Salzburg Global Fellow Deborah Cohn analyzes how the dismantling of USAID and higher education programs has weakened American soft power abroad
This article was written by Salzburg Global Fellow Deborah Cohn, who attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program on “What Next for the U.S.? What Next for America in the World?” in September 2025.
The views expressed here belong to this Fellow individually and should not be taken to represent those of any organizations to which they are affiliated.
When thinking about the U.S.’s position in the global order over the next few years, it helps to think first about what has been destroyed since January 2025, in both specific and general terms, as it is (part of) what will need to be rebuilt to get back to a point of international (and domestic) stability. While there is much to choose from, I focus here on how the attacks on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and higher education alike have caused significant damage to the U.S.’s international standing and efforts to promote democracy, while also hurting the nation in other ways.
Personal Background
I want to start by positioning myself in this debate, as my ideas reflect both my areas of research and my personal experience. First, my father was a public health officer with USAID. We lived in Central America, often under dictatorship, in the early 1980s. My father then worked on AIDS prevention for the state of California and was USAID’s first HIV/AIDS officer, serving in Uganda from 1987 to 1991; my mother also entered the State Department during these years. Second, I am trained as a Latin Americanist and frequently teach about dictatorship and democracy. Also, my current research focuses on the history of modern language education in the U.S. and how it was affected by the Cold War, as well as how academics, universities, philanthropies, and the U.S. State Department collaborated on cultural diplomacy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s that sought to showcase U.S. strengths - and, by extension, democracy - abroad.
Consequences of Reduced USAID
I am, as a rule, critical of how the U.S. has exercised its power internationally, given its history of interventionism (e.g., coups, sponsorship of right-wing dictatorships, etc.). At the same time, I recognize how valuable soft power can be and how it can protect U.S. interests. USAID, for example, not only worked to promote democracy, it saved lives directly through many of its programs - some of which, in turn, protected lives in the U.S. by preventing the spread of disease across borders and, additionally, by tempering anti-Americanism and fostering good will. The cruel and sudden stoppage of USAID’s work has not only left people to die, it is creating additional anti-Americanism and pushing other countries into the arms of China and Russia. In other words, this has itself created additional dangers to national security. The U.S. will have a long way to go towards rebuilding its relationships with the countries that it has abandoned, and the trust that it has broken will not easily be mended.
Implications for U.S. Higher Education
International education and exchanges similarly have tremendous implications for U.S. cultural diplomacy, soft power, and national security. Also, like USAID, these programs punch well above their weight in terms of their relatively low costs. For example, the Fulbright program, whose future is extremely uncertain, originated by quite literally turning swords into ploughshares. For over 75 years, it has fostered mutual understanding and positive attitudes towards the U.S. among opinion leaders that have included the heads of state of nations across the globe. The Office of International and Foreign Language Education in the Department of Education, in turn, which administered the language and area studies programs that originated in Title VI of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, was shuttered in March. Its proposed budget for 2026 was zeroed out on the grounds that “these programs are inconsistent with Administration priorities and do not advance American interests or values.” And yet, for over 65 years, Title VI programs, according to the Department of Education’s own website (which is no longer available), “prepar[ed] highly qualified individuals with critical skills to meet U.S. national security, education, business, diplomatic, and economic competitiveness needs.” Canceling support for training in area studies and critical languages, which are already understudied in the U.S., directly impacts national security, business needs, the economy, and more, and we will need to develop new programs to take over these roles.
It is also worth examining how the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education have not only directly damaged the educational system, but have also undermined an important source of the nation’s soft power. The federal government is the nation’s largest investor in basic research, and its investments have created a higher education system and research infrastructure that have made the U.S. the “envy of the world,” a “leader in global innovation,” and so on. According to the 2025 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, seven of the world’s top ten research universities are in the U.S. Major cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as well as revocations of funding, visa revocations for international scholars, and other attacks on universities across the nation have hamstrung crucial research and innovation within the U.S. and threaten to prompt a brain drain. Indeed, three quarters of scientists who responded to a spring reader survey by Nature said that they are seeking to leave the nation as a result of threats to research under the Trump administration. Meanwhile, as David G. Victor recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, “China … is becoming more competitive in the very fields the United States is kneecapping,” while several European nations and others are capitalizing on the situation by developing programs to recruit scientists seeking to leave the U.S.
I’ve focused on USAID and the U.S. higher education system here (simplifying a great deal, of course) because in addition to the specific missions that each carries out, both, broadly speaking, are also powerful vehicles for soft power that help to disseminate an image of the U.S. overseas. The Trump administration’s attacks on both have undermined the U.S.’s opportunities to spread its values, destroying other nations’ trust in us as well as key tools with which to rebuild it. Restoring stability in these areas will be important to helping the U.S. to regain some of its place in the global order.
Deborah Cohn is provost professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of "The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism during the Cold War" (Vanderbilt UP) and "History and Memory in the Two Souths: Recent Southern and Spanish American Fiction" (Vanderbilt UP), as well as coeditor, with Hilary Kahn, of "International Education at the Crossroads" (Indiana UP), and, with Jon Smith, of "Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies" (Duke UP). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the American Philosophical Society, and the Harry Ransom Center, among other sources. Her areas of research include cold war cultural diplomacy, especially in relation to the use in the U.S. of academic disciplines such as American studies and language study as means of bolstering the U.S. national interest.
