On February 21, 2025, I received an impersonal email notifying me of my termination from USAID (United States Agency for International Development), effective March 8. In 14 years with USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), I was fortunate to have amazing opportunities to support peace and democracy in more than 20 countries. But in the first months of the second Trump administration, the US government is destroying USAID’s capacity to promote democracy around the world. In addition to the unconstitutionality and catastrophic humanitarian effects, dismantling USAID will impede the US government’s support of democratic movements throughout the world. By reducing violence, encouraging stability, and countering hostile actors, USAID has exemplified key US values as it pushes back on the global rising tide of authoritarianism.

A History of Broad, Bipartisan Support

Founded in 1961 through Congressional legislation, USAID enjoyed bipartisan support for its mission of supporting democracy throughout the world until early 2025. Military leaders routinely highlighted the importance of USAID’s “soft power” capability to complement military strength in advancing American interests while promoting democratic values. Over the past decade, a growing recognition for using foreign assistance to achieve short-term security and political goals prompted increased attention to develop these specific capabilities. Republicans in particular appreciated USAID’s ability to support democratically minded actors in communist or socialist authoritarian states and to defend American interests globally against malign influence from China and Russia.

This broad, bipartisan support allowed USAID to play a critical role in some of the most important US foreign policy successes of the last half century, especially in the fields of peace and democracy:

• In Colombia, USAID supported the implementation of the peace accord that ended almost six decades of conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group.
• In Eastern Europe, USAID helped formerly communist countries of the Warsaw Pact integrate into a Europe that became “free, whole, and at peace” in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• More recently in Ukraine, USAID has provided wide-ranging assistance to help resist Russia’s illegal war of aggression.

Not every intervention that USAID has undertaken has been a success, but its absence will be apparent in coming years and decades.

Supporting Global Democracy: On the Ground in Bolivia

In January 2020, I traveled to Bolivia as part of a USAID and State Department assessment team to determine how the US government could support a free and fair electoral process to counter the democratic backsliding that Bolivia had been experiencing for more than a decade. Our goal was to advance US interests by supporting democratic actors and countering authoritarianism in a key region. The charismatic aspiring autocrat Evo Morales had recently resigned in the face of massive street protests triggered by credible accusations of fraud in Bolivia’s 2019 presidential election. Following Morales’s resignation, then Senator Marco Rubio highlighted the importance of free, fair, and democratic elections for Bolivia and supported USAID playing a role in enabling those elections to happen.

The results of our assessment and subsequent programming in Bolivia were mixed. The team designed programming that empowered local activists and other Bolivians to play a newly meaningful role in civic life, although their voices had been silenced and co-opted for years. We implemented this under a right-wing interim government that quickly became just as authoritarian and anti-democratic as the one it had replaced. Five years later, Bolivia remains mired in polarization and governmental dysfunction, with no obvious path out of its national political crisis. But the network of local activists that we supported endures. They continue to advocate for their communities while standing ready to take advantage of a future opportunity to move Bolivia toward a democracy that works for all its citizens. Because of USAID’s programming and commitment to supporting democracy around the world, the activists will be more ready when that moment comes.

A Dramatic Absence in the Short and Long Terms

In 2024, the US government was the largest humanitarian donor in the world, and USAID was its lead agency for foreign assistance, accounting for more than 40% of aid distribution that year. On the democracy assistance front, USAID, the State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy spent approximately $3 billion in aid in 2024. By contrast, total federal spending in 2024 was $6.75 trillion, and Congress authorized $884 billion in total defense spending. The halt to USAID spending in early 2025 has had devastating consequences for the organizations in the US and around the world that implement democracy assistance. Other governments are unlikely to make up the shortfall, especially with similar anti-democratic trends in other parts of the world and European Union countries turning inward to defend against potential new threats from the United States.

USAID’s dissolution has had immediate consequences, such as the Serbian government’s crackdown on USAID supported civil society activists and the Hungarian government’s escalated efforts to stamp out pro-democracy groups and independent media organizations. These actions have been spurred by a (correct) analysis that the current US leadership would not defend democratic actors, such as student protestors in Nicaragua or Ukrainian volunteers who keep schools open and rebuild housing in communities on the frontline of the war. Over the longer term, this shift away from supporting democracy will have catastrophic impact on the quality of global democracy because democratic activists will no longer be able to rely on USAID programming or US diplomatic pressure in the face of authoritarian threats.

A Diffuse but Powerful Legacy

At the moment of its intended dissolution by the Trump administration, USAID leaves behind a legacy of mixed success in democracy promotion at the global and national levels. A rich, albeit diffuse, network of thousands of local activists all over the world have trained, built capacity, increased community resilience, and gained a taste of what success can look like in the incredibly difficult work of nurturing democracy. These democracy builders will carry on the struggle against creeping authoritarianism in the places where they live and, perhaps, in partnership with others nationally and globally, until the US government decides to reconstitute its will to support global democracy.

Daniel Tirrell is the cofounder and coexecutive director of The Ohio Democracy Project. Previously, he worked for 14 years on political transition and violence prevention programs at USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives.

From Many, We is a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that highlights the insights of thought leaders dedicated to the idea of inclusive democracy. Queries may be directed to fmw@kettering.org.