOA and other services.

In Asia, dismantling Radio -free Asia I would mean losing the world's only independent Uyghur language news service, closing the Asia factual laboratory, since it reports on misinformation from the Chinese joint party and has mastered access to information in countries such as China, North Korea and Myanmar, the freelance and independent media, said the president of the broadcaster, Bay catches.

“Your invaluable work is part of RFA's responsibility to maintain the truth so that dictators and despots do not have the last word” The New York Times.

Experts who monitor global democracy said that the information gap created by the administration US competitors such as Russia And Chinawho are already at work The attempt to form public opinion.

Barbara Wejnert, a political sociologist at the University of Buffalo, who studies global democracies, said diplomatic efforts by the US broadcaster and non -profit organizations of democracy had triggered a “rapid increase in the countries of democratization” in the late 20th century.

“Especially today when the truth is distorted and people do not trust the governments, it is even more important to spread the term freedom and democracy through media,” she said.

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