Chicago – Growing up in the former Soviet Union, the father and grandparents of Pedro Spivakovsky-González heard Voice of America With their ears pressed towards the radio, trying to catch words through government radio.
The news service by the United States was essential to help them understand what was happening to the other side of the iron curtain, before moving to the United States in the 1970s.
“It was a window to another world,” Spivakovsky-González said. “They considered it as a kind of lighthouse of freedom. They could imagine a different world than they lived.”
When Spivakovsky-González and his family found out about President Donald Trump’s attempts To dismantle the United States Agency for Global Media – The agency that supervises Voa, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia – He said he was an “intestine.”
The first months of the second Trump administration have hit after a blow to US efforts to promote democracy abroad and pierce the information wall of authoritarian governments through programs that had been supported for decades by presidents of both political parties.
The new administration has decimated the global media agency, restructured The State Department eliminate a global democracy office and destroyed the United States Agency for International DevelopmentThat last year he launched an initiative to try to stop democratic setback worldwide. In total, the movements represent a reduction in the role of the United States in the dissemination of democracy beyond its borders.
Experts say that movements will create a void to promote freedom and representative government, and could accelerate what many see how Anti -democratic trends Around the world.
“The United States has historically been the main power in the dissemination of democracy worldwide. Despite the different administrations, that has continued to be the case, until now,” said Staffan Lindberg, a professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
David Salvo, managing director of the Alliance to ensure democracy in the German Marshall background, said that promoting democracy abroad has been “a pillar of US foreign policy in the last 50 years” as a means to ensure more stable and peaceful relationships with other countries, reduce the threat of conflict and war, and promote economic cooperation.
However, among Trump’s first actions was to aim at democracy programs through the State Department and USAIDthat he had launched a New Global Democracy initiative at the end of the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden. The Treasury Department arrested the funds for the National endowment for democracyand Secretary of State Marco Rubio He said in April It would close an office of the State Department that had the mission of building “more democratic, safe, stable and fair societies.”
Fund cuts have arrived at the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and non -profit organizations of the United States that have worked for decades “to inject resources into environments so that civil society and democratic actors can try to make the change for better”, even through the reinforcement of unstable democracies against autocrats, he said except.
If it is worth financing global democracy programs, it was fundamental for an audience on Thursday held by a Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives such as the representative Maria Salazar, R-Fla., He repeatedly asked how to “guarantee that our return on the investment is really high.”
About 1.2% of the federal budget went to foreign help in fiscal year 2023, according to the PEW Research Center.
“I understand that the Committee is interested in how we can improve … and return to the basics,” Tom Malinowski, former Democratic congressman of New Jersey and assistant secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and work under President Barack Obama, told the legislators. “The problem is that the administration is eliminating the basic concepts at this time.”
Uzra Zeya, who first directs the non -profit human organization after serving in the Biden State Department, said it was “heartbreaking and alarming” to see the United States essentially dismantling its democracy and human rights programs.
“The possible long -term impacts are devastating for the national security and prosperity of the United States,” he said.
For more than 80 years, VOA and its related media have delivered news worldwide, even more than 427 million people each week in 49 languages, according to a Internal Report 2024. The station began during World War II to provide news to the Germans, even when Nazi officials tried to stuck their signs. The Soviet and China Union tried to silence their transmissions during the Cold War. Iranian and North Korean governments have also tried to block Access to VOA For decades.
But the most successful attempt to silence VOA has been through its own government. It closed effectively in March An executive order.
Lisa Brakel, a 66 -year -old retired librarian in Temperance, Michigan, said that Voa was a “pillar” when she was a music teacher in Kuwait in the 1980s. She and her colleagues would listen together in the Apartment Complex where US teachers were housed, using him as a way to keep up with the US news.
“When I saw the news, I thought: ‘No, they can’t close this. Many people depend on that,'” said Brakel. “As a librarian, any cut for free access to information worries me deeply.”
The future of the station It remains in flow After a Federal Court of Appeals arrested a ruling that would have Inverted its dismantling. This was just a day after journalists were told that they would soon return to work after being out of the air for almost two months. Even if they are allowed to return, it is not clear that the mission is the same. Last week, the Trump administration He agreed to use The conservative and very pro-trump media network Oan’s feed on VOA and other services.
In Asia, dismantling Radio Free Asia It would mean losing the only independent Uyghur language news service in the world, closing the Asia data verification laboratory, since it informs about the erroneous information of the Chinese Community Party and braking access to information in countries such as China, North Korea and Myanmar that lack free and independent means, said the president of the issuer, Fang Bay, in a statement.
“His invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to defend the truth so that dictators and despots do not have the last word,” Fang wrote in May in The New York Times.
Experts who monitor global democracy said the information gap created by the administration will be emboldened to US competitors, as Russia and Porcelainwho are already at work Treating to shape public opinion.
Barbara Wejner, a political sociologist at the University of Buffalo, who studies global democracies, said that diplomatic efforts through broadcasters and non -profit organizations of democracy helped precipitate a “rapid increase in democratizing countries” at the end of the 20th century.
“Especially today when the truth is distorted and people do not trust governments, spreading the notion of freedom and democracy through the media is even more vital,” he said.
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