Since January, the world has watched the United States retreat from global leadership, swapping a foreign policy based on long-held, bipartisan principles for one grounded in transactional relationships. This dramatic shift has included the sudden cancellation of foreign aid programs, the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the rollout of an "America First" foreign policy that has shocked and alienated some of the United States' closest allies.
Amid this shift, onlookers have debated whether soft power—the ability to advance interests by attraction rather than coercion or payment—is an idea whose time has passed. Yet soft power enables the United States to set the agenda in world politics, a powerful tool that will be essential in the coming decades.
Proponents of the continued relevance of soft power, including the late Joseph Nye, who coined the term in 1990, have argued that the Donald Trump administration's decision to surrender soft power will weaken U.S. alliances, reawaken fears of imperialism, undercut America's reputation for benevolence, and be a gift to the authoritarian regimes vying for global primacy. Others have questioned whether decades of U.S. leadership in development and global health have generated any soft power at all. Meanwhile, leaders from low- and middle-income countries have expressed mixed reactions to the United States' stepping back. Those reactions include both frustration at the rapid withdrawal of support and eagerness to build a new system in which the United States plays a less central role.
Amid this shift, onlookers have debated whether soft power is an idea whose time has passed
In the face of dramatic cuts, some proponents of foreign aid are pitching a new approach more narrowly focused on advancing short-term objectives, such as allowing Starlink to expand to new markets. But overcorrecting toward a fully transactional mindset could lead to less effective programs that fail to target the most pressing needs, undermining the prolonged strategic benefits of these investments.
In considering what comes next, U.S. policymakers should strive for a balance that maintains a focus on saving lives and promoting economic growth while maximizing soft power benefits to advance U.S. strategic interests.
Foreign Aid, Soft Power, and Self-Interest
Regardless of whether historical investments in foreign aid have generated U.S. soft power, they have saved millions of lives, and polling continues to show that Americans overwhelmingly support lifesaving foreign aid. One recent estimate suggests that U.S. foreign aid saves about 3.3 million lives annually. Another study found that full withdrawal of U.S. funding in global health would result in more than 15.2 million additional deaths from AIDS by 2040, more than 2.2 million deaths from tuberculosis, 7.9 million child deaths from other causes, up to 55 million additional unplanned pregnancies, and 16 million related unsafe abortions. Given the lifesaving benefits of U.S. foreign aid, the sudden disruption of support will have enduring diplomatic consequences.
Not all foreign aid investments will generate soft power for the United States. Nye and others have argued that four conditions are paramount: The aid is seen as largely altruistic; the U.S. role in providing aid is visible; the aid is effective at achieving its objectives; and the aid is aligned with the recipient country's priorities.
Not all worthwhile foreign aid investments will meet all criteria, as demonstrated in the following examples.
Altruistic, strategic, and targeted investments. On February 6, 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border. The same day, President Joe Biden authorized an immediate U.S. response to the earthquake and directed federal departments and agencies to support the Turkish government and humanitarian partners in Syria. Within hours, Washington deployed disaster assistance response teams led by USAID and announced an initial tranche of $85 million in funding. Within two weeks, U.S. financial support had increased to $185 million, and included 170,000 pounds of specialized tools and equipment, U.S. Black Hawk helicopters to support airlift operations, and U.S. personnel and partners, including urban search and rescue teams from California and Virginia.
The United States provided hundreds of millions of dollars of additional support to rebuild in the year following the earthquake. This investment was time bound and consequential, responsive to a clear request from the recipients, visible, and largely altruistic given the lack of an immediate threat to the United States. In addition to its lifesaving benefits, the earthquake response underpinned U.S. strategic interests in the region, including keeping Turkey anchored to the Euro-Atlantic community and maintaining regional stability amid the ongoing conflict in Syria. This acute investment both saved lives and advanced U.S. strategic interests via a humanitarian response—one of many examples.
Altruistic, strategic, and sustained investments. In 2003, when President George W. Bush launched the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Botswana's life expectancy at birth was 53 years, a decline of more than 10 years since HIV/AIDS first emerged in the 1980s. Twenty years later, after about $1 billion in U.S. support through PEPFAR, Botswana's life expectancy had increased to 69 years. This epic progress has transformed a generation in Botswana as well as the entire continent of Africa, where 90% of PEPFAR funding has been directed. Since its inception, PEPFAR has been effective and highly visible, implemented in partnership with recipient countries. Although the United States has faced HIV/AIDS as a public health threat, PEPFAR is largely seen as altruistic given its scale.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, African countries with more PEPFAR funding have the strongest opinions of U.S. leadership relative to countries receiving less or no support. Gallup surveys show that Africa holds the highest image overall of the United States, and approval for U.S. leadership experienced a bump following the 2003 launch of PEPFAR. In recent years, however, Africa's public support for China's leadership has exceeded support for U.S. leadership for the first time as China has become Africa's largest trading partner. Soft power generated from even large investments may fade over time when the recipient countries come to expect the contributions, as perhaps the case with PEPFAR. Efforts to evolve investments in response to changing needs could present an opportunity for additional lifesaving and soft power benefits.
Self-interested and targeted investments. In late September 2024, the U.S. government learned of a Marburg virus disease outbreak in Rwanda. Although Rwanda's health system is one of the strongest in the region, it had no experience in containing this type of acute threat. Within days of learning of the outbreak, the U.S. government stood up a response team [PDF], led by its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), deployed experienced epidemiologists, delivered testing supplies, and repurposed millions of dollars of funding to Rwanda to support the response.
Within about a week, the U.S. government had worked with the Rwandan government, the World Health Organization, and other partners to set up a trial and deliver experimental vaccine doses to Rwanda for immediate administration to health workers and others at high risk. In parallel, the U.S. government issued travel warnings to Americans planning to travel to Rwanda, which hurt tourism in Rwanda. The effective response by the Rwandan government, bolstered by support from the United States and others, contained the outbreak by December 2024.
During the response period, however, the U.S. relationship with Rwanda was strained by Rwanda's ongoing conflict with Democratic Republic of Congo and by the addition of U.S. travel measures. Nevertheless, the Rwandan government continued to include U.S. experts in the response, given their shared goal of quickly containing the outbreak. The U.S. government's investment was welcomed and effective, but largely not visible to the public and not seen as altruistic given the national security threat posed by Marburg. That investment, however, saved lives in Rwanda, opened a window for collaboration between the United States and Rwanda, and protected Americans from an acute biological threat.
Building Soft Power in a New System
As the aid-based system of the last five decades is disrupted, a new system will emerge in its place. Foreign aid investments that are aligned with country priorities and are effective, altruistic, and visible are most likely to generate soft power for the United States. But those investments will also need to align with a new system.
Many low- or middle-income countries have pushed for deeper partnership with the United States based on trade and investment, which points toward a future path for collaboration that is visible and welcome, has an impact, and brings value to the United States and its partners. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first African to serve as director general of the World Trade Organization, has called on African leaders to shift away from depending on foreign aid and focus instead on attracting investment and mobilizing domestic resources. The Africa CDC has released a plan [PDF] for "financing in a new era" that calls on African leaders to meet the 2001 Abuja Declaration [PDF] target of allocating 15% of national budgets to health, identifying innovative financing solutions, such taxes on regional airlines, and building policy and regulatory environments that will attract more private-sector investment. The world is changing, and the types of partnerships that are seen as valuable are evolving. So too will soft power opportunities evolve, presenting more possibilities for the United States to build allies and long-term security and trading partners. In the future, the investments most likely to generate soft power will be a combination of longer term partnerships based on shared investments and mutually beneficial initiatives, alongside shorter term, high-impact support to respond to crises or roll out innovations.
Given continued high levels of support for lifesaving programs by Americans across the political spectrum, one might wonder whether soft power still serves a purpose. Although transactional relationships could be useful in producing short-term narrow gains—similar to the threat of military action or withholding resources—soft power enables the United States to set the broader agenda in world politics.
The power to set the agenda or frame the terms of debate and decision-making on key foreign policy issues is important to advancing U.S. interests and not easily won through transactions or bilateral relationships. Coming out of World War II, the United States helped build the UN system, including the establishment of the World Health Organization. The move set the terms of decision-making on the global agenda for decades in a way that largely aligned with U.S. interests. As the world now faces numerous cross-border threats, from pandemics to climate change and conflict, the United States has a stronger interest than ever in shaping the agenda for decades to come.
