By Grayson Logue
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
President Donald Trump has a clear preference for kinetic
action in carrying out United States foreign policy, including the strikes
killing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani
and targeting Iranian nuclear facilities as well as the operation to capture
Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
As popular uprisings across Iran triggered a brutal
crackdown by the Islamic Republic’s regime earlier this month, the
administration made public statements supporting the protesters, saying,
“help is on its way.” The administration’s options were partially limited by the absence of some U.S. military assets in the Middle East,
and the president held
off authorizing any strikes. A carrier strike group
reached the region this week, but now tens of thousands of protesters are dead,
and a window of opportunity may have passed.
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.
Missing media.
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.
Laying the groundwork.
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.
Targeted political support.
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 15th 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.”
Will the money be spent?
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.”
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