{"id":633128,"date":"2025-12-15T03:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T03:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/633128\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T03:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T03:11:13","slug":"for-most-of-the-world-the-u-s-is-now-a-malign-actor-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/633128\/","title":{"rendered":"For most of the world, the U.S. is now a malign actor \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next day, while at the Moldova Security Forum in Chi\u0219in\u0103u, a Polish government official expressed his deep concern about sharing intelligence with the current U.S. administration. While he had great respect for the embassy in Warsaw, he noted a lack of trust in some leaders in Washington and his worry that intelligence would get leaked, in the worst case to Russia \u2014 as had happened during<\/a> Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

My week came to an end at a two-day workshop for democracy activists, all who described the catastrophic impact that the U.S. Agency for International Development\u2019s (USAID) elimination had on their work, whether that be protecting free and fair elections, combating disinformation campaigns or supporting independent media. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about the money. It\u2019s the loss of the U.S. as a democratic partner,\u201d said one Georgian participant.<\/p>\n

Others then described how this withdrawal had been an extraordinary gift to Russia, China and other autocratic regimes, becoming a main focus of their disinformation campaigns. According to one Moldovan participant, \u201cThe U.S. has abandoned Moldova\u201d was now a common Russian narrative, while Chinese messaging in the global south was also capitalizing on the end of USAID to paint Washington as an unreliable ally.<\/p>\n

Having spent a good deal of my career tracking malign foreign actors who undermine democracy around the world and coming up with strategies to defend against them, this was a rude reality check. I had to ask myself: \u201cWait, are we the bad guys?\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be naive to suggest that the U.S. has always been a good faith actor, defending global democracy throughout its history. After all, America has meddled in many countries\u2019 internal struggles, supporting leaders who didn\u2019t have their people\u2019s well-being or freedom in mind. But while it has fallen short in the past, there was always broad bipartisan agreement over what the U.S. should be: a reliable ally; a country that supports those less fortunate, stands up against tyranny worldwide and is a beacon of freedom for human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s values and interests were viewed as intertwined \u2014 particularly the belief that a world with more free and open democracies would benefit the U.S. As the late Senator John McCain famously said: \u201cOur interests are our values, and our values are our interests.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next day, while at the Moldova Security Forum in Chi\u0219in\u0103u, a Polish government official expressed his deep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[12915,6215,31,32,33,6562,805,6565,332,1771,49,1781],"class_list":{"0":"post-633128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-aid-and-development","9":"tag-cooperation","10":"tag-democracy","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-eu27","14":"tag-foreign-policy","15":"tag-populism","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115721396807402191","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}