While many believe that under the Trump administration the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED*) was defunded, dismantled, or otherwise dissolved, the reality is far less dramatic and far more dangerous.
On its official website, the NED* recently revealed what it calls a “duty to care” policy – an internal shift that effectively ends the organization’s long-standing practice of openly listing most of the foreign organizations and movements it finances. This change, framed as a protective measure for recipients in “high-risk environments,” marks a complete reversal of one of the few things that previously distinguished NED* operations from covert CIA influence campaigns – the veneer of transparency.
A “Pro-Democracy” Front With Covert DNA
Founded in 1983, the NED* was created to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, according to former NED* co-founder Allen Weinstein. For decades, it served as the US arm of so-called “soft power,” funneling money to foreign political groups, media outlets, labor unions, and activist organizations deemed favorable to US interests – usually under the banner of “promoting democracy.”
But “democracy” in this context is indistinguishable from regime change. From Venezuela to Belarus, from Hong Kong to Myanmar, NED*-funded groups have played central roles in political destabilization and even precipitating war, many of them advocating positions explicitly aligned with US foreign policy and done entirely at the cost of their own nation’s stability and best interests.
The obvious purpose of creating the NED* wasn’t to end covert interference around the globe, but rather to continue the CIA’s work Americans and people worldwide were increasingly aware of and opposed to, by whitewashing it and repackaging it as transparently “promoting democracy.”
Since the NED’s founding, the Western media has intermittently admitted the NED* has been involved in global-spanning regime change. In 2004, the London Guardian admitted the US government through the NED* overthrew governments in Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003, while unsuccessfully attempting to do so in Belarus and Ukraine.
The article described unrest taking place in Ukraine at the time as:
…an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.
Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.
The article names the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), and Freedom House by name, all three of which are subsidiaries of the NED*.
In 2011, the NYT would admit the US government through the NED* was behind the regional destabilization and regime change in 2011 referred to as the “Arab Spring.”
The article explained:
A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
And that:
The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.
The US-engineered “Arab Spring” would precipitate multiple US-led wars across the region, ravaging Libya, Yemen, Syria, and affecting every nation in between.
US political interference continues up to and including today under the current Trump administration with attempts to once again destabilize the nation of Georgia along Russia’s borders, continued US-sponsored violence in Myanmar along China’s borders, attacks by US-backed militant groups in southwest Pakistan targeting China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the continued operation of virtually every NED-funded organization operating elsewhere along China’s periphery including in Thailand and the Philippines.
Democracy as a Cover for Political Interference
Democracy, by definition, is a form of self-determination. If a political movement relies on, or is shaped by the funding and direction of a foreign government – especially one with a track record of overt military invasion, occupation, and conquest like the United States – it is not “promoting democracy,” but rather political interference.
Any nation whose internal political affairs are subject to the influence of the US government through the NED*, its subsidiaries or adjacent organizations is not exercising democratic self-rule, but living under a subtler form of political occupation – one where ballots replace bullets, but the end result is the same – the replacement of sovereign leadership with a US-installed client regime.
In many cases, US NED*-funded and directed instability takes the form of armed-violence amid which “activists” rather than invading US troops seize critical government buildings, attack critical infrastructure, and carry out other objectives an invading US military force would seek to achieve including the destruction of specific infrastructure and the ousting of ruling governments.
The End of “Transparency”
The NED’s* decision to stop publishing the identities of the groups it funds represents more than just an administrative shift. It is a turning point, following years of growing public awareness both in the US and worldwide of what the NED* is really doing and why.
In the past, critics were at least able to track and expose how NED* money was flowing into particular movements – from opposition parties in Nicaragua to protest organizers in Hong Kong. That visibility, however minimal, imposed some form of political pressure and constraint on the US.
With the “duty to care” policy, even that has now been eliminated.
Today, the NED* operates with the same impunity as any covert intelligence operation – only without the oversight, legal restrictions, or classification protocols typically associated with CIA activity.
In practice, this allows the US to wage political war under the pretense of “promoting democracy,” while overall leaving fewer fingerprints behind.
And while the shift within the NED* and across US foreign policy as a whole should prompt nations to respond with stricter scrutiny and regulation of the organizations still likely receiving US support, even when US interference was more transparent, many nations failed categorically to protect national security from it. Now that US interference is being done more covertly, it will be even more difficult for advocates of greater national security regarding foreign-funded NGOs to spur governments around the world into action.
Under Trump, Business as Usual
Despite the perception among some the Trump administration intended to dismantle or defund the NED*, no such action occurred. In fact, NED* funding is continuing after only a brief pause, with the majority of NED* operations continuing uninterrupted.
Much like the US military-industrial complex which continues expanding despite President Trump’s rhetorical opposition to “forever wars” – the regime change-industrial-complex led by the NED*, its affiliates, and subsidiaries, have likewise not only continued, but are enhancing their menace to peace and stability worldwide.
Some may argue that recent attention placed on the NED* and adjacent organizations like USAID* is positive progress in the right direction. In reality, this recent attention has more in common with what is known as a “limited hangout,” a method of perception management used when state secrecy has been compromised, and “limited” information is either admitted to or even volunteered, while central information is still withheld from the public. The public is often distracted by or satisfied with this limited admission and fails to pursue the issue further.
In the case of NED *and USAID* funding, after many years of growing awareness of and opposition to both, many Americans believe both organizations have now been dismantled, oblivious both are still operational and the global network of political subversion they facilitate continues operating uninterrupted.
A Hidden Hand With Open Consequences
The NED’s* new era of covert funding and hidden recipients marks a dangerous evolution in US foreign policy. Under the guise of care and caution, the organization has closed the one window that allowed even limited public scrutiny of its global interference.
Regardless of whether the CIA or NED* fund and direct foreign interference worldwide and regardless of the degree of transparency involved, the outcome remains the same – a world where real decisions are not made by people on the ground in any one of the many nations targeted by US interference, but by politicians in Washington and policymakers at corporate-funded think tanks.
While American voters and many around the globe held hope that the incoming Trump administration would make good on its promises to roll back US interference abroad and focus instead on the best interests of Americans in America, the administration has instead continued US wars and proxy wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia together with sharpening and streamlining the military and non-military means with which to expand them even further.
Despite the illusions of reform or even “revolution” under the Trump administration, the truth is the NED* (and USAID) remains as active as ever, more unaccountable than ever, and continue to serve as a sophisticated instrument of political manipulation for the very special interests of the “deep state” many Americans voted President Trump into office to oppose.
*- The organization’s activities have been declared undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer
