Is it a waste of money to fund US broadcasts and websites for the world’s captive and abused peoples?
Apparently it is, in the eyes of the Trump administration. On March 15, the $142m annual funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was terminated, along with its 1,700 or so employees. The group’s president, Stephen Capus, called the decision “a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
From my lifetime of experience and travel in the captive nations, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment.
Let me share some personal experiences, both regarding US overseas media and other programs designed to extend and explain our nation’s outlook and understanding.
Vienna in 1952-1953. The library operated by the US Embassy with US periodicals and books was always crowded. A similar library run by the Soviet Embassy was far more comfortable and well heated, but nearly empty most of the time. Few Austrians believed anything published by the USSR.
Moscow 1958-59. As an exchange student at Moscow State University, I learned which radio programs my Soviet colleagues wanted to hear as they gathered around my short-wave radio. For honest, factual reporting, they chose the BBC. Radio Liberty in Russian featured critical news about life in communist countries but was often turned into static by Soviet jammers. Voice of America in Russian, featuring positive news about the US, was sometimes jammed; sometimes not.
Far surpassing all these programs in audience appeal was the Voice of America jazz hour hosted by Willis Conover from 1955 to 1996. Relatively few Soviets could experience Louis Armstrong when he toured the USSR. but VOA permitted millions of Soviets to appreciate Armstrong and other American musicians. Many Soviets distrusted political news from any source. From VOA, however, they could internalize the musical freedoms practiced by American musicians — many of them black and not so oppressed as in Soviet propaganda.
Czechoslovakia 1968. Climbing in the High Tatras when the Warsaw Pact invaded, I saw that Czechs and Slovaks preferred their own local radio stations (alternating news with Smetana’s Má Vlast). When invaders stopped local transmissions, the locals turned to Deutsche Welle (available in dozens of languages) and Austria’s Ősterreich Eins.
Estonia 1991. When theKremlin deliberated whether to crush independence movements in its Baltic republics, some US political leaders debated how they could buttress the three Baltic Davids against Goliath. Radio Liberty broadcast many chapters of my book Baltic Independence and Russian Empire (St, Martin’s, 1991) to the Baltics, and a CIA enterprise bought and sold several thousand copies for overseas distribution. When a subject people weighs the risk of a violent crackdown, a breath of encouragement can be decisive.
The World. the USIA sent me to lecture in Asia, Europe, and Latin America in 1970, 1976, 1982-83, and 1992 — with a far from exorbitant daily honorarium of $50 for two or three encounters…
On other occasions, Washington backed me as a Fulbright lecturer in Trinidad, China, and Slovenia (with pay that did not cover my mortgage in Massachusetts).
Russia and the USA: Exchange programs with the USSR certainly advanced US objectives. The student exchanges that began in 1958 opened the eyes of both sides to unknown social realities. The major brain behind Gorbachev’s perestroika was Alexander Yakovlev, who learned about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reforms at Columbia while I studied in Moscow. A Soviet student with whom I skied then, Nikolas Popov, later worked in Washington for several years as an editor of Soviet Life magazine. In the USA Popov learned public opinion polling from George Gallup and brought back these techniques to the USSR, where he still helps Russians understand the zigs and zags of US politics. He also learned surfing and fostered it back home.
I don’t know if my words and deeds did anything to advance the policies of presidents Nixon, Reagan, or George W. Bush, on whose watches I went abroad. Only once did any US officials complain about my content — when (in Sri Lanka) I detailed the Marshall Plan as a model of mutual gain instead of denouncing Moscow’s cruelties in Afghanistan. But these exchanges certainly enlightened me and, indirectly, my students in Boston — a pattern repeated thousands of times across the US and other countries.
The US Agency for Global Media (AGM), which runs the US media outlets, last year claimed the largest global audience of any publicly funded international news organization — 420 million every week listening in 63 languages in over 100 countries — often in some of the world’s most restrictive media environments.
Despite draconian crackdowns on journalism in China, Russia, Iran, and in some places friendly to the US, AGM’s networks have provided essential news on multiple platforms. Is this a worthwhile expense? If Americans esteem their values and care how they are seen abroad, surely Americans want a strategy of truth.
If we see facts and knowledge as expendable in a struggle red in tooth and claw, there is little reason to do anything except count our Bitcoin, Teslas, and land grabs.
Walter Clemens is Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
