[CORRECTED] Shutting Down U.S.A.I.D. and the Voice of America: Real World Consequences, and the Author's Experiences
“You can’t argue with stupidity.”
BACKGROUND
1)”Trump tapped Kari Lake to run VOA. Then he dismantled it; Lake had big plans to transform the outlet into a powerful “weapon” to fight an “information war.” Instead, the president has essentially shut it down,” washington Post, March 16, 2025 (12:44 p.m. EDT);
2)James Rowles, ”A lawless government seeks to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); CONNECT THE DOTS: Coup d'état in progress,” Trenchant Observations, February 3, 2025.
3) James Rowles, “Ukraine War, February 26, 2022: The current fighting; Playing “the China card”–again; Voice of America Russian-language short-wave broadcasts to Russia,” The Trenchant Observer, February 26, 2022.
4)David Enrich, ”As Voice of America Goes Dark, Some Broadcasts Are Replaced by Music; President Trump’s executive order on Friday calling for the dismantling of the federal agency that oversees the broadcaster is part of a wider campaign to weaken the news media.” New York Times, March 16, 2025.
The U.S. Information Agency and the Voice of America
I remember listening to the Voice of America on my Zenith Transoceanic short-wave radio receiver when I was 10 years old. On a picnic hike in the mountains near Tucson, Arizona one day, I was so attached to my 25-pound “portable” shortwave receiver that I lugged it for an hour each way to a swimming hole where we had our picnic.
That radio opened me to the world, and had a lot to do with me becoming fascinated by other countries and languages and the big world out there. I became an avid shortwave listener in Arizona where I was sent because of severe asthma. When I was 10, I got my mother to help me put up two 20-foot high 4 by 4’s to support a dipole antenna at my boarding school, which greatly increased my reception of foreign signals, as did a World War II army-surplus receiver, a Hallicrafters S-20R, which I convinced her to buy me.
When I was 11 years old, I passed the exam for a Novice amateur radio license, after passing the Morse Code test at five words per minute. My call sign was KN5BVF. When I was 13, I passed the test for my General Class license, meeting the Morse Code requirement of 13 words per minute. My call sign became K5BVF.
The Voice of America was not only my window to the world, but also that of hundreds of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain and in authoritarian countries around the world.
When Russia launched its expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, following its seizure of Crimea and invasion of the eastern region of Ukraine known as the Donbas in 2014, it occurred to me that shortwave broadcasts would be the ideal way to transmit accurate news to the Russian population. Unlike satellite and internet communications, shorteave radios were compact and left no trace of their use for reception.
Unfortunately, the VOA and its Russian service had moved to the Internet where its broadcasts were easily blocked by the Russian authorities. Despite my suggestions in my blog, The Trenchant Observer, no one at the VOA picked up on the idea, which involved a brilliant use of “old” technology. See item 3) in BACKGROUND, above.
Other memories come to mind When I was working on an Access to Justice project in an African country with an authoritarian regime, I remember how during an interview with a high government official he interrupted our meeting to listen to a broadcast of the VOA news. In the provinces, I recall interviewing a courageous VOA reporter who brought news about demonstrations to a country whose citizens lived in a total blackout of significant political news. These and similar activities had a large impact on the attitudes of foreign leaders toward the U.S. in many countries around the world.
The U.S. Information Agency, the home of the Voice of America for many years, was founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Edward R. Murrow, the CBS reporter famous for his news dispatches from London during World War II, was its first director.
The USIA sponsored the many America Houses in Germany during the first decades of the Cold War, which contributed mightily to good relations with future German leaders.
The USIA sponsored libraries at U.S, embassies in many countries. I remember showing a group of Ethiopian architecture students around Houston under the auspices of the Institute of International Education. They had been studying in Moscow, and recounted how they had always gone to the U.S. Embassy and its library, where they could drink a coke. They were about as pro-American a group as you could find.
In this way the U,S.I.A. contributed to the education of future leaders throughout the world.
One summer after college. I was an intern in the Office of the Assistant Director for Europe of the USIA, in Washington, D.C. There I worked with highly-qualified civil servants (mainly Foreign Service Information Officers) dedicated to winning friends for the U.S. through the”soft power” of spreading knowledge of American culture and everyday life.
Despite its achievements, Donald Trump has decided to abolish the United States Information Agency, to throw it into the wood-chipper as Elon Musk might say.
The USIA and the Voice of America have been and potentially could be among most powerful instruments of “soft power” that the United States has. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Iran’s Ali Khamenei must be among those happiest with Trump’s recent moves in the area of public diplomacy,
Undoubtedly they and other authoritarian leaders much prefer not to have VOA news transmitted to their countries, in Russian or Chinese orFarsi (Persian)), or cultural programs that show the U.S. in a positive light.
Trump has drawn his gun, aimed it carefully at his foot, and pulled the trigger.
You can’t argue with stupid.
FURTHER READING
1)Editorial Board, “America’s voice, silenced; Trump is dismantling programs that push back against dictatorship and reach people in closed societies, Washington Post, March 17, 2025 (1:56 p.m. EDT);
31Dana Milbank, ”Stalin, Mao and Khomeini couldn’t quell freedom’s voice. But Trump did.; The world’s autocrats are doing somersaults about the silencing of the Voice of America,” Washington Post, March 17, 2025 (4:06 p.m. EDT).
NEXT COLUMN My experience working for USAID as an international development n practitioner in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia
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James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harv Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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