Autocrats can rejoice: The Trump administration no longer wants to promote democracy

The financial freeze on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has caused little stir in the media - but there is unrest in geopolitical circles in Washington. Prominent experts, high-ranking diplomats and politicians from both parties are closely linked to the foundation. The well-known liberal political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the austerity measures by Elon Musk's efficiency authority "absolutely self-destructive".

For over forty years, the non-partisan institution has supported pro-democracy movements. Wherever the civilian population mobilized against an authoritarian regime, the endowment played a role in the background: it supported Lech Walesa's Solidarity in the Polish underground, the protests in the Arab Spring and Ukrainian groups during the Maidan revolution. In Russia, the foundation was banned in 2015 when Putin took action against "undesirable" foreign organizations. But the "regime change turbo" was also a thorn in the side of the anti-imperialist left.

No organization embodies the American sense of mission as much as the National Endowment for Democracy. In his Westminster speech in 1982, during the Cold War, Ronald Reagan called for the establishment of an organization that would promote the "infrastructure for democracy" - namely the free press, unions, political parties and universities. A year later, Congress established the independent but state-funded foundation to promote "free and democratic institutions throughout the world." Historians acknowledge that it played an important role in ending the Cold War.

Initially, the organization served primarily anti-communist goals. After the fall of the Soviet Union, its mission expanded to countries "where the democratic breakthrough is still pending." In 2023, the foundation had a small budget of around $320 million - compared to the US's total foreign aid of almost $70 billion. The money was used to support pro-democracy groups in Iran, Cuba and China, among others.

The foundation board is a playground for prominent Republicans and Democrats who like to boast about their honorary positions. Trump's designated UN ambassador Elise Stefanik sat on the NED foundation board, and until recently Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat on the board of the affiliated International Republican Institute. Anyone trying to access the institute's website now encounters an error message. What is going on in Washington?

The Trump camp has had the international foundation in its sights for years. But now influential think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America are beating the drum against the traditional promotion of democracy. The main criticism is that the NED has been infiltrated by left-wing circles over the past eight years. It has developed into a "radical weapon" against right-wing populist movements abroad, but also in the USA.

In a congressional report with the dramatic title "Tools and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex," Republicans made similar accusations of bias: The foundation had financially supported the British fact-checking group Global Disinformation Index, which campaigned for the censorship of conservative opinion portals. The foundation then ended its cooperation with the group.

Democracy expert Thomas Carothers from the think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nevertheless rejects the accusations of politicization. "Defending democracy does not mean partisan interference." The foundation protects the integrity of elections without seeking to influence the outcome. Nor does it fund candidates or parties. The current NED chairman is Republican Peter Roskam, while CEO Damon Wilson began his career as a NATO and Ukraine expert on the staff of the National Security Council under Republican President George W. Bush.

Carothers suspects that the real reason for the campaign lies in Trump-critical statements made by some foundation board members - for example by the conservative political scientist Robert Kagan, editor of the "Journal of Democracy", or the journalist Anne Applebaum, a former NED board member. Both warned in drastic terms about the danger that Donald Trump poses to American democracy.

At the beginning of February, Trump's efficiency representative Elon Musk began attacking the National Endowment for Democracy on his Platform X: The "corrupt" and "criminal" foundation was an "evil organization" and had to be dissolved. Musk later deleted some of the tweets - they were very reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Chinese Foreign Ministry: "The organization's countless evil deeds have caused great damage and drawn criticism from the international community." Beijing has long been trying to portray the organization as an arm of the CIA.

In February, payments from the finance department to the NED stopped, as the platform The Free Press revealed. Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao warned in the magazine "The Wire China" of serious consequences for civil rights organizations: "Many dissidents and activists in China do not make it public, but receive money from the NED."

Even though the reaction among Republicans was muted, the fact that Musk deleted several of his aggressive tweets on the subject shows the tug-of-war behind the scenes. It remains to be seen whether the National Endowment for Democracy will soon be funded again, as the law stipulates. What is clear, however, is that the idea of ​​promoting democracy has lost popularity and Trump's party has moved far away from Reagan's vision of a free, democratic world.