Senator Shaheen on U.S. Soft Power and Competition with China

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on July 15, 2025. Watch the full video here.

John Hamre: Hey, good morning, everybody. We’ve got a few more seats in, and we’ll bring in more if we need them. And I just want to say a hearty thank you and a welcome to all of you for coming out this morning. I feel like, you know, you walk out the door and you feel like you’re putting your head in the oven to check how the brownies are doing. You know, it’s so hot, it’s just awful. But that’s Washington. But we’re cool here. And we’re going to – we’re going to be cool and comfortable. Thank you all for joining us today.

We have a real opportunity – a privilege, really – to feature Senator Jeanne Shaheen as our speaker. And we’re going to have a conversation. Senator Shaheen, she’s the only woman who has ever been elected both governor and senator from a state. And it’s just – it’s a testimony to her, you know, deep conviction about the important role the government plays in making lives better. And she’s devoted herself to that. And so it was with – and I said this – it was with some disappointment when I saw the announcement in March that she was not going to run for reelection in 2026. You know, I kind of know how that feels. I’m going through a process of transition myself. But this is – we’re going to miss – she’s a national leader. And we’re going to – we’re going to miss that leadership in the Senate.

Senator Shaheen is first going to say a few remarks, and then we’ll have a short colloquy, because we have a limited amount of time. So could I ask you, with your very warm and enthusiastic applause, welcome Senator Jeanne Shaheen. (Applause.)

Senator Jeanne Shaheen: Well, thank you very much, John. And thank you all for joining us this morning. My staff, very dutifully, gave me prepared remarks that I could deliver. But we don’t have much time and I figured it’d be much more fun just to go right into the question and answer.

I do have to correct you a little bit though, John. While I am the first woman who has been both governor and senator, there are now three of us. And the interesting fact is that we’re all from New Hampshire. (Laughter.) So it really says something about New Hampshire voters, I think, more than us.

But thank you for having me. This report, I think, is significant because it lays out the policy decisions that have been made by the Trump administration since the president took office. And it does it in a way that I think give us time to reverse some of these policy decisions, if we can get support to do that. You know, one of the things that I think there has been strong bipartisan support for, since I got to the Senate, actually, and it’s increased in recent years, has been the idea that the biggest threat to the United States, to democracies, is China. It’s a threat both economically and it’s a threat militarily. That is a perspective that the Trump administration claims to share, but what we have seen since Donald Trump took office is a series of decisions that actually undermine our ability to compete with China and to stem the threat that it poses to not just the West but to democracies everywhere.

This report is done by the minority staff of the Foreign Relations Committee. It is the result of extensive research, of hundreds of thousands of miles of travel by staff, and of meetings with officials from all over the world, actually. And as I said, I think it lays out in very stark terms the case for why we need to reverse so many of the policies of the Trump administration, whether it’s the tariffs that are aimed at our allies and partners, the dramatic cuts to foreign assistance – 84 percent of foreign assistance has been cut since Donald Trump took office – the reversal of participation in international bodies, which undermines our ability to play in the global environment, the cutbacks in the information space, which allows us to counter Chinese propaganda. I mean, there are so many things that are detailed in this report that show why we need to reverse course.

So thank you for having me. I look forward to our discussion this morning. And I hope that – of course, I brought copies of the report. (Laughter.) So this is for you, John.

Dr. Hamre: Thank you.

Sen. Shaheen: I know you can get it online, but we wanted you to have the official copy. And I hope that folks will look at it and think about how we need to respond.

Dr. Hamre: Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

Let me say, you know, CSIS is a bipartisan or nonpartisan think tank, and so I want to let you know that we’ve reached out to Republican senators and members of the House if they want to have an opportunity to comment on this.

But it is an important message that you’re bringing, and I think we ought to explore it. That’s why we decided it was important for us to host this.

But before I get into the content, let me just ask, you know, you – as you were a governor, you’re a senator – you have to stand up in front of people and explain complex things. How do you talk to your constituents about why America needs to have an active dimension of – you call soft power, this both development assistance, you know, the engagements with the rest of the world. Why – how do you talk to your citizens to explain why that’s important?

Sen. Shaheen: Well, I’m fortunate, because New Hampshire has a lot of people who are former Peace Corps volunteers, former State Department officials. We have a big defense-industrial base that recognizes the importance of national security to the country. But I also talk about the way that we are affected here at home by what happens abroad and the fact that foreign assistance has made up only about 1 percent of the U.S. government’s budget. And most people think it’s much bigger than that, because some people have, like Elon Musk and his chainsaw, have used it as a real whipping boy for whatever their concerns are.

So I talk about the connection to global health, that diseases don’t stop at borders. And anybody who lived through the Ebola scare, as we’ve looked at what’s happened with bird flu, as we think about COVID and the impact of COVID, people understand that that’s the case. People understand the economic implications when intellectual property is stolen by China and there’s no one to try and recoup that.

People understand, when you talk about how many people in the United States are victims of fraud that is being conducted in Africa, in Asia and other parts of the world against the United States and Americans and the fact that the Trump administration is dismantling the unit that helps to go after those fraudsters who are bilking Americans of billions of dollars. So when you make that case, people understand that.

Dr. Hamre: You’re a very unusual senator. You’re on the Appropriations Committee. You’re on the Armed Services Committee. You’re ranking on the Foreign Relations Committee, Small Business Committee. That’s probably the most important for back home.

Sen. Shaheen: For New Hampshire.

Dr. Hamre: (Laughs.) For New Hampshire. But, so let me just ask, how – we’ve all been watching this reorganization at the State Department. I don’t know if you’ve yet had a chance to hold hearings or to dig into it. Do you have any initial thoughts about this reorganization that’s underway?

Sen. Shaheen: Well, I wouldn’t call it a reorganization because reorganization assumes there is a thoughtful, strategic process that’s in place. No business would do what the DOGE boys and Elon Musk and this administration have done to the federal government, whether we’re talking about the State Department or any other agency.

There has been really very little thought into what is trying to be accomplished, whether it’s really going to save any money – and, by the way, I would argue that it doesn’t. It’s not saving any money. And what the outcome is going to be, how we’re going to be more efficient and effective as the result.

Listen, I was governor. I know that we can always make state and public agencies more effective. We worked really hard on that. But you don’t do that by just coming in and arbitrarily cutting people and cutting programs. You do that by assessing what’s effective, what’s making a difference, what’s in the interest of the American people, of our economy, and none of that has been taken into consideration.

Dr. Hamre: When I looked at your website this morning and the first thing it says at the top is that you reach across the aisle. What’s been the nature of your conversation with your counterparts on the Foreign Relations Committee about this report?

Sen. Shaheen: You know, we just released it yesterday so I haven’t had a chance to speak at length with my colleagues. I think what I will hear is that most of the Republican members of the Foreign Relations Committee – not all of them – but agree with much of what’s in there.

One of the areas, for example, that I have had a number of conversations with my Republican colleagues about has been the PEPFAR program, something started, as you all know, by George W. Bush when he was president. It’s been very effective in saving millions of lives and that’s being, essentially, discontinued under the Trump administration.

All of the prevention aspects of the program are being eliminated and I know that my Republican colleagues don’t support that. I’ve had a number of conversations; they would like to see that funding restored. That’s one of the things that’s being rescinded as part of the rescissions package this week.

But you know, sadly, they’re afraid of Donald Trump and most of them are not willing to do anything publicly.

Dr. Hamre: You say this rescission package is going to be probably later this week. Will the rescission – will the Senate uphold the rescissions, do you think, or are you going to say no? 

Sen. Shaheen: Well, sadly, I don’t think the votes are there to kill it. So whether we can improve it I think remains to be seen.

Dr. Hamre: But, look, I’m sure that you and your Republican colleagues would agree broadly about the centerpiece of your – of this report and that is the way China is playing a game and winning on the global stage.

Would you just share your thoughts about that? 

Sen. Shaheen: About what China is doing or about –

Dr. Hamre: About what China is doing, how successful they are, where are they succeeding where we’re failing, and what we should be doing.

Sen. Shaheen: So within days of the dramatic – the closure of USAID and the dramatic cuts to foreign assistance China was already labeling the United States as the unreliable partner as they talked to countries, particularly in the Indo-Pacific but all over. 

Within months they started moving in and picking up programs that we had discontinued funding for. They have – while we are talking about reducing our diplomatic footprint, China is expanding theirs. You know, I was just in France for the Paris Air Show. New Hampshire has a big aerospace industry. And we met with the embassy officials in France. And what they told us is that they are seeing – they saw the biggest presence of China at the air show that they had ever seen, that they have just opened three consulates in France, and that there are over 20 Confucius Centers in France. So if they’re doing that in France, imagine what they’re doing in countries in the Indo-Pacific.

So we should be concerned about what’s happening at international bodies. For example, the Trump administration is zeroing out all funding for the U.N. Now, hopefully the Congress won’t let him do that, but, you know, pulled us out of the World Health Organization. China has dramatically expanded their middle level professional officers at the U.N. We’ve reduced hours in half. China’s got over 500 of those officers in the U.N. The World Health Organization, while we pulled out, China committed millions – hundreds of millions of dollars to the WHO.

Within days of the administration saying to Harvard and other universities, we’re not going to allow you to accept international students, we saw Hong Kong University immediately offer to allow those students – allow students in science and STEM subjects to come there and to get scholarships. So read the report. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of examples like that in this report that show what China is doing to expand its Belt and Road Initiative, while we are pulling back. 

Dr. Hamre: And the administration, I think rightly, has identified China’s domestic economic policies and exporting to the world as being a great threat and a great challenge, undermining American companies. And I know that you speak to the issue of trade in this. But I also don’t quite understand then why we’re going after allies, who are probably going to be the partners in confronting China. Have you had conversations with your counterparts in the Senate about this challenge?

Sen. Shaheen: Yes. And I think some of them – a few of them have spoken up on the tariff issue, in particular. And you’re absolutely right. We took a bipartisan delegation, including Senator Cramer from North Dakota, to Canada shortly after Mark Carney put his Cabinet in place, so that we can meet with the prime minister, meet with his top Cabinet officials. It was almost all senators from border states who see – in New Hampshire we see very directly the impact of the – not just the tariffs, but the rhetoric on our Canadian visitors who we depend a lot on for business, for tourism.

And we had good conversations, but the prime minister was pretty direct in saying, you know, we want to do business with the United States. You have been our best ally and partner. But if this is going to be the approach the administration takes, then we’re going to have to see what other options we have. It’s kind of like, you know, we have a lot of tourists, as I said, who come down to New Hampshire to go to our beaches, to go to the mountains. And those tourists are going other places this summer. And they may never come back.

And you’re absolutely right, to start off with a policy that goes after our allies and partners – who we need in this competition with China, and with Russia, and with other adversaries around the world – makes absolutely no sense. Especially when it’s allies and partners who don’t have a trade deficit. I mean, look at the president’s attacks on Brazil and what he’s talking about with tariffs on Brazil. We have a trade surplus with Brazil. So there’s no coherent strategy. There is no – as I said, no consistent messaging, no real effort to figure out what’s in the best interest of the United States and Americans, and what we need to do going forward.

Dr. Hamre: If I could – if I could ask, as you’re looking forward, do you see this fall, when the Congress appropriates funds, that the Congress is going to, you know, reinforce things that are being – that are being cut at this stage? Do you see – or do you see these cuts carrying through the appropriations process through the rest of the year? 

Sen. Shaheen: Well, I’m the ranking member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. We just got our bill through the committee in the markup with unanimous support. All the members of the committee supported the bill. It was very much a bipartisan product. But there were a couple of things in it that I’m really proud of that we got done.

One is we fully funded the WIC program. As you know, the WIC program provides food for –

Dr. Hamre: Women, infant, children. 

Sen. Shaheen: – women and infants. And as part of that, we also included the – there is a benefit that’s part of the WIC program that provides fresh fruits and vegetables which the Trump administration has tried to cut. We got that approved. 

We approved – we fully funded a rental housing piece that is very important to first-time homebuyers and low-income families to help them with the cost of housing. 

So we also increased agricultural research. Not a lot, but slightly. Not a lot because the agreement on the funding levels is less than I would like, but I think got a number of programs funded in a way that are important going forward that were not part of what the Trump budget proposed. 

So I think that shows that there’s a lot of agreement with our Republican colleagues about the need to continue to fund certain aspects of the federal budget. 

Dr. Hamre: That’s interesting. That’s encouraging. 

I thought the president’s visit to NATO was quite successful. I mean – 

Sen. Shaheen: Me too.

Dr. Hamre: Why don’t you – because you’re on the Armed Services Committee, and you know, how your thoughts are about NATO and its importance for us and also, frankly, our support for Ukraine. I mean, I think Ukraine’s –

Sen. Shaheen: Right.

Dr. Hamre: – fighting on the frontline of freedom. 

Sen. Shaheen: Absolutely. And I also co-chair with Thom Tillis from North Carolina something called the Senate NATO Observer Group that we restarted in 2018 in response to what we thought was the Trump – the first Trump administration’s effort to withdraw from NATO. And it’s bipartisan. We are dedicated to try and ensure that members of the Senate know what’s happening at NATO and how we can continue to support what NATO does. 

Chris Coons from Delaware and I went to The Hague for the NATO summit. We had really good meetings with a lot of our European leaders. We met with President Zelensky, who was very – I think did a really good job of talking about the importance of – and his appreciation for what America has done to support Ukraine. He had a positive meeting, as you probably know, with President Trump while he was there. 

I think Mark Rutte, the new secretary general of NATO has been masterful. He was masterful in helping shepherd through the 5 percent increase in defense spending for NATO countries and in structuring that summit in a way that encouraged very positive participation by the United States. 

Our new ambassador to NATO, Matt Whitaker, has been very supportive of NATO, of the Article 5 commitment, and of continuing troops on the eastern part of Europe. 

So I think it was a very important summit. And what we heard from our European counterparts is their commitment to continuing to support Ukraine. I think the announcement yesterday from President Trump to provide the weapons that NATO will pay for was a positive step forward. Hopefully, that will be followed by action. But I think that’s good news, and he seems to at least be acknowledging that he’s been played by Vladimir Putin since he took office. And I think that’s probably a good sign as we think about what we need to do to continue to support Ukraine. 

Dr. Hamre: Just – I’m sure everybody knows the NATO observer group was launched by Kay Bailey Hutchison, former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, when she was ambassador in the first Trump administration. And she was the one that led to ask for it. And so I think it is a strong sign that there’s bipartisan support for NATO. 

Maybe a little bit edgy question. Do you think it’s legitimate for us to take Russia’s – you know, their deposits in banks in the West and use it to pay for weapons to help defend Ukraine? You know, Russia’s – we’ve not done this before. It’s edgy question. 

Sen. Shaheen: We have not. And I know there’s a lot of concern in Europe about what using the seized Russian assets would mean for financial markets. I happen to think it’s fine. If Russia’s going to violate international law and attack a country for no reason at all, destroy its infrastructure, kill its citizens, then I think they need to be held accountable. And I think this is one way to do that. 

Now, the decision by European leaders has not yet been made to actually use the assets themselves. What they’re using is the interest on those assets. So they’ve been seized so Russia can’t use them, but I hope that we will determine that, in fact, we are going to use those assets to help rebuild Ukraine. 

And again, I think Russia’s got to be held accountable here. We can’t let nations just act as rogues and go about seizing any other country they want to just because they don’t – they think that they’re part of their history or because they don’t like the current leader or whatever reason, because they want their critical minerals. 

So I think it’s something that I hope will continue to move forward. Obviously it’s going to take a lot of discussion and opportunity for countries to raise the concerns. 

Dr. Hamre: When Russia was supporting Assad in Syria, they intentionally targeted hospitals. They intentionally targeted clinics; 450 documented episodes where Russian airplanes attacked health facilities. And they’re doing the same thing now in Ukraine. I think this is a different kind of an opponent. I think we should be honest about that. And to be quibbling over whether, you know, it’ll affect capital markets, I’m sorry. This is obscene. 

Sen. Shaheen: I agree. And they’ve also kidnapped –

Dr. Hamre: Kids.

Sen. Shaheen: – thousands of Ukrainian children that are going into Russia. You know, when – I was in Ukraine in February, and we visited the largest children’s hospital in Kyiv that had been targeted by the Russians, and we talked to some of the families who were in that hospital, talked to the citizens. And actually, after that strike, the whole – it seemed like the whole city turned out to try and rescue the people who were buried by the strike, to try and help the people who were hit. 

I think the Ukrainians have shown the world what courage looks like. And the innovation and technological advancements that they have developed with their army are lessons for us in the United States. It’s one of the things that we are benefiting from. And, you know, what we don’t want is to have the largest, most experienced, most highly technical army in Europe become part of Russia’s orbit. That is not in Europe’s interest, but it’s also not in America’s interest. 

Dr. Hamre: So is it – could I conclude that you’re likely to support the resolution that is – that Senator Graham has worked up for –

Sen. Shaheen: Yes, the Graham –

Dr. Hamre: – super-tariffs? 

Sen Shaheen: The Graham-Blumenthal sanctions bill. I’m a cosponsor of that. We have 85 bipartisan cosponsors in the Senate. I think we should have taken it up months ago and pass it, because I think it sends a very strong message. 

And one of the things that I thought was positive about the president’s statement yesterday was he talked about the importance of secondary sanctions on those countries that are helping to fund Russia’s war machine – China, India, Brazil. And I think we need to send a very strong message to them that we don’t think that’s acceptable and we think they need to pay. 

Dr. Hamre: This is why I’m going to miss you in the Senate. I just – gosh, we have just – now it’s only two minutes left and why don’t I just ask you your concluding thoughts? 

I mean, you’ve had such a distinguished career in public service. This is a pivotal time. There are a lot of people questioning whether government really is helpful and, you know, you hear this too when you go home. 

Your thoughts as you look back over your career and a message for the rising generation that’s here? 

Sen. Shaheen: Well, one of the things that I think we’ve got to do is to engage and listen to young people, to the next generation, about what their concerns are and what they think government needs to do to respond to those concerns, and I appreciate that a lot of, particularly, young people are very frustrated with where we are right now. 

But I try and point out the positive things that we have been able to do and continue to do and the fact that we need that energy – we need that optimism and excitement that young people can bring to the process, and we’ve got to ensure that they continue to understand why they’re so important to the process.

You know, one of the things I think we did that has been a mistake was we eliminated civics education in most curriculum and that was not a good thing to do because a lot of times people don’t understand the connection.

We were having this conversation in New Hampshire when I was home over the weekend about the fact that the reconciliation bill that we just passed in Congress is going to dramatically shift costs from the federal government to the state and local level, and in New Hampshire, because we fund so much of government at the property tax level, that is going to raise property taxes for people all across the state. 

And we need to help connect the dots for people. We need to engage with people in those conversations and it’s up to us as political officials to help make those conversations happen. You know, we built a new middle school in my kids’ and grandchildren now – my grandchildren’s school district where we live and they had over a hundred and thirty meetings. This is not a big school district but neighborhood meetings with folks to talk about why it was important to build this middle school and why it was worth raising people’s taxes to do that. 

That’s what we’ve got to do, and we’ve all got to get back to that and, you know, the idea that the most important role in a democracy is a citizen is absolutely correct. You know, it’s up to all of us to have these conversations with people.

You know, people ask me today, what do you tell people who are frustrated with the Trump administration. I said, my new motto is call everyone. You know, call your legislator. Call your local official. Call the governor’s office. Call your federal delegation.

Talk to your social media group. Tell everybody what your concerns are and that you think they need to get engaged in this conversation because that’s how – what makes democracy work, and unless we’re all willing to engage in it it’s not going to work very well.

Dr. Hamre: Well, that’s – what a benediction. I mean, that’s saying don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. You have a chance to shape your future.

We’re going to – we’re so grateful you’re in the Senate and you deserve a new phase of your life where you can be with your grandkids but we’re going to miss you in the Senate. 

Sen. Shaheen: Well, thank you. I’m, obviously, going to miss it too but, you know, it’s time for the next generation, right? 

Dr. Hamre: OK. Well, please – with your applause, please thank Senator Shaheen. (Applause.) 

Enoh T. Ebong: Thank you all for being here. And thank you to the senator for those really insightful remarks and the conversation. We are going to take just a very short break. We will be back in a few minutes to continue the conversation with the panel of our experts. So don’t go away. Thank you.

(Break.) 

Victor Cha: OK, good morning, everyone. So, my name is Victor Cha. I’m president of Geopolitics and Foreign Policy here at CSIS and professor at Georgetown. We just had an excellent session with Dr. Hamre and Senator Shaheen, a wide-ranging session. And in this one, we’re going to go to experts and dig a little deeper, in particular, on the whole question of American soft power. Joe Nye, who was a trustee here at CSIS, was renowned for the work he did – the academic work that he did on soft power. And we are clearly in the midst of a paradigm shift when it comes to this particular aspect of American power and diplomacy. So I think we’re in store for an excellent discussion. I’m going to turn it over to our president of our Human Development Department, Enoh Ebong, to take us through the conversation. So thank you very much, Enoh.

Ms. Ebong: Thank you very much, Victor. Do I have this on? Yes. Thank you very much for that. And good morning and welcome again. Thank you all for being here. As Victor said, I’m Enoh Ebong, the president of the Global Development Department here at CSIS. Very pleased to have collaborated with Geopolitics and Foreign Policy and also our Congressional Department to bring this event together.

So as many of the speakers, the senator, John Hamre, Victor just now have indicated, the landscape of U.S. soft power has inexorably changed over the last few months. You know, there’s been disruption, at least putting some programs in abeyance, a lot of dislocation. So it’s difficult sometimes, in the context of all of that, to really think about framing a way forward. But it’s incredibly important to do that at this point.

So we want to today look and delve a little bit deeper as to what the landscape means for the future of U.S. soft power. How really can we leverage, actually, tools and skillsets that have been developed over decades in this moment, and beyond? How do we think of recipients as partners and understand and meaningfully engage with their vision for going forward? And then, of course, how do we understand the CCP’s expansion in this space? And what actually can we learn from it? So that’s what we’re going to do a little bit of discussion around today.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this expert panel. And I’ll do so quite immediately and quickly. To my left here is Michael Schiffer, who is a former assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau of Asia. Also earlier in your career served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia. Next to Michael is Jim Richardson, who is the executive chairman of the Pompeo Foundation, and previously served as the director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the Department of State during the first Trump administration. And then, of course, rounding out the panel is Henrietta Levin, who’s a senior fellow and Freeman Chair in China Studies here at CSIS, and, of course, held very senior positions focused on China, both at the National Security Council and the State Department. So welcome to you all.

Let’s dive in, and really just, first of all more broadly, you know, the goal of soft power has always been to attain a desired objective. The senator outlined many of them in both the conversation and the report. I would also add, to combat the influence of our rival partners, to avoid the costs of boots on the ground, and also to open markets for U.S. companies and our business interest. I think we can all agree that some of these objectives and successes have not always been clearly articulated, communicated, or understood.

So I think the question arises, how can we more effectively make the connection between soft power, foreign assistance, any of the elements of it, and our national security, our economic security, the very goals that have been the point of all of this? And I want us all to, if we can, have a conversation. So we’ll start in the order now, but please, as we continue, feel free to jump in. Why don’t you start us off, Michael? 

Michael Schiffer: Sure. Well, thank you all for joining us this morning. And thank you for the kind introduction. I guess I’m going to start by being a bad guest and biting the hand that feeds us, and suggest that the first step is we need to stop using the term “soft power.” I completely understand, as an analytical perspective for academic purposes, why it’s a useful distinction. But as a matter of political communication – and I think we’ve seen the cost of this over the past several months – there’s an implication that soft power isn’t real power, right. And if it’s not real power, then why do we support it? Why do we do it? Why are we pursuing it? 

And so I would suggest that we need to be thinking much more clearly simply in terms of what are the tools in our national-security toolkit, be they foreign assistance and development, humanitarian assistance, diplomacy, military security, or now technology? And how do we use those tools in cost-effective ways to achieve our foreign-policy purposes? And that’s not just sort of narrowly pursuing interests, but for the United States, I would offer that pursuing, safeguarding and expanding our values, being that bright city – shining city on a hill, right. That is also baked into our DNA. 

And so I think that shift from distinction between soft power, which then allows it to get marginalized and ghettoized and not receive political support, and the rest of the suite of U.S. national-security tools, I think that is essential. And then we can have a real discussion about, given the effect that we’re seeking to have in different parts of the world, given how we’re looking to promote our interests and our values, what’s the right tool to draw on? What’s going to be effective? What’s going to create that – you know, have the influence that we’re seeking to have? Or how do we get the different pieces, right, working together so that we have that what used to be called sort of the 3D, right – diplomacy, defense and development – approach, where the different elements are leveraging each other. 

And then we can also have a much better discussion with the American people – and I worked up on Capitol Hill as well, so I am keenly aware of the importance and necessity of being able to explain to taxpayers where their tax money is going – what the return on investment is on the different elements, different tools, that we’re being able to explain to taxpayers where their tax money is going, what the return on investment is on the different elements, the different tools that we’re using to pursue our national-security interests. 

So I guess I would start with that. 

Ms. Ebong: Thank you. You have thrown down the gauntlet very effectively. It’s a really important point. 

And so I would ask Jim just to give your thought on that and go from there. 

James Richardson: No, I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. It’s great to be back here at CSIS. 

You know, obviously, I’m a conservative Republican. I’ve worked with Mike for a number of years in a number of different positions, and – but I couldn’t agree with him more. He’s absolutely right. We do need to be thinking about what are we trying to achieve, what is the right tool for that success, and then how are we going to resource and execute those tools. 

Foreign assistance is just one tool. And for us to call it – to distinguish it as something unique and special is almost to set it apart, allow it to create a life of its own. But unfortunately, it sort of – it’s not always the right tool for the right moment. And for us – and I think we almost asked too much of it, which then led to abuses of it that we saw sort of historically. And then I think we saw this opportunity to come back and to have this – be in the position that we are in today. 

So I do think, for us in this moment, we have to acknowledge that not all assistance programs were successful, but also not all assistance programs are designed to achieve every policy objective that we have. But at the same time, foreign-assistance programs can be very useful and impactful if conceived the right way, executed the right way, and implemented with people who actually want to share those objectives. 

So I think there’s huge opportunities for the American policymakers and thinkers to reimagine what foreign assistance can be, what it needs to be, and how it meets the new challenges of the changing world. The world is not the same as it was 25 years ago and, yet, I don’t know how many times we would be running the exact same programs in the exact same way for the past 30 years and getting marginal results.

Not to criticize those programs; they were run by wonderful people with great intentions and to the benefit of a particular type of group. But we really needed to have the opportunity to have a discussion about what’s next given technology, given AI, given where the world is, given the rise of China, as we’ll have a conversation with about, and reimagine how we can utilize these tools in order to achieve really important national security objectives of the American people. 

Ms. Ebong: Thank you, and I know we’ll come back to some of that discussion on the actual tools. I agree that foreign assistance was one – but one of the tools we have but I’m mindful of, you know, it’s been hard enough to grasp under one sort of terminology. How then do we do that with a number of tools? So we’ll definitely come back to that. 

Henrietta? 

Henrietta Levin: I would align myself strongly with the comments from my esteemed panelists. 

But I would just briefly add that, you know, within what has traditionally been considered the soft power toolkit really lie some of the United States’ strongest asymmetric advantages in its global competition with China.

I mean, within, you know, what we would think about as or what we would traditionally call soft power, you know, the United States can win over generations of, you know, young people in the Global South by supporting civil society, by supporting anti-corruption, by supporting small businesses in a way that, you know, China’s political system almost precludes it from doing in some way and there’s some elements of the U.S.-China competition that are going to be somewhat more symmetric.

For example, you know, China has long been more effective at deploying infrastructure assistance quickly at scale, doing big projects that are visible in a society at certain social and environmental costs but they can do it fast. 

And so over, you know, recent years, you know, the U.S. has tried to modernize our development toolkit to be able to do, you know, similar scale, similar speed, to be a real player in the infrastructure space and I think there was important progress on that under the first Trump administration as well as with the Biden team.

But, you know, if we’re just fighting China on its own terms, I mean, that’s really to surrender the incredible advantage that America’s open society provides to us in this competition, and so from the China perspective that’s part of why I think I end up spending a lot of time thinking about how the United States can most effectively invest in its soft power around the world and in its foreign assistance capabilities.

Ms. Ebong: So just following up on that then, before focusing in on China’s tools can we just lay out the distinctions a little bit more granularly in terms of what it is that United States does differently to China and how, perhaps, and whether that begins to be the formation of this not called soft power but new array of tools enhanced in some way, perhaps, as this opportunity gives us to move forward. 

How would you place and how would you describe in a way that, perhaps, gives us a sense of how we can leverage our tools that work effectively?

Ms. Levin: Sure. Well, let me just maybe give one example. Then I’m sure others will want to weigh in.

Thinking about the media space and how China and the U.S. have traditionally kind of accrued influence internationally, one very effective tool – and I think in the United States we sometimes underestimate how effective this can be – is media content-sharing agreements, where Chinese state television or state-associated media organizations will give, for free, programs to television channels, to newspapers, to magazines around the world – especially in the Global South. And we see this getting huge traction in Latin America and Africa and parts of Asia, because it’s free. And producing content is expensive. And it’s good. It’s fun. People want to watch it. You know, it’s not necessarily all propaganda. There’s entertainment materials that, you know, Chinese state media are making available around the world. 

But, of course, they are presenting the world through the lens, nonetheless, of the Chinese Communist Party. And so they are able to kind of present, perhaps, an optimistic view of Chinese society and China’s role in the world. And then if we think about, OK, how does the U.S. engage in the media space internationally, well, traditionally, we’ve had the Voice of America, we’ve had Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. We’ve supported these independent broadcasters and journalists, who are out there doing incredible investigative journalism in their own right, including on Chinese corruption, you know, environmental challenges associated with Chinese infrastructure projects. Traditionally the State Department and also USAID had supported further independent journalists around the world – you know, local news operations, sometimes just one or two people, who otherwise would have no way to engage in that work. 

And so as much as you see in kind of that scenario the U.S. and China both understanding and placing very significant prioritization on the information domain of competition, we go about it in very different ways. And, you know, I would argue that the Chinese approach does secure a certain degree of traction in certain media environments, but I would argue that the U.S. approach is vastly more effective because it’s so – when you’re empowering independent journalists to go tell their own stories, share their own views, do their own work, there is nothing more effective than that in, I think, associating the United States with the best of each of these societies, and a desire to improve and bring truth to bear.

But also, I mean, from the counter-China perspective, like I mentioned, a lot of – you know, if you’re – if you’re a journalist looking at economic issues in really any country in Africa, China is going to be a huge part of that story. And if there isn’t that journalism, then China is going to get away with a lot. (Laughs.) So it has been a little disappointing over the past few weeks and months to see the United States quite significantly step back from, or even in some cases dismantle, that asymmetric side of our own toolkit. Because we have to assume, I think, that China will continue to increase the scale of its own efforts to gain influence in that media space, and now in a much more uncontested environment. 

Mr. Richardson: I’ll just weigh in just a little bit. You know, I support the Voice of America. And I do think that we need to continue to invest in that. But if you go to Africa and say, you know, what is the American sort of media that you are consuming, it’s Friends, right? It is our private sector. And we’ll get to this later, but – I’m sure – but, you know, the opportunity of leveraging private sector in what is already being accomplished has huge opportunities. People around the world, they don’t want to consume Chinese media. They don’t want to go to the University of Beijing. They want to go to Stanford, right? They want to come here. We should allow them to come here. And that’s a big debate. But they want to come here. They want to consume American media, because it is the best.

And we need to think about ways for our institutions and our private sector to work together to really do something very powerful, because it is a huge asset of the American cultural – the American people that we just don’t necessarily even think about as policymakers. But if you go overseas, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And so I think there is huge opportunities to reimagine, at lower cost, at being effective, being impactful. But we do need to be creative in the way that we approach it because I do – look, I mean, I think that the American apparatus and American foreign assistance and diplomacy has really tried to be – to compete with China around the world. 

I started the first countering China initiative at USAID, clear choice. It was OK, you know. We did OK. We have done some good work trying to compete with China. But there are few places you can say, yeah, the Americans won, right? And we do want to win in this competition. And so I think looking – trying to be more creative, thinking about new solutions, leveraging private sector in a – in a less traditional way I think could really help us to achieve that, because our financial markets, our media institutions, our universities, these are the things that really set America apart from China and that they can’t replicate. 

Mr. Schiffer: Sure. Well, thank you all for joining us this morning. And thank you for the kind introduction. I guess I’m going to start by being a bad guest and biting the hand that feeds us, and suggest that the first step is we need to stop using the term “soft power.” I completely understand, as an analytical perspective for academic purposes, why it’s a useful distinction. But as a matter of political communication – and I think we’ve seen the cost of this over the past several months – there’s an implication that soft power isn’t real power, right. And if it’s not real power, then why do we support it? Why do we do it? Why are we pursuing it? 

And so I would suggest that we need to be thinking much more clearly simply in terms of what are the tools in our national-security toolkit, be they foreign assistance and development, humanitarian assistance, diplomacy, military security, or now technology? And how do we use those tools in cost-effective ways to achieve our foreign-policy purposes? And that’s not just sort of narrowly pursuing interests, but for the United States, I would offer that pursuing, safeguarding and expanding our values, being that bright city – shining city on a hill, right. That is also baked into our DNA. 

And so I think that shift from distinction between soft power, which then allows it to get marginalized and ghettoized and not receive political support, and the rest of the suite of U.S. national-security tools, I think that is essential. And then we can have a real discussion about, given the effect that we’re seeking to have in different parts of the world, given how we’re looking to promote our interests and our values, what’s the right tool to draw on? What’s going to be effective? What’s going to create that – you know, have the influence that we’re seeking to have? Or how do we get the different pieces, right, working together so that we have that what used to be called sort of the 3D, right – diplomacy, defense and development – approach, where the different elements are leveraging each other. 

And then we can also have a much better discussion with the American people – and I worked up on Capitol Hill as well, so I am keenly aware of the importance and necessity of being able to explain to taxpayers where their tax money is going – what the return on investment is on the different elements, different tools, that we’re being able to explain to taxpayers where their tax money is going, what the return on investment is on the different elements, the different tools that we’re using to pursue our national-security interests. 

So I guess I would start with that. 

Ms. Ebong: Thank you. You have thrown down the gauntlet very effectively. It’s a really important point. 

And so I would ask Jim just to give your thought on that and go from there. 

Mr. Richardson: No, I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me. It’s great to be back here at CSIS. 

You know, obviously, I’m a conservative Republican. I’ve worked with Mike for a number of years in a number of different positions, and – but I couldn’t agree with him more. He’s absolutely right. We do need to be thinking about what are we trying to achieve, what is the right tool for that success, and then how are we going to resource and execute those tools. 

Foreign assistance is just one tool. And for us to call it – to distinguish it as something unique and special is almost to set it apart, allow it to create a life of its own. But unfortunately, it sort of – it’s not always the right tool for the right moment. And for us – and I think we almost asked too much of it, which then led to abuses of it that we saw sort of historically. And then I think we saw this opportunity to come back and to have this – be in the position that we are in today. 

So I do think, for us in this moment, we have to acknowledge that not all assistance programs were successful, but also not all assistance programs are designed to achieve every policy objective that we have. But at the same time, foreign-assistance programs can be very useful and impactful if conceived the right way, executed the right way, and implemented with people who actually want to share those objectives. 

So I think there’s huge opportunities for the American policymakers and thinkers to reimagine what foreign assistance can be, what it needs to be, and how it meets the new challenges of the changing world. The world is not the same as it was 25 years ago and, yet, I don’t know how many times we would be running the exact same programs in the exact same way for the past 30 years and getting marginal results.

Not to criticize those programs; they were run by wonderful people with great intentions and to the benefit of a particular type of group. But we really needed to have the opportunity to have a discussion about what’s next given technology, given AI, given where the world is, given the rise of China, as we’ll have a conversation with about, and reimagine how we can utilize these tools in order to achieve really important national security objectives of the American people.

Ms. Ebong: Thank you, and I know we’ll come back to some of that discussion on the actual tools. I agree that foreign assistance was one – but one of the tools we have but I’m mindful of, you know, it’s been hard enough to grasp under one sort of terminology. How then do we do that with a number of tools? So we’ll definitely come back to that. 

Henrietta? 

Ms. Levin: I would align myself strongly with the comments from my esteemed panelists. 

But I would just briefly add that, you know, within what has traditionally been considered the soft power toolkit really lie some of the United States’ strongest asymmetric advantages in its global competition with China.

I mean, within, you know, what we would think about as or what we would traditionally call soft power, you know, the United States can win over generations of, you know, young people in the Global South by supporting civil society, by supporting anti-corruption, by supporting small businesses in a way that, you know, China’s political system almost precludes it from doing in some way and there’s some elements of the U.S.-China competition that are going to be somewhat more symmetric.

For example, you know, China has long been more effective at deploying infrastructure assistance quickly at scale, doing big projects that are visible in a society at certain social and environmental costs but they can do it fast. 

And so over, you know, recent years, you know, the U.S. has tried to modernize our development toolkit to be able to do, you know, similar scale, similar speed, to be a real player in the infrastructure space and I think there was important progress on that under the first Trump administration as well as with the Biden team.

But, you know, if we’re just fighting China on its own terms, I mean, that’s really to surrender the incredible advantage that America’s open society provides to us in this competition, and so from the China perspective that’s part of why I think I end up spending a lot of time thinking about how the United States can most effectively invest in its soft power around the world and in its foreign assistance capabilities. 

Ms. Ebong: So just following up on that then, before focusing in on China’s tools can we just lay out the distinctions a little bit more granularly in terms of what it is that United States does differently to China and how, perhaps, and whether that begins to be the formation of this not called soft power but new array of tools enhanced in some way, perhaps, as this opportunity gives us to move forward. 

How would you place and how would you describe in a way that, perhaps, gives us a sense of how we can leverage our tools that work effectively?

Ms. Levin: Sure. Well, let me just maybe give one example. Then I’m sure others will want to weigh in.

Thinking about the media space and how China and the U.S. have traditionally kind of accrued influence internationally, one very effective tool – and I think in the United States we sometimes underestimate how effective this can be – is media content-sharing agreements, where Chinese state television or state-associated media organizations will give, for free, programs to television channels, to newspapers, to magazines around the world – especially in the Global South. And we see this getting huge traction in Latin America and Africa and parts of Asia, because it’s free. And producing content is expensive. And it’s good. It’s fun. People want to watch it. You know, it’s not necessarily all propaganda. There’s entertainment materials that, you know, Chinese state media are making available around the world. 

But, of course, they are presenting the world through the lens, nonetheless, of the Chinese Communist Party. And so they are able to kind of present, perhaps, an optimistic view of Chinese society and China’s role in the world. And then if we think about, OK, how does the U.S. engage in the media space internationally, well, traditionally, we’ve had the Voice of America, we’ve had Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. We’ve supported these independent broadcasters and journalists, who are out there doing incredible investigative journalism in their own right, including on Chinese corruption, you know, environmental challenges associated with Chinese infrastructure projects. Traditionally the State Department and also USAID had supported further independent journalists around the world – you know, local news operations, sometimes just one or two people, who otherwise would have no way to engage in that work. 

And so as much as you see in kind of that scenario the U.S. and China both understanding and placing very significant prioritization on the information domain of competition, we go about it in very different ways. And, you know, I would argue that the Chinese approach does secure a certain degree of traction in certain media environments, but I would argue that the U.S. approach is vastly more effective because it’s so – when you’re empowering independent journalists to go tell their own stories, share their own views, do their own work, there is nothing more effective than that in, I think, associating the United States with the best of each of these societies, and a desire to improve and bring truth to bear.

But also, I mean, from the counter-China perspective, like I mentioned, a lot of – you know, if you’re – if you’re a journalist looking at economic issues in really any country in Africa, China is going to be a huge part of that story. And if there isn’t that journalism, then China is going to get away with a lot. (Laughs.) So it has been a little disappointing over the past few weeks and months to see the United States quite significantly step back from, or even in some cases dismantle, that asymmetric side of our own toolkit. Because we have to assume, I think, that China will continue to increase the scale of its own efforts to gain influence in that media space, and now in a much more uncontested environment. 

Mr. Richardson: I’ll just weigh in just a little bit. You know, I support the Voice of America. And I do think that we need to continue to invest in that. But if you go to Africa and say, you know, what is the American sort of media that you are consuming, it’s Friends, right? It is our private sector. And we’ll get to this later, but – I’m sure – but, you know, the opportunity of leveraging private sector in what is already being accomplished has huge opportunities. People around the world, they don’t want to consume Chinese media. They don’t want to go to the University of Beijing. They want to go to Stanford, right? They want to come here. We should allow them to come here. And that’s a big debate. But they want to come here. They want to consume American media, because it is the best.

And we need to think about ways for our institutions and our private sector to work together to really do something very powerful, because it is a huge asset of the American cultural – the American people that we just don’t necessarily even think about as policymakers. But if you go overseas, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And so I think there is huge opportunities to reimagine, at lower cost, at being effective, being impactful. But we do need to be creative in the way that we approach it because I do – look, I mean, I think that the American apparatus and American foreign assistance and diplomacy has really tried to be – to compete with China around the world. 

I started the first countering China initiative at USAID, clear choice. It was OK, you know. We did OK. We have done some good work trying to compete with China. But there are few places you can say, yeah, the Americans won, right? And we do want to win in this competition. And so I think looking – trying to be more creative, thinking about new solutions, leveraging private sector in a – in a less traditional way I think could really help us to achieve that, because our financial markets, our media institutions, our universities, these are the things that really set America apart from China and that they can’t replicate. 

Mr. Schiffer: Sure. I’ll be – I’ll be very quick because I know we have a lot of ground to cover still. 

You know, I guess I would offer, you know, in a – in a compare and contrast with the People’s Republic of China that, you know, our foreign assistance and development, our humanitarian assistance is an instrument of foreign policy, but it is not one that we approach in a purely self-interested, transactional, or instrumental way. We work with partners as partners, because we believe that a world where we have more capable countries able to work alongside us is one that is better for our – for our interests and values. 

You know, Victor just came back overnight from Seoul, I believe. You know, 30, 40 years ago – 40 years ago, poverty rates in the Republic of Korea were still in places akin to today’s sub-Saharan Africa. The development work that we did with the Republic of Korea enabled the Korean people to create what is now a world-class economy, a strong and capable security partner on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia, and a strong diplomatic partner for the United States globally – not to mention that they keep my Netflix queue fully, fully stocked, right? I mean, that is what a good development partnership looks like, and that is what a return on investment for the United States in what is sometimes disparaged as charity work can look like. 

Ms. Ebong: Well, I do think we have to be very clear, as you all have been so far on this, in terms of what the distinctive tools are, what has worked, and what we can build on. 

I want to, I think, shift a little bit into the soft power versus sharp power, perhaps, of the CCP, the China approach, and get an understanding. You’ve already, I think, Henrietta, given us a sense of some of the soft-power tools. Sorry I keep using that word, but – (laughter) – it will take some time, Michael. But, yet, we know that that is combined with, you know, an approach, certainly with respect to infrastructure development, that is very business-oriented, a focus on loans with very kind of severe terms. And so how do they use the two? And I think you’ve made an important point about partners, because we do have to understand how this is received – because it is – and then, you know, what does that mean for us going forward. 

I’ll put you on the spot again, Henrietta, just because there’s that comparison. But again, look forward to everyone’s contributions. 

Ms. Levin: Sure. So it is a really excellent point that Michael surfaced and you’ve raised again here of how the United States and China view partnerships, including in the development context. I think some of our development partners or the governments of the day appreciate working with China because China’s just there to do a project. A government asks for a project and China does it. China will build a bridge, China will build a road, though less so now because they have a little bit less on the fiscal-resourcing side to do that, but over recent decades. 

I think, though, when the U.S. approaches development traditionally, when we think about how we want to work with our partners, we are thinking about how to support the overall development path, trajectory, to build a strong and resilient society with that partner. We want to make sure not just that U.S. investment in a development project has a solid return on investment for the American people, but also that it has a return on investment for the people, and not just the people signing the contract in that host country. 

And so that means our process can be a little more slow because we want to get that right. But I think, in the end, what we get out of that time and care and investment in designing and resourcing projects that advance not just kind of a particular tactical problem but really deepen these overall strategic partners and support a longer-term development path, is, you know, the U.S.-Korea alliance, these incredibly deep relationships with very strong partners that have immeasurably strengthened the U.S. role in the world. 

And I think it’s harder to think of examples where China’s development assistance has had that kind of transformative effect on China’s strategic relationship with a country, though I feel like I also need to acknowledge some of the advantages for China of China’s model. So because everything is directed or at least guided by the party state in China’s political system, they have an incredible capacity for coordination and direction. And you could consider that perhaps their asymmetric advantage. 

So, for example, if China wants to build a military facility that the People’s Liberation Army could use in a country somewhere in the world, they will always come in, not just saying, you know, this is what we want to do on the military side; they’ll say this is what we can offer in terms of development assistance. This is infrastructure we can build. These are trips we can offer you to China, we can offer your students to China. What do you want? 

And it is traditionally more challenging for the U.S. to have that kind of comprehensive conversation. When the U.S. Defense Department opens negotiations with partners, it doesn’t know whether it can draw on the resources of American economic agencies, though I think over the past few years we have gotten much better even ourselves at that kind of comprehensive deployment of power. And Michael played a big role in this at USAID. 

But just one quick example that I think was quite powerful was with respect to the U.S. alliance with the Philippines. And this is a critical treaty alliance for the U.S., but also one that has had, let’s say, ups and downs over the decades, where there has been waxing and waning trust in whether the security partnership between the Philippines and the U.S. on both sides is worthwhile. 

And so we, during the Biden administration, tried to ask the question of, OK, how do we build real political enduring sustainability into the alliance as a whole? And so that means doing more on the security side, but it also means pairing security cooperation with visible and impactful economic and development assistance and humanitarian assistance as well. 

And so when we were engaging with the Philippines about, you know, opportunities to expand U.S. military cooperation with the Philippines, you know, open cooperation at new sites around the country, we were talking about the military side of that, but we were also saying what can USAID do? Can USAID open new projects to provide health assistance or education assistance or help with small businesses, you know, just in those same locations? Can we co-locate American assistance and power across that full spectrum, from soft to hard power? Apologies for the distinction. (Laughs.) 

And so, you know, I think that asking those questions allows the U.S. – or, has started to allow – had started to allow the U.S. to contest China’s ability to coordinate and direct with such alacrity. 

Mr. Richardson: You know, it is a real – it is a real challenge. I would say that China’s relationship with its neighbors is much more of a client relationship, right? This is not a benevolence. This isn’t shared objectives, often. Yeah, there is a port involved. There’s a bridge involved. But when some – when a vote happens in the U.N. that China cares about, guess what bridge doesn’t get built if that country doesn’t go along with it, right? There are real consequences.

And this is – this is really where you see a lot of the frustrations on the policymaker side, especially in-country where, you know, the United States is spending a billion dollars in South Africa every year, and gets the crap beat out of it by the government every single day. And China comes in, builds a bridge, and suddenly this is – you know, we’re in China love country, right? So it’s frustrating for policymakers, but from our standpoint today we really need to understand that there are real consequences to countries turning away from China, because China doesn’t have that same type of attitude about a long-term strategic objective, partnership, we’re all going to be in this together for the long term. It’s, what are you going to do for us today? How are you going to help us achieve Chinese objectives? And then they move out from there.

So articulating that to country allies, friends, potential friends around the world is very complicated and difficult. But what does make it more opportunistic is, for us, I think the opportunity is, you know, if you look at the potential reorganization of the State Department in creating the F cone, the foreign assistance cone, I do think that there is a huge opportunity to accomplish what Henrietta was just talking about, which is about unity of purpose for the United States government when it comes to negotiating and having conversations with friends and allies. 

We have had such a fractured approach to foreign assistance. And this is, you know, minus the DOD stuff. This is just on our own stuff, right? MCC, DFC, USDA, Commerce, Treasury – everyone’s doing their own thing. And you’re, like, well, the ambassador’s going to coordinate in the field. Well, that’s never happened. So I think there is a huge opportunity, if we get this right – and there’s a lot of ifs – there’s a lot of processes that would need to be built, along with some structure pieces – to create a unified structure – a more unified structure that allows for a human to go to country X and have that hard – have that conversation.

What do you need? The same way that the Chinese do. Let’s create a partnership sort of across the spectrum. Let’s bring in DOD. Let’s bring in DFC. Let’s bring in MCC. Let’s have somebody who has the actual levers of power, the authorities from the president, to go accomplish that. That could be really transformational if we really approach it the right way. And I think if you do create a much more unified approach to foreign assistance, I think that is a real opportunity. And then you bring in the fact that the United States does look for long-term partners, that we are not just interested in a transactional approach to – you know, that mineral rights, while beneficial, let’s do it, let’s do that too, but we’re really also interested in a whole spectrum of development programs that can really set that country ablaze. 

Mr. Schiffer: If I can just sort of agree and disagree with Jim on something and then underscore one of the points that Henrietta made.

I think Jim is absolutely right that we have a huge opportunity to transform the way in which we do development assistance, foreign assistance, humanitarian assistance, and the like. I think the challenge that we have right now is that for the first six going on seven months now of the Trump administration, we have not done that in a thoughtful way. Instead of thinking through what capacity do we need, what functions do we need to be able to fulfill, what technical capacity across our workforce do we need to maintain, we simply burn things down in a completely astrategic way. And that’s going to make it much more difficult now to do the sort of rebuilding and reenvisaging that Jim rightly is talking about. 

You know, and I couldn’t agree with him more on one of the points that he made earlier. You know, when USAID was created in 1961 it was at a particular point in time for a particular purpose.

If we were sitting down, all of us, you know, in this room and out there in the ether, you know, with blank sheets of paper today in 2025 to develop and design a foreign assistance, development, you know, humanitarian assistance capacity for the United States – development finance – it would look very, very different because we’re in a different world and we need to be thinking about that.

And then just to quickly underscore one of the points that Henrietta made, you know, when she was talking about the way in which Beijing approaches development assistance she talked about – and I just want to make sure that this didn’t get by anybody – you know, the advantages of their model for China, right, and that is, I think, the key point.

The way in which Beijing approaches development, and we’ve all said this in different ways, is for PRC purposes and ends, very narrowly construed. The way in which we have traditionally approached our development and foreign assistance is not solely and purely through a lens of narrowly conceived American interests but in a broader context that so happens to create a world that is congruent with American interests and values.

But it’s a very, very different approach. It can be more difficult to work, you know, as Henrietta pointed to, when PRC decides to drop a bridge or infrastructure projects on somebody’s head they can do it like that, and that can goose GDP for a couple of years.

But if it doesn’t have an economic logic to it – a free market economic logic to it, to one of the points that Jim made earlier – it’s not actually going to be sustainable development, and we’ve seen that in the data and the analysis time after time after time where Beijing is able to deliver quick development hits but after five or six years things just drop off.

Whether it’s in quality of infrastructure or whether it’s in economic growth itself just drop off the edge of a cliff, and we’re in the business or at least we used to be in the business of real, sustainable economic growth and development to create real, capable partners fully armored up with all of the habits of what a successful open society looks like.

Ms. Ebong: I think something that really sticks out to me, though, in this conversation is really understanding where our partners are because there has been evolution over time and I think it’s a critical piece to making sure that we can effectively leverage our tools with them.

I will also say on the, you know, partnership with China quite literally some of that infrastructure having come from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency where we once or twice had to redo or look at projects that had been done by China, I think the partners are willing to have a different kind of conversation with us on that.

Let’s segue – oh, go ahead. 

Ms. Levin: Just one point on that.

I mean, in my last role at the State Department I spent a lot of time talking to our partners in the Global South about their experience of Chinese development assistance, and I think you raise an important point that they know what’s happening.

I mean, there is a clear-eyed understanding of some of the, let’s say, drawbacks in the Chinese model, especially now that a lot of the kind of concessional long-term loans that were issued by China at the beginning of the Belt and Road Initiative are coming due when we’re seeing very little flexibility on repayment expectations.

But what those partners will say is, I needed a bridge – were you going to build it? Because I asked.

And so, you know, it just emphasizes the importance of providing credible alternatives to China’s model of development because even if there is a perfect understanding that this isn’t ideal, you know, for a country’s national development path, if it’s the only development path available they will take it.

Ms. Ebong: Thank you. 

I would like to go back to – Jim, you mentioned the private sector, and I think it is important to have some conversation in the time we have on that because we hear a lot about the role that the private sector can perhaps play in this environment. I think having worked very closely with the private sector from a standpoint of a government agency, the private sector absolutely is needful of an enabling environment in order to do business, in order to leverage all the tools that they bring. The private sector also does a lot of development, if I’ll say it, in a way in terms of capacity building, in terms of building what they need to be able to do business. So, given the environment that we have where we’ve had a lot of pullback, where many of the agencies that provided that kind of enabling environment – whether it’s through standards setting, helping with regulations, being able to help with technical assistance so that partners can negotiate, et cetera – what role do you see for the private sector in this context? And how, given the landscape, can they go forward here most effectively? 

Mr. Richardson: Yeah. Look, the private sector’s going to go where it’s wanted and where it can make money, right? So we have to be clear-eyed about that expectation. When you start dealing with the private sector – and I was proud to roll out the first private-sector engagement strat, or strategy, at USAID – it was – it was good. And I think – but I think there is way more to be done. 

You know, it’s hard to say how private sector and development’s going to go, to Mike’s point earlier. We don’t really know what the development strategy of the next four years is really going to look like. We don’t know how any of this is really going to be built up, sort of integrated, those types of things. So we’ll see what that looks like. 

But in terms of – the American private sector is the most powerful tool that the secretary of state has, that the president has in order to achieve strategic objectives around the world. People want to do business with the United States, they want access to our markets, all really true things. When you start looking at the developing world and the Global South and how the American private sector can sort of be a tool for good, I think historically we’ve really looked at, you know, can the private sector give me a check. And then we went to, oh, let – you know, I want to do – I want to do X; I wonder if I can get some private-sector partners to do some things around that. 

I think we really – my perspective is, I think we need to clearly understand where the private sector is, where it is acting, where it sees opportunities, but where there’s a barrier to growth. And I think looking at that in a much more transactional basis I think will be very – could be very – could be a real opportunity. We’re not going to be able to achieve every development outcome with the private sector. Again, I mean, I think we have this belief, oh, we’ll just throw more money at it and we can solve this problem. It’s just – historically, just not the truth. But I think we can solve a lot of issues if we think about it creatively, thinking about derisking, thinking about finding new opportunities.

But to your point, regulatory environment, land use reform, being able to sue people, you know, an honest judiciary, lack of corruption – these are the basic institutions that every private sector company is looking for. And without even putting a conditional loan on anything, right, providing conditional guarantees or financing agreements, those are the types of things that we could really – those are the types of actions we could really take, working with partners, in order to create opportunities for our private sector.

Ms. Ebong: Any last comment? 

Mr. Schiffer: Like, I – just to pile on. I mean, I – you know, the private sector and, you know, economic growth that is driven by the private sector, that is our development model, at the end of the day. You know, the question for the public sector, for the government, is, you know, where and how do we create the public-private partnerships that enable in developing countries, where there may be market failures; there may be, you know, as you offered, a lack of technical expertise; there may be regulatory questions or legal opacity, right – where is it necessary for the public sector to engage as well to help to create the right sort of enabling environment that then allows for private-sector investment to come in and drive growth? 

And that requires real expertise and real attention to meeting our partners where they are to be able to address the problems that they have. You know, for example, in the Pacific, where Henrietta and I did a lot of work together over the past few years, economies of scale simply make it difficult for private-sector investment to be successful unless you have the sort of derisking that Jim was talking about, unless you have the sort of technical assistance that is necessary to help develop bankable deals that we can then take to, whether it’s the Development Finance Corporation inside the U.S. government, or to JPMorgan Chase or whoever might be outside of the U.S. government. So getting that ecosystem up and functioning for public-private partnership is absolutely critical to be able to drive the sort of private-sector-led investment that we seek. 

Ms. Ebong: I think you’ve all – you’ve both sort of hit on an important point, which is there are actually tools within the government. I just recently came from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which does project preparation for large infrastructure projects, but in a way that is entirely sort of private-sector-driven. We would always say sort of we partner to be able to open those environments where they want to go. 

And there is a need for that, but I do think that we have to have a coherence. There was a lot of coordination that went on behind the scenes; it just was not terribly clear and not always consistent, to your point. So I think it is important to really elevate those and build on them as we go forward. 

Our time is just about out here, but I’d like to give you all an opportunity just to give a closing thought on how you think we can best, given the landscape that exists today, understanding that we have to build to respond to today, but also for the future, out of many of the tools, many of the points we’ve made here, where should we or how would you suggest putting our most important focus here to go forward? Is it by perhaps finding a case study – I know we’ve recently signed a peace deal in DRC and Rwanda. Is that a model for which we can build on all the aspects of development which will be needed to successfully achieve that end of critical minerals? 

Just if you would like to close out your thoughts by where the emphasis should be at this moment as we try to find a way forward. I’ll start with you, Michael. 

Mr. Schiffer: That’s good, because now this is going to allow me to steal something that Henrietta said earlier. 

I think the most important thing for the United States right now, as we think about these questions, is that if we want to be an alternative, and be an alternative to Beijing in particular, as they look to take advantage and rush to fill the vacuum that we’re creating, we have to be an alternative. And that’s not an alternative in a couple of years, once we’ve figured out how we’re doing our reorganization and realignment, but that’s an alternative now. And if we’re not an alternative, then I think the results are going to be predictable and tragic, both for the United States and for many of our would-be-otherwise development partners around the world. 

Mr. Richardson: I would just say that the United States’ global-engagement approach over the past 70 years has benefited the American people tremendously. And we can debate specific programs and agencies and structures, but that basic tenet – that an engaged America benefits the prosperity, health, and security of the American people – needs to be reinforced. And it needs to be done in a bipartisan way. We cannot walk away from being engaged. We cannot beat China by not fighting China. We can’t just walk back to America and say, we’re done, and we’re going to beat China by just staying here. We got to be out there. We got to be competing. We have to provide better solutions. We have to be tougher. And I think we, you know, American private sector ingenuity, media, culture, we have the tools in order to succeed. We just have to go out there and do it. 

Ms. Levin: So I would think about the question of what would it look like for China to succeed in overtaking the U.S. in terms of soft power? And I think the most plausible vision that China could present for itself – and it does often get in its own way in doing this – but I think China could argue that it is a model of incredible technological innovation that touches everyday lives in a way that makes life better. China can argue it is a powerhouse of green solutions, and maybe even something like climate justice, as the U.S. steps away from those ideas. And of course, there’s a bit of absurdity there in that China is also the world’s largest emitter of carbon, but I think it’s an image they present. And, of course, they have, you know, strong, stable state capacity, which appeals in some parts of the world.

And so if this is kind of the image of superiority that China might present to the world, then the next question is how can the United States most effectively tell and show its own story of the value of the rules-based international order, the value of open markets, the value of open societies? And, you know, we’ve already talked a lot about some of the most effective tactics in doing that. So I would just say that, you know, it is important to actively contest that narrative, and that conversation, and be in the fight. And that takes people. And it has been worrying to see, you know, of course, the dismantling of USAID, but also, you know, we’re meeting today, just a couple days after, you know, more than a thousand of State Department’s technical experts were eliminated from their roles, on the basis of what job they held in May.

And it does seem like – you know, talk about technology. You know, a lot of the State Department’s technology diplomats were let go. Or, if you think about kind of energy innovation – or energy dominance in the language of kind of the current administration – a lot of those energy experts were let go. So I do worry that even kind of if you have the best strategy in the world, you’ve got to have people to implement it. And I don’t know if that’s the case today. So I do hope that we see the federal government really invest in its own capacity to pursue whatever its chosen strategy is for executing this competition with China.

Ms. Ebong: Thank you, Henrietta. And thank you to all the panelists. I think that was a very important point to end on, in that we have – we do have the tools. But there has to be consistency in the landscape in how we deploy them. And right now there is, Jim, you’re right, unclarity as to where we’re going to go. But whatever the path, it has to be done in a way that we are equipped, staffed to do so.

So I appreciate all of the inputs. Thank you. And I want to thank all of you for participating, attending with us. And please join me in giving a warm thank-you round of applause to our panelists. Thank you. (Applause.) 

(END.)