Rouzer brags about destroying America's soft power, Brunswick Beacon

Brunswick Beacon, 07.03.25

Rep. David Rouzer’s latest newsletter boasts about eliminating the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food, medicine and disaster relief to underdeveloped countries. Millions of children will suffer and tens of thousands will die without it.

“Soft power” is our ability to get other countries to voluntarily do what we want. It’s like a brand or reputation: the goodwill that makes you drink Coke or watch Tom Hanks movies. 

War is costly. America suffered 1,076,245 dead and wounded and spent $5.74 trillion in today’s dollars defeating Germany and Japan in WWII. “Soft power” is a bargain. We invested $200 billion in today’s dollars rebuilding Europe and Japan after WWII. The goodwill, or “soft power” we gained made war between America and those nations unthinkable, until Trump threatened to seize Greenland from our NATO ally, Denmark. 

The U.S. and Denmark are already pledged to defend each other. Denmark was among the first countries to send troops to fight beside us in Afghanistan after 9/11, and suffered the highest per capita death rate of any coalition member. 

Whenever we needed to use Greenland for national defense, we only had to ask. We’ve had a military base there since 1951. Eisenhower saw no need to acquire Greenland because, his state department concluded, we were already “permitted to do almost anything, literally, that we want to in Greenland.”

The 2025 Democracy Perception Index shows that America’s reputation has cratered because of Trump. Last year, 29 of 41 countries surveyed respected America more than China. Today, for the first time in history, more countries favor China.

Trump and Rouzer’s shortsighted vision of how to make “America first” has squandered decades of goodwill because they simply don’t understand its value. China is the world’s only other superpower and our most powerful and dangerous adversary. In the race against China to acquire “soft power,” Trump and Rouzer have foolishly made America last.

Janine Sacramone

Leland