A U.S. Retreat in the War of Ideas
Trump shuts down networks that help evade dictatorship firewalls.
March 19, 2025 4:59pm ET
President Trump has adopted Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” theme to echo the Gipper’s successful foreign-policy realism. But what Mr. Trump ignores is the idealism that was the other half of Reagan’s message: the promotion of human freedom that undermined dictatorships from within.
On Saturday Mr. Trump ordered the termination of grants for Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and Television Marti), the Open Technology Fund and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks are also being dismantled. This is a retreat in the global war of ideas.
The news agencies were created to counter communism and spread the truth in countries where media are controlled by governments that lie about the world. As Natan Sharansky and other former prisoners of communism attest, Radio Free Europe was a source of inspiration as it broadcast throughout countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. It’s the same in China, Cuba and other dictatorships today.
In February Elon Musk posted on X.com that the U.S. should shut down the networks because “Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Hello??” and “Nobody listens to them anymore.” He said the outlets are “just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”
Sometimes reality is more complicated than 280 characters. Radio Free Europe/Radio Farda runs Persian language outreach that is heard or seen by 10% of the Iranian population each week, some 6.5 million people, according to RFE. Those broadcasts include informing Iranians about Mr. Trump’s discussions with the Iranian regime.
The networks operate in countries where a free media is restricted. Radio Farda delivered news during the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and had two billion views across Instagram in 2024. They also bring sunshine in Russia and eastern Ukraine, where few reporters can operate.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) delivers news and content in Tibetan, Mandarin, Cantonese and to North Korea. Its reporters broke critical stories about Chinese ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang as well as early stories countering the Chinese coverup of the progress of the Covid epidemic.
RFA has some 38 million followers on social-media platforms. Following the implementation of Hong Kong’s draconian national-security law, RFA’s Cantonese Instagram account grew rapidly and now has some 150,000 followers. The Open Technology Fund helps locals circumvent internet firewalls—supporting VPNs and other ways for Chinese citizens to evade government censorship. China bans or restricts Western social-media platforms even as Chinese-owned TikTok operates freely in the U.S. and uses algorithms to mute criticism of China.
The networks of the Agency for Global Media provide original reporting in more than 100 countries in 63 languages, reaching 420 million people. Radio Free Asia has an annual budget of $60.8 million and reaches some 58 million people a week. The cost is inconsequential compared to the value of news that challenges the narratives of autocratic regimes.
Mr. Trump understands the leverage of hard military power, but he has no interest in soft power or the war of ideas. It’s a blind spot that will be filled by the propaganda of our adversaries.