Samantha Power, former US Ambassador to UN: Closing USAID was soft power suicide

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Interview – Samantha Power, Former US Ambassador to UN

Episode Title: Closing USAID was soft power suicide
Host: Katrina Perry, BBC World Service
Guest: Samantha Power (former US Ambassador to the UN; former USAID Administrator)
Date: March 9, 2026
Duration: ~24 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid conversation with Samantha Power, reflecting on her tenure as USAID Administrator and former US Ambassador to the UN. With the closure of USAID under the second Trump administration, Power offers a devastating critique of what she calls “soft power suicide.” She discusses the ripple effects on global humanitarian aid, the weakened role of the UN in today’s fractured world order, and the resulting opportunities for adversarial powers like China. The discussion also tackles U.S. foreign policy under Trump, the state of American alliances, and lingering hope for the restoration of American soft power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Closure of USAID and Its Impacts

• Power’s Condemnation

  • Refers to the decision as “soft power suicide” and "an enormous own goal for the United States' credibility” ([02:38], [15:35]).
  • Argues that dismantling USAID eroded decades of American people-to-people links that benefited US foreign interests and global goodwill.
  • “So many people you meet... got a scholarship in the 70s or the 80s because of a USAID grant and then they turn up as a minister... They have a very positive impression in the United States because of that relationship.” ([02:38])
  • Cites projections that “14 million people, at least... will die, who would have been kept alive if the assistance had continued to flow.” ([09:17])
  • Losses go beyond death tolls: “It's not just the lives lost, it's the lives worsened and in some cases destroyed by this... incredibly shortsighted and very unpopular decision by Musk, blessed and embraced by President Trump.” ([09:17])

• Broader Global Ramifications

  • USAID’s closure considered a gift to rival powers: “It hands over American soft power to China and to other actors that often don't have the interests of civilians in mind.” ([09:17])
  • China stepping in: “China has stepped into the breach in many of the places the United States has pulled back, in a non-transparent way, in a way that is hostile to the inputs of civil society, in a manner that often includes surveillance.” ([14:53], [15:35])

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2. The UN’s Weakening Influence & Security Council Gridlock

• Security Council Paralysis

  • Cites Russia’s actions (Crimea, Ukraine invasion) and US/China veto usage as having “really complicate[d] the business of the Security Council” ([04:09]).
  • The Council now faces “gridlock,” unable to effectively address crises like Gaza or global humanitarian needs.
  • “If the Security Council is the primary organ for maintaining, enforcing international peace and security, that's not an auspicious set of national interests as they're being defined and enacted.” ([04:09])

• Humanitarian Agencies Still Working, But Diminished

  • “The UN is still doing unbelievable work through its humanitarian agencies, much less of it, because the United States has cut so much foreign assistance. USAID was spending $14 billion a year... That number was cut by $10 billion by the Trump administration.” ([04:09])

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3. Gaza, Humanitarian Aid, and Policy Contradictions

• Humanitarian Dilemmas After October 7

  • Power describes the challenge: “It was immensely challenging to square that throughout... the obstruction of humanitarian assistance... but it's also the number of civilians who were killed.” ([06:50])
  • Aid workers and civilians suffered: “The attacks on civilians were incessant... The attacks on humanitarian aid workers, the killing of aid workers, the lack of accountability, the impunity around that.” ([06:50])

• US Attempted to Leverage Aid, but Ultimately Fell Short

  • Explains efforts to use military support for Israel as leverage for humanitarian breakthroughs: “What we tried to do... is leverage the military assistance that was being provided to try to secure breakthroughs on the humanitarian front. But again, it was extremely difficult to see progress.” ([06:50])
  • Once Trump took office, “almost no effort made to get humanitarian assistance” resulted in further deterioration ([06:50]).

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4. Losses Beyond Immediate Humanitarian Aid

• Cascading Consequences

  • “That doesn’t capture the end of power Africa, which had electrified 150 million homes for 150 million people. It doesn't capture what it means to take away a scholarship where a kid had just received the letter knowing they were actually going to get to go to college. And then that scholarship program is destroyed because Elon Musk, in a fever dream, decided to destroy the agency.” ([09:17])
  • US democracy programs: “98% of them terminated. That means no support for independent media, anti corruption organizations, legal clinics, counseling for women who've survived sexual violence.” ([09:17])

• Loss of Trust

  • On the symbolic blow to international trust: “It feels like just one big setup, you know, a feint almost that you rely on America and then we just pull the rug out from under you.” ([09:17])

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5. Criticism and Defense of USAID

• Power on Charges of Waste and Inefficiency
  • Strongly pushes back: “I have to keep my temper in check when I hear those criticisms because the most frustrating part of running USAID was that we were earmarked by the US Congress at around a rate of 96%.” ([12:56])
  • “Probably 30% of the rest of the work is on energy, electrification, democracy and governance... the kinds of small examples that might be cited, I'd say about 70 or 80% of them are just made up from part of the disinformation machine.” ([12:56])

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6. Prospects for a Reborn USAID and American Soft Power

• Hopeful about the Future

  • “I think there's no question the United States is going to have an assistance arm again in the world that is very robust. One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats can agree upon... is the importance of not ceding the world to China’s governance model.” ([14:53])

• Need for Renewed, Adaptable Foreign Aid

  • “I hope it will come with more flexibility to design from scratch what is needed for today and for 10 years from now and 20 years from now.” ([15:35])
  • Emphasizes importance of bipartisan Congressional buy-in to avoid a repeat of abrupt policy reversals ([15:35]).

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7. US Global Standing, Alliances, and ‘World Order’

• World Order “Ruptured”

  • Responding to the Canadian PM: “I would certainly be inclined to think this was a break from which it would be very hard to recover.” ([20:03])
  • Laments US “tariffs... imposed all around the world, but the highest tariffs... were reserved for our closest allies” ([20:03])

• Lessons from US Wars and Alliances

  • “I look back on the war in Afghanistan and see it very differently than President Trump has described it... It was a rally around the flag against aggression and for democracy and for freedom. That is a reason that we have alliances...” ([20:03])

• Challenge of Trust and Stability for Allies

  • “The challenge is going to be to convince our Canadian, our European, our East Asian allies to believe in our staying power and not to expect more whiplash from one presidency to the next.” ([20:03])

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8. Ukraine and the Shift in US Policy

• Europe’s Perception of Betrayal

  • “They have reason to be upset and to feel betrayed, just as Ukraine does.” ([23:19])
  • Withdrawal of US support seen as abandonment: “...a termination of US Aid programs that were helping Ukrainians repair energy infrastructure... to keep prices down in developing countries...” ([23:19])
  • “The only good news... is that the policies being carried out by the Trump administration are not broadly reflective of the views of the American people.” ([23:19])

• Long-term Damage to Transatlantic Relations

  • “It will take a very long time for them to forget.” ([23:19])

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Notable Quotes

• “It's referred to widely as soft power suicide. It's just an enormous own goal for the United States credibility.”
  — Samantha Power ([02:38], [15:35])

• “The destruction of USAID is not only one of the cruelest acts that I've seen in my career, but of course also one of the dumbest. It hands over American soft power to China and to other actors that often don't have the interests of civilians in mind.”
  — Samantha Power ([09:17])

• “That doesn’t even capture it. That doesn’t capture the end of power Africa, which had electrified 150 million homes... It doesn't capture what it means to take away a scholarship...”
  — Samantha Power ([09:17])

• “I have to keep my temper in check when I hear those criticisms because the most frustrating part... we were earmarked by the US Congress at around a rate of 96%.”
  — Samantha Power ([12:56])

• “The challenge is going to be to convince our Canadian, our European, our East Asian allies to believe in our staying power and not to expect more whiplash from one presidency to the next.”
  — Samantha Power ([20:03])

• “It will take a very long time for them to forget.”
  — Samantha Power, on European trust after US withdrawal from Ukraine ([23:19])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• USAID Closure & Soft Power Suicide: [02:38], [09:17], [15:35]
• UN Security Council Paralysis: [04:09]
• Gaza & Humanitarian Dilemmas: [06:50]
• China Filling the Vacuum: [14:53], [15:35]
• US Alliances and World Order: [20:03]
• Ukraine Policy Shift: [23:19]

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Tone & Language

Samantha Power’s tone throughout is urgent, often impassioned and deeply informed by her experience. She blends pragmatic analysis with heartfelt frustration and grief for lost progress, leavened only by a guarded belief in the American capacity to recover its role for good.

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Summary Verdict

This episode offers a stark warning about the costs—human, strategic, and moral—of dismantling foreign aid and turning inward, both for the world’s vulnerable and for American influence. Power’s testimony is both a eulogy for USAID and a call to restore principled, bipartisan engagement on the world stage. For listeners seeking to understand the stakes of American “soft power” and the cascading effects of its withdrawal, this is an essential, unflinching listen.

Transcript

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[Katrina Perry]

hello, I'm Katrina Perry, BBC News Chief Presenter, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC People shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid,

[Samantha Power]

then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united.

[Interviewer]

Do not make that boat crossing do not make that journey.

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Being born in America, feeling American, having

[Interviewer]

people treat me like I'm not.

[Samantha Power]

We're more popular than populism.

[Katrina Perry]

For this interview, I met Samantha Power, former American Ambassador to the United nations, who led the U.S. agency for International Development, USAID, until January 2025. Her tenure there ended with the inauguration of President Trump. Shortly after, funding for USAID was drastically reduced and the agency was effectively closed down, with any remaining projects transferred to the U.S. state Department. You're going to hear her thoughts on the challenges facing the United nations in today's shifting world order, as well as her devastating take on the decision to close usaid.

[Samantha Power]

It's referred to widely as soft power suicide. It's just an enormous own goal for the United States credibility. And again now with the Trump administration bombing here and there and with the tariffs and threatening Greenland and plenty of other Soft power suicide and hard power blunders afoot. So maybe the destruction of USAID now kind of recedes in people's memory. There's a lot going on, but this is lasting because the capillaries of this people to people assistance spanned countries, spanned generations. So many people you meet, you know, got a scholarship in the 70s or the 80s because of a USAID grant and then they turn up as a minister and then you go to them wanting to negotiate something else. And they have a very positive impression in the United States because of that relationship. That goes back.

[Katrina Perry]

Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Samantha Power.

[Interviewer]

I'm interested in your views on how you see the United nations now, how strong or weak it is, because again, we have those calls relating to Iran. We had many calls from the UN and various agencies calling for ceasefires, for help, humanitarian aid in Gaza. It seemed pretty ineffective in that scenario. How do you see the UN placed now for these kind of big global conflicts and tragedies?

[Samantha Power]

Well, I think you look at the Security Council as the kind of executive branch to the United Nations. And when you have a permanent member of the Security Council starting back in 2014, invading Crimea, eastern Ukraine, launching a full scale invasion in 2022, just four years ago, that's going to really complicate the business of the Security Council when a veto holder commits aggression of that magnitude against a neighbor. And I lived it firsthand the difference between pre Ukraine and post Ukraine how much less functional the Security Council became. Obviously, the United States on the Security Council also running a blocking motion for the State of Israel, not only after October 7th with the war that unfolded, but for many, many years before. And then of course, the People's Republic of China, making no secret of the fact that if not this year or next year, that it has as an objective taking over the country of Taiwan and all that will unfold in the wake of that. So if the Security Council is the primary organ for maintaining, enforcing international peace and security, that's not an auspicious set of national interests as they're being defined and enacted. And it's going to create what it has created, which is a gridlock within the Security Council. The UN is still doing unbelievable work through its humanitarian agencies, much less of it, because the United States has cut so much foreign assistance. USAID was spending $14 billion a year my last year as USAID administrator in managing an unprecedented number of humanitarian emergencies around the world. That number was cut by $10 billion by the Trump administration. And so that's tens of millions of people who don't have access to rations or to shelter or to medicine that did very recently, that doesn't look good for the un. So in both of these examples I'm offering, it's an example of countries, the states, powerful states that constitute the UN having the greatest impact on the performance of the UN as such, when you

[Interviewer]

were administrator of USAID in the wake of October 7th and very quickly afterwards, USAID sent humanitarian aid to Gaza at a later point, tried to get a maritime option up and running, which ultimately was unsuccessful after a period. How do you square that with the other side of the administration continuing to support Israel with military aid, causing some of the problems that humanitarian aid is then needed for?

[Samantha Power]

It was immensely challenging to square that throughout. And it wasn't just the obstruction of humanitarian assistance which USAID and our diplomats sought to create breakthroughs on every day with limited success, but it's also the number of civilians who were killed. You know, here's this horrific event, monstrous attacks carried out on October 7th. I met with the families of those who were killed in the kibbutzes, you know, near Gaza, and with people who had loved ones who had been taken hostage. But in the wake of that, the attacks on civilians were incessant. The attacks on humanitarian aid workers, the killing of aid workers, the lack of accountability, the impunity around that. And so what we tried to do, and President Biden and the whole team tried to do, is leverage the military assistance that was being provided to try to secure breakthroughs on the humanitarian front. But again, it was extremely difficult to see progress. I will say that when the United States transitioned then to the Trump administration and there was almost no effort made to get humanitarian assistance, where the blank check was written, the military assistance provided, then we could look back and see, okay, well, we actually, at least we got some assistance through. At least we were able to run a hospital where people were cared for or use our leverage to make sure that organizations like Doctors Without Borders or UN agencies were not expelled. So you could look back and say, okay, would that leverage achieve something? But next to the humanitarian toll, it felt very small.

[Interviewer]

And when we're talking about humanitarian crises, of course it's not just Gaza. There are many, many places in the world where there are millions of people at risk of famine in famine scenarios, displaced at risk of gender based sexual violence and so on since USAID has shuttered. And there are estimations from the Rockefeller Centre amongst others, that millions of people, more now will die because those programs aren't there. Five million children, they estimate by 2030. How does that sit with you, having spent so long as the administrator of that agency and so much of your career working for those missions, for those humanitarian causes?

[Samantha Power]

I think it is the destruction of USAID is not only one of the cruelest acts that I've seen in my career, but of course also one of the dumbest. It hands over American soft power to China and to other actors that often don't have the interests of civilians in mind. The estimates are 14 million people, at least that number is likely to go up, will die, who would have been kept alive if the assistance had continued to flow. But honestly, Katrine, that doesn't even capture it. That doesn't capture the end of power Africa, which had electrified 150 million homes for 150 million people. It doesn't capture what it means to take away a scholarship where a kid had just received the letter knowing they were actually going to get to go to college. And then that scholarship program is destroyed because Elon Musk, in a fever dream, decided to destroy the agency. Or never mind the girls education happening in parts of the world where the authorities or society would not have embraced that mission. But because the United States was there nudging it along, mothers and fathers were able to find a place for their, for their kids to go. Democracy is in retreat all around the world. Human rights are in retreat all around the world. US democracy programs run by USAID, 98% of them terminated. That means no support for independent media, anti corruption organizations, legal clinics, counseling for women who've survived sexual violence. In other words, it's not just the lives lost, it's the lives worsened and in some cases destroyed by this. Again, incredibly shortsighted and very unpopular decision by Musk, blessed and embraced by President Trump. So it's been very hard to watch. I feel like this organization created by John F. Kennedy had built trust in so many communities. Trust in usaid, but really trust in America and the American people. Our slogan was from the American people. And it really had that sense of kind of people to people ties. But for the communities who one day were able to get access to medicine and the next day weren't, it feels like just one big setup, you know, a feint almost that you rely on America and then we just pull the rug out from under you. So we talked about the damage caused by military operations around the world that don't have authorization and that don't seem to have much planning behind them. But if you combine that sense of the wild, wild west and Might makes right. That is one feature of the Trump administration's policies. If you combine that with the cruelty of ripping that rug out from under tens of millions of people around the world, it is a huge hole out of which it's going to be very hard to dig.

[Interviewer]

Critics would say that usaid, parts of it weren't being very well run, that there were budgetary overspends and programs being funded that perhaps weren't in American interests. What do you say to those criticisms?

[Samantha Power]

I have to keep my temper in check when I hear those criticisms because the most frustrating part of running USAID was that we were earmarked by the US Congress at around a rate of 96%. So there's not one sector that we invested in or program that Republicans and Democrats together didn't have to come together on to approve. And were there things that I would have loved to have done differently? Yes, but by law and by the micromanagement of the appropriations, I had to go up and to negotiate with very influential members of Congress and many of them had their pet projects that said 65% of what USAID did totally uncontroversial, life saving, humanitarian assistance, global health work, HIV work, malaria, tb. I don't think anybody quibbles with that work. And probably 30% of the rest of the work is on energy, electrification, democracy and governance, other forms of primary health programming and the like. So really, the kinds of small examples that might be cited, I'd say from what I can tell, about 70 or 80% of them are just made up from part of the disinformation machine that we know accompanies destructive acts. But those that actually were USAID programs that seemed problematic, probably they came written into law and appropriated by some member of Congress in a manner that left our teams very little discretion.

[Interviewer]

Now that it is essentially gone, how easy? Or what's the likelihood of someone starting it up again, another president, Republican or Democrat?

[Samantha Power]

I think there's no question the United States is going to have an assistance arm again in the world that is very robust. One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats can agree upon in this polarized world is the importance of not ceding the world to China's governance model. China has stepped into the breach in many of the places. The United States has pulled back in a non transparent way, in a way that is hostile to the inputs of civil society, in a manner that often includes surveillance.

[Interviewer]

And if you're talking about soft power. Was this essentially a bit of a gift then to China and others where the US Left and that soft power has been diminished, that there's a vacancy.

[Samantha Power]

I think it's referred to widely as soft power suicide. It's just an enormous own goal for the United States credibility. And again now with the Trump administration bombing here and there and with the tariffs and threatening Greenland and plenty of other soft power suicide and hard power blunders afoot. So maybe the destruction of USAID now kind of recedes in people's memory. There's a lot going on, but this is lasting because the capillaries of this people to people assistance spanned countries, spanned generations. So many people you meet got a scholarship in the 70s or the 80s because of a USAID grant, and then they turn up as a minister and then you go to them wanting to negotiate something else, and they have a very positive impression in the United States because of that relationship that goes back. So I think there will be a reconstitution of robust U.S. assistance. I hope it will come with more flexibility to design from scratch what is needed for today and for 10 years from now and 20 years from now. But there's no question that the American people saw themselves in some of the work that was happening, sort of appreciated, valued the show of compassion that the United States was doing. But it's also clear that the case has to be made. And when USAID or something like it is reconstituted, making sure that those very members of Congress who are insisting that this happened in this part of Africa and this happened in Vietnam and this happened in Peru, that they themselves as well are making the case to constituents so that that vulnerability doesn't exist to one man's whim.

[Katrina Perry]

You're listening to the interview from the BBC World.

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[Katrina Perry]

I traveled to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts to meet Samantha Power, where she teaches classes straddling politics, law and international relations. She doesn't do many interviews now that she no longer holds public office, preferring for the moment to educate the next generation of leaders. But her office is still full of memories from those days. Photographs with presidents, images of her on the world stage. Memories of a career on the front lines. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Samantha Power.

[Interviewer]

When you're talking about the place in the world that the US has right now, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos in January said the world order has been ruptured. Do you agree with that statement?

[Samantha Power]

I mean, if I were living in one of the countries that were part of the NATO alliance and I heard an American president threatening to take Greenland by force, when I saw that tariffs were being imposed all around the world, but that the highest tariffs, by and large were reserved for our closest allies and indeed the Russian Federation managed to evade tariffs for whatever reason, I would certainly be inclined to think that this was a break from which it would be very hard to recover. That said, everyone benefits from more, not fewer friends. I benefit from it in my own life. I'm sure you do. I look back on the war in Afghanistan and see it very differently than President Trump has described it. I see 2,500Americans who died in combat and 1100 NATO citizens who did not come from the United States, who died in combat. I remember post 9 11, the rally. It wasn't the rally, just the rally around the American flag. It was a rally around the flag against aggression and for democracy and for freedom. That is a reason that we have alliances. It's a reason that we think in terms of shared and enduring interests and prior to President Trump, in a bipartisan way, looked to see what those interests were that would transcend politics. I believe there are many Republicans who are practicing what we call preference falsification at the moment. Muzzling their actual views of NATO, their actual views of the president's foreign policy, their actual views of the invasion of Iran, in fact. So I do believe that there is still a critical mass and a constituency in this country. The challenge is going to be to convince our Canadian, our European, our East Asian allies to believe in our staying power and not to expect more whiplash from one presidency to the next. And that set of commitments, convincing people that those commitments can be sustained is going to be America's biggest challenge in the decades ahead.

[Interviewer]

You can see how Europeans are concerned, though, in the case of Ukraine, when they hear the president talk about kind of both sides about Ukraine and Russia, when one clearly invaded the the other, and they feel that perhaps the US Isn't as engaged as it should be and that Europe needs to step up and take over the role of what was once a close ally.

[Samantha Power]

They have reason to be upset and to feel betrayed, just as Ukraine does. When Ukraine was invaded, the United States stood with Ukraine because it has a history of standing up against aggression and not perpetrating aggression. And what has happened over the course of the last year is not only an end to military assistance and a shift to requiring Ukraine to buy the weapons that the United States is providing, but a termination of US Aid programs that were helping Ukrainians repair energy infrastructure, helping Ukrainians put their agricultural goods back out on market so farmers could make a living, but also to keep prices down in developing countries. And just last month at the United nations, it was the Trump administration trying to water down language in UN Resolutions in support of Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Absolutely. Europe has every reason to be aghast at these developments. The only good news, again, is that the policies being carried out by the Trump administration are not broadly reflective of the views of the American people. And we do have a midterm election coming up where I'm hopeful that the Democratic Party will have more leverage financially and even in pressing on foreign policy as it's being currently conducted. So for as long as we have a democracy, we do have a chance to have course correction, but it will take a long time for the people of Ukraine and the people of Europe, who are now have gone from providing 50% of the assistance to Ukraine to 90%. It will take a very long time for them to forget.

[Katrina Perry]

Thank you for listening to the interview. For more compelling conversations, search for the interview. Wherever you get your BBC podcasts, you'll find episodes from the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres and Volodymyr Zelensky. The President of Ukraine plus many many others. But until the next time, bye for now.

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