April 2, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:36
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| From cutting USAID programs to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration has been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives. | |
| But some such spending may yet have value. | |
| If you're a little newspaper in Solomon Islands and you want to cover what China is doing in your country, it's nearly impossible. | |
| Your advertising can get cut, you're discredited. | |
| So Carrie Lake talked about, for example, setting up a dedicated unit within VOA to investigate Chinese illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive activity throughout the region. | |
| And VOA is very well placed to connect those dots. | |
| The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, FDD, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to U.S. national security interests to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region. | |
| The PLA studied very carefully the Pacific War. | |
| You see it targets the same locations where there were bases or where there were runways. | |
| In the Solomon Islands, the Chinese are now A lot of unusual things have been happening with respect to different tools of U | |
| .S. foreign policy. | |
| USAID is being cut down dramatically. | |
| Most recently, VOA, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia, RFA, are being reduced down to their statutory spending requirements. | |
| I see a lot of narrative out there that basically the axe is being taken to U.S. foreign policy initiatives. | |
| What's your take? | |
| It's a complicated and evolving picture. | |
| I'm looking mostly at the Pacific region, but just to say that there are entire countries like India that are very happy to see USAID go, because they think that some of that activity was targeted at their leadership. | |
| So the sense that all countries are angry and heartbroken about it is not accurate, but there are some where this is going to hurt. | |
| And so this kind of hammer versus scalpel is going to be very important. | |
| Figuring out what works and what doesn't is going to be very important. | |
| And I'm hoping that what we're in is a transition phase where there is this pause or whatever it is, and then there's going to be a readjustment that's more in line with the sort of things that are good for US power. | |
| But I'll Just for an example, because you talked about the media stuff, there's been some excellent reporting in the Pacific coming out of VOA. | |
| There have also been some very peculiar pieces coming out of Radio Free Asia around, for example, Palau. | |
| We're using specific examples to get an idea of what it means. | |
| Palau has a huge number of challenges that it is countering. | |
| The president of Palau gave the National Security Coordinator the right to go after people who are overstaying their visa, misusing their visas, in some cases almost literally breaking down doors, rolling up Chinese illegal gambling organizations, getting all sorts of very dubious people out of the country. | |
| But Radio Free Asia chose to write during that the same period about Unexploded World War II bombs being a huge problem. | |
| In other places... | |
| And not cover that. | |
| And not cover that. | |
| Right. Now, there are some unexploded World War II bombs, but in terms of what's important as a story coming out of Palau is not accurately being reflected. | |
| There are other stories about, you know, teenagers in Palau anti-US militarization but there aren't stories about how at the inauguration of the president of Palau the foreign minister of Japan sat next to the foreign minister of Taiwan in a show of solidarity which is a huge signaling geopolitical signaling so the coverage has been unusual In certain locations, | |
| and I'm not saying this about those particular stories, but as you know, there have been a lot of concerns about penetration, targeted penetration, into those reporting agencies by people who have interests that are not aligned with U.S. interests. | |
| So, a reassessment is not a bad thing. | |
| We'll see what happens during the rebuilding phase. | |
| I guess the idea is, I mean, I'm thinking about Ted Lipien's work, you know, he's been arguing that there needs to be reform in these agencies for a very long time. | |
| But now he's also saying, you know, he thinks what's happened is going too far. | |
| Yeah, and we'll see what happens next. | |
| When you cover the CCP, your advertising can get cut, you're marginalized, you're discredited. | |
| So imagine if you're a little newspaper in Solomon Islands and you want to cover what China is doing in your country. | |
| It's nearly impossible. | |
| And I'm using that as a specific case because there is a very good news organization in Solomon Islands called In Depth Solomons that was beat We're good. | |
| going to other agencies and that was going to that. | |
| And they're having a hard time now. | |
| They can't do that sort of coverage. | |
| They're not going to be able to get local advertising to support themselves. | |
| So they were doing what basically VOA should have been doing anyway, but they were doing it on the ground in their own voice and with incredible courage. | |
| And some of those journalists have now been laid off. | |
| And what typically happens in those situations is the pro-PRC government offers them a job within the government. | |
| Come and do marketing for us, or come and do PR for us. | |
| And you've got a journalist who has a family, their parents might need medical care, their kids need school fees, and the source of funding has been cut off. | |
| to survive. | |
| So they get diverted into the system. | |
| They know it, doesn't make them feel good, but they need to be a good parent, they need to be a good child, and this is their only option for doing it. | |
| So that's an example of where the cuts are directly hurting Chinese coverage. | |
| For example, Broca's story about how the Minister of Police in Solomons had a bank account with a Chinese national and the son of the former Prime Minister of Solomons, which is the one that switched the country from Taiwan to China, in Singapore. | |
| That is an incredibly important piece of information that changes the way you look at policing, for example, in Solomon Islands. | |
| It wouldn't have happened if they wouldn't have been getting funding from the US. | |
| Now, there have been different sorts of funding to achieve very specific political goals, and that's the problem. | |
| It sort of all became kind of enmeshed. | |
| And hopefully this is a process of disaggregating and figuring out what is supporting freedom around the world, both with USAID and with VOA, and creating structures that are going to reinforce that going forward. | |
| Well, and also, you know, one of the things that was brought to my attention by Michael Pack, who had ran USAGM for a bit under Trump 45, was just a lot of really bizarre anti-American content, right? | |
| Which makes no sense, obviously, in such media. | |
| Yeah, and what happened to him is, you know, he was kept out of office. | |
| He was appointed and he was kept out of office for years. | |
| Right? They wouldn't approve and they wouldn't put them in. | |
| And so I think that part of this is a reaction to that perceived overreach on the other side. | |
| You know, the American people voted for change and you're not going to let us do it. | |
| So we're going to get rid of the organizations that are blocking that. | |
| If you're going to continue to maintain control over them and not reflect the will of the voter, this is sort of the Trump administration line, then Then why should we continue to support you? | |
| You're not doing what the voters voted for. | |
| It's described sometimes as the deconstruction of the administrative state, but the question is, you know, is there also sort of a re-appropriation of the mechanisms of state that they think are under this, under the executive, as opposed to this unelected bureaucracy? | |
| That's the whole language around it, right? | |
| This is really a fight about I remember President Trump, you alluded to this earlier, right? It was scalpel, not hatchet, if I believe is the term. | |
| So that's kind of what you're hoping for here, I guess. | |
| Well, yeah. | |
| And then after the scalpel, you do some suturing, you get some antibiotics, and then you get up and running, We're in this cutting phase, but the question is, okay, then what? | |
| If you've excised what you consider to be the cancer, are you then going to put the body politic in a position to be able to get up and running again? | |
| Or are you going to let it bleed out? | |
| There's arguments about this, right? | |
| Is there a place for U.S. media? | |
| Is there a place for U.S. media? | |
| Is there value to those U.S. media? | |
| Some people would just say, that's just U.S. propaganda. | |
| Why should we have that? | |
| I think that what they're terming as propaganda, if it's done right, if you're just telling the American story truthfully, Right? | |
| lot of people, right? | |
| So it's not about--and this is actually a lot of what it was originally, was founded during the Cold War, was to get out the American story. | |
| Warts and all. | |
| It's not the US is perfect. | |
| And in fact, when talking about how the working towards a more perfect union, the imperfections involved in that is also part of the inspiring. | |
| You know, even the U.S. isn't perfect, but it has these structures in place that the founders put in, these checks and balances, and so maybe, why doesn't our country have that? | |
| You know, how can we work through some of our problem? | |
| But second of all, it cuts through a lot of the propaganda that you're getting, the anti-American propaganda that you're getting, from The United Front organizations, for example, or things like that. | |
| We, I'm talking about sort of the free world, if Canada is free, have something that the CCP doesn't, which is we have truth on our side. | |
| So the more that you talk about how things really are, the better. | |
| It gives hope to honest people in other places that there is another model than this just continuous degradation of the institutions trending towards CCP-ification, where you can't trust your judiciary, you can't trust your police, you can't trust—the U.S. is going through some internal issues like that now, but the fact that it's all out in the open gives you hope. | |
| Cleo, one quick sec. | |
| We're going to take a break. | |
| We'll be right back, folks. | |
| We're back with Cleo Pascal, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, FDD. | |
| Talking about the Pacific and doge cuts as well, I can't help thinking back a little while when it was almost the case that the compact countries, the three countries in the Pacific—I'm going to get you to tell me all about them—that play an incredibly important part of the U.S.'s security posture in the Pacific, almost were defunded. | |
| Right? Almost were in the process of defunding. | |
| And so I was thinking about DOJ and how, you know, it's already been said that there's been certain things that have been cut that shouldn't have had some things have been brought back. | |
| Right? So maybe let's talk about, you know, that whole realm, like, because this is something we wouldn't, we wouldn't want to see that same scenario happen again, probably. | |
| Right. So just very briefly, the compact countries are Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. | |
| And the compact refers to a very unique agreement made between each of those countries and the United States at the end of the Cold War. | |
| This zone goes across the center of the Pacific. | |
| In the 20s and 30s, so the U.S. had Guam and the Philippines along the coast. | |
| But Japan controlled the center of the Pacific. | |
| These countries that are now Palau, Federated States of American Indonesia, Marshall Islands, and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana, so Saipan, Tinian, that whole zone was controlled by the Japanese. | |
| And Japan did, you know, civil-military fusion in the middle, and when it hit Pearl Harbor, it very quickly took the Philippines and Guam, and it cut the U.S. off at Hawaii. | |
| After 100,000 Americans died liberating those islands, so Palau is the Battle of Peleliu, Federated States of Micronesia is Truk Lagoon, Marshall Islands is Kwajalein, after the U.S. sort of fought and died across that whole area after the end of World War II, they said, we're not going to do this again. | |
| And a lot of the people who went to Congress had fought in that war. | |
| And so the question was, and this is a perennial question for the U.S., because the U.S. is actually not a comfortable colonial power. | |
| There's elements in Congress who consider, not only isolationists, definitely not comfortable with colonialism. | |
| So how do you make sure that the center of the Pacific isn't a threat to you while not being a colonial power? | |
| And the way that they threaded that needle was they set up the Congress of Micronesia, where representatives came from all across that region, and the end result was that what's now the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which is Saipan and Tinian and some other islands, voted to join the United States, and they became part of the United States. | |
| And those three, the other three countries, voted to go independent, but they signed this compact with the U.S. The compact ties So | |
| that's how the needle was threaded because along with that came US strategic denial. | |
| So the US can say, No other militaries can operate here and we can base here if necessary. | |
| So it's a very unique, elegant solution that was born out of blood and suffering of those Pacific Islanders and of the men, almost all men, who went into Congress to create this deal. | |
| The issue with DOJ is There's very little awareness of this. | |
| You're getting these machete cuts across the systems. | |
| It's not clear if they know how this is going to affect those relationships. | |
| So, for example, the post office... | |
| Right, that's exactly what I was thinking. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| The discussion is, you know, okay, cuts to the post office. | |
| The post office hates having to service the compact states because they lose money. | |
| Right. So if there isn't awareness, but they've been funded by Congress to do it, but if there isn't awareness of this relationship, then it might look like something that's easy to cut. | |
| Right. Because there's this awareness of this broader deal, right, that the U.S. gets this massive security perimeter in response for paying for this stuff. | |
| Yeah. And you don't want to end up like we did in the late 30s, where you've got These Americans, or American territories, sitting out on the edge of Asia, so Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, and nothing in the middle, because the PLA studied, Toshi Oshihara did a very good study on this, studied very carefully the Pacific War. | |
| And when you see, when it goes into a place like Sullivan Islands, you see it targets the same locations that, where there were bases or where there were runways. | |
| And in the Sullivan Islands, the Chinese are now They're rebuilding Henderson Airfield, which so many Marines died to protect. | |
| They're putting in ports. | |
| They're putting in Huawei towers. | |
| They're getting through political warfare and placement that has the potential to be switched very quickly from commodity to strategic asset. | |
| And they're trying to do that in these three countries. | |
| Two of them recognize Taiwan, so they have an added layer of defense. | |
| But they're still trying to do things like push in Chinese tourists. | |
| They did this in Palau. | |
| Build up the economy, pull the tourists, and say, if you don't de-recognize Taiwan, then we're going to continue with this crashing of your economy. | |
| That's also why, for example, they're very happy to let Chinese organized crime operate in these locations because it weakens governance, it increases corruption, and it makes it easier for the Chinese to exert political leverage. | |
| And so very briefly, a strategic denial. | |
| Can you define that for me? | |
| Sure. So that means that the US can block the militaries of other countries from operating in that region. | |
| So that whole center zone with Palau, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, the U.S. can say, we don't want Chinese warships pulling into port, for example. | |
| So that's actually the more important element, the strategic denial element, than the sort of emplacement element. | |
| Keeping the area Clean of aggressive foreign militaries and allowing that ability to freely move back and forth across the region. | |
| If I may, the problem with that in a Chinese context is they use non-military ships in a military capacity. | |
| So their fishing fleet can actually be just as destructive for the security of a country as one of their warships. | |
| I would argue for the expansion of the definition of defense and security of the Compacts of Free Association well beyond kinetic warfare. | |
| So that includes these unrestricted warfare elements that we're seeing the Chinese employ in the area. | |
| So I would say bribery, Going after corruption, getting rid of those Chinese organized crime gangs that do the sort of foot soldier work of some of the CCP infiltration activities, that should all be considered going after or be the responsibility the U.S. has to secure the defense and security of the compact states. | |
| Well, Cleo, this has been another fascinating discussion. | |
| I always learn so much when I speak with you. | |
| Any final thought as we finish? | |
| I think that a good chunk of what we're talking about now may be out of date in three months. | |
| Things are moving so quickly. | |
| And I'm hoping that discussions like these, that that can inform the debate, which you do so well. | |
| Make sure that when the scalpel is applied, it doesn't nick an artery. | |
| Well, Cleo Pascal, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Always, always great to see you. | |
| Thank you all for joining Cleo Pascal and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. |
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