Jul 30, 2026 | Current Events, International
Bold Challenges Initiative team celebrates milestone as villages gain access to clean water
After two years of collaborative effort, a team of University of Michigan researchers is celebrating a major milestone in rural Tanzania: Clean, safe water now flows to Esilalei and Oltukai villages and surrounding hamlets in Monduli District, serving pastoralist families who formerly traveled long distances in search of water.
The project is expected to benefit more than 10,000 people, local health clinics, a primary school, and countless livestock, using solar power to pump and distribute water to Maasai communities. It’s a model of sustainable technology meeting the urgent global need to address water scarcity.
Sisty Massawe, Brian Min, Kelly Askew and Aline Cotel in Oltukai Village, October 11, 2024
The initiative was led by University of Michigan researchers Brian Min, associate professor of political science; Kelly Askew, Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies; Aline Cotel, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Sisty Basil Massawe, executive director of the ELICO Foundation in Tanzania and a former fellow of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars (UMAPS) program. Min and Askew are affiliates of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
From Solar Panels to Water ATMs
Water ATM dispensing water in Kanjiro hamlet, Esilalei Village, July 17, 2026
Through support from the University of Michigan and its Bold Challenges Initiative, ELICO Foundation installed a solar-powered pumping system in Esilalei Village, expanded the water distribution network, and introduced a prepaid water management system—delivered through “Water ATMs,” automated machines to dispense water from a natural spring about 12 miles away to ensure reliable and sustainable delivery.
“The solar-powered infrastructure eliminates dependence on fossil fuels or unreliable grid electricity to meet the realities of remote pastoral communities,” said Askew.
The team then focused on extending clean water services to Oltukai Village by connecting it to the Minjingu water supply system of the neighboring Babati District.
On July 26, the day the researchers returned from their field visits, the pipeline they helped construct with local partners ELICO Foundation and the district rural water authority (RUWASA) reached Oltukai Village.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
The project exemplifies the Bold Challenges Initiative’s mission to support interdisciplinary teams pursuing solutions to real-world problems with potential for large-scale impact. Solutions implemented in local communities can be tested and later applied on a global scale. Selected for the 2024 Boost cohort under the title “Solar PV Water Pumping for Domestic and Livestock Uses in Last Mile Pastoral Societies in Tanzania,” the team bridges political science, anthropology, and engineering with deep local knowledge and partnerships.
The researchers bring a wide range of expertise to the community-driven initiative. Min’s research uses satellite imagery and computational methods to track energy access and reliability across the developing world: Work that has revealed the true scale of global energy poverty and the equity gaps that persist in underserved regions. Askew has conducted research in Tanzania for more than three decades, with expertise spanning land rights, rural energy access, cultural production, and Indigenous political movements. Cotel brings engineering expertise in water systems and a commitment to creating pathways for women in science and engineering.
The project is an example of the University of Michigan’s leadership in energy, climate action, sustainability, and environmental equity, bringing solutions to communities disproportionately affected.
For Maasai pastoralist families, the consequences of inadequate access to clean water include conflict over scarce resources, decimated livestock herds, forced displacement, and public health risks.
Digging the trench and preparing material for the water pipeline to Oltukai Village, July 18, 2026
The team celebrated the arrival of clean water to the Masaai communities at the end of July and will be installing ‘Water ATMs’ over the coming month to expand water access in Oltukai Village, with locations that include a health clinic and a cattle trough.
Left to right: Kelly Askew, Brian Min, Aline Cotel, Sisty Massawe, Monduli District Water Engineer Neville Msaki, John Maxwell (ReCon Corp, Michigan), July 17, 2026
This post was written by Tevah Platt, communications manager for the Center for Political Studies. Photography by Esau Ng’umbi of the ELICO Foundation.
Apr 13, 2026 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, Elections, expert analysis, International
Victor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary for sixteen years (2010-26), has conceded the election to Peter Magyar and his opposition Tisza party. This is an enormous defeat for the right-wing populist leader and his right-wing populist Fidesz party and a landslide victory for the democratic opposition.
Parliamentary Supermajority for the Opposition Provides Lever to Rebuild Democracy
By winning more than 135 seats in the 199-seat legislative body, Magyar’s Tisza party has not just secured a majority but a supermajority in the Hungarian parliament. Orbán’s Fidesz party has held a parliamentary supermajority for four consecutive terms, which he has used to rewrite the constitution to consolidate his own power and to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Hungary.
Many of the tactics he used are part of the authoritarian playbook that is by now all too familiar—eliminating checks and balances on executive authority, taking control over media outlets, and reengineering the electoral system to disadvantage the opposition. Regaining control will enable the opposition to amend the constitution, reverse many of these changes, and rebuild institutions that promote democracy and the rule of law.
Yet, the landslide victory is not only a triumph for Hungary’s democratic opposition and the country’s future trajectory; it is also a major win for Europe, the European Union (EU), Ukraine, and the US.
Hope for a Strong and United Europe
The defeat of Orbán and his nationalist agenda signals to Europe, and to Europeans, that the rise of right-wing populism is not irreversible. Although not yet the dominant trend across the continent, far-right parties such as Orbán’s Fidesz have been gaining ground in Europe since the 2000s and appeared to be building momentum. Moreover, Orbán himself has become an iconic figure among them, exemplifying the success of illiberal democracy. The sweeping electoral victory of the liberal opposition in Hungary has countered this trend and diminished Orbán’s appeal as a model for Europe’s future. Instead, he is a cautionary tale.
Second, Orban’s defeat signals that Hungarians have not rejected either Europe or European values, including liberal democracy. As many European leaders stated following the election results, there is renewed hope for a strong and united Europe.
The primary beneficiary of this reunion—at least in the short run—is Ukraine. Among the many ways in which Orbán has undermined the EU is his refusal to support either further assistance to Ukraine or stricter sanctions against Russia following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As part of his electoral campaign, Magyar pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationship with the EU. He made good on this promise following his victory by agreeing to unblock critical aid in the form of a 90-billion-euro ($103-billion) loan to Ukraine.
Takeaways for the US
The cautionary tale of Orbán’s defeat also suggests a prescriptive one for the United States. Both the large turnout and the substantial margins made the Tisza party’s electoral win too decisive for even Orbán to contest. But neither the size of the turnout nor the landslide victory happened overnight. Albeit weakened by Orban’s policies, Hungarian civil society continued to mobilize undaunted, and Hungarian citizens increasingly took to the streets to show Orban, his loyalists, and most importantly, their fellow citizens that they would not tolerate an autocratic takeover.
The road ahead will be difficult. Orbán not only succeeded in dismantling democratic institutions and the rule of law. He also used his unchecked authority to institute a system of crony capitalism, rewarding loyalists with control over key economic sectors and lucrative development contracts, and destroying Hungary’s economy in the process. In fact, the protests that amalgamated in the opposition’s massive victory focused on anti-corruption and pocket-book issues. So too did Magyar’s electoral campaign, signifying that this is a winning electoral strategy. The new government will have to both rebuild and restore confidence in democratic institutions and the rule of law while actively combating the corrupt practices that have fueled inflation and slowed economic recovery.
This post was written by Pauline Jones, Research Professor and Director of the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies. Pauline Jones is a Professor of Political Science and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is an expert on politics in the former Soviet Union (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) and on assessing the impact of mass protest in authoritarian regimes. She regularly teaches PoliSci140: Introduction to Comparative Politics and recently shared her insights on US democratic decline in global perspective. Dr. Jones is currently a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.
Oct 13, 2025 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, International, Race
A new survey on the nature and distribution of American stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans measures the nature, extent and distribution of stereotypes about each of the three groups.
The broad goals of the survey and analyses of the data are:
- to map the dimensional structure of prevailing stereotypes about each group
- to map the distribution of these stereotypes across important population categories
- to explore the relationships between stereotypes of different religious or ethnic groups,
- to test hypotheses about probable determinants of various stereotypes
The survey was designed and carried out by Mark Tessler and Francy Luna Diaz of the University of Michigan and Amnon Cavari, associate professor of Political Science at Reichman University in Israel.
A research brief including preliminary results from the survey reports findings on some of the negative stereotypes about each group that the survey examined. Results on additional questions, including positive stereotypes and questions about US foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will be forthcoming.
The brief focuses on the degree of agreement with two negative stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans, respectively, which is not the same for the three groups; how responses pertaining to stereotypes are associated with differing levels of education, and how agreement with stereotypes across groups are correlated.
Read the Research Brief: Some Preliminary and Partial Findings on American Stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans: Evidence from a 2024 US Survey
The Research Brief was published by the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
Jun 16, 2025 | Current Events, International, Profile
A Special Exhibit opens June 19 in Berlin
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and at a moment when global authoritarianism is on the rise, a tiny fraction of the people with memories of the war and Hitler’s Europe are alive today to relay their stories. It is increasingly the work of archivists and descendants to transmit the record of that time– to honor and reckon with the past, and to invoke what Elie Wiesel called “a prayer, a promise and a vow”: Never again.
A special exhibition opening June 19 at the House of the Wannsee (VAN-see) Conference Memorial and Educational Site on the outskirts of Berlin centers on the story of Fritz Traugott, a German Jewish refugee expelled from his native Hamburg, who returned to Europe as an American soldier.
Traugott was among some 10,000 “Ritchie Boys” in the U.S. Army– soldiers trained in intelligence gathering who graduated from Camp Ritchie, Maryland– and one of the 20 percent of that force who were Jewish refugees with language skills that were leveraged in the effort.
His letters to his wife at home in Providence, R.I., and photos he took at the Wannsee villa in the summer of 1945 are at the heart of the special exhibit that tells Traugott’s story but is as much about memory itself.
“In my mind, it’s not really a story about my father,” said Michael Traugott, who shared his father’s documents with Wannsee after discovering them in 2018. “I think he is kind of a vessel in this story for thinking about the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, and about what happened then, and how it relates to what’s going on now, and other events in between.”
A Portrait of Fritz Traugott
The youngest of three children, Fritz Julius Traugott was born in Hamburg in 1919. After the passage of Nuremberg Laws that sought to marginalize and separate Jews in German society in 1935, he was forced to leave the Lichtwark School, a prominent high school that emphasized cultural education and the fine arts. He remained in close contact with his classmates and his teacher, Erna Stahl, an influential educator who once characterized her own work as creating an “inner counterbalance” in her students to the “destructive, demonic denial of all human spiritual worth, especially in Germany, which could not be undone.”
A 1933/34 class photo of the Lichtwark School from the Traugott archive. Both in the back row, Fritz Traugott is third from the left, and Erna Stahl, fourth from the right. Six of the students in the photo are wearing Hitler Youth uniforms.
With professional opportunities likewise cut off, Traugott followed his brother in immigrating to the United States in 1938, and his parents followed. Traugott’s sister, Hedwig, remained in Hamburg with her non-Jewish husband and two daughters, surviving through Nazi persecution, forced labor, and the bombing of their home.
Traugott married Lucia Scola, an Italian-American Catholic, in Providence.
At 22, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he was transferred to Camp Ritchie to learn counter-intelligence and interrogation techniques. He was first deployed to England to participate in the “secret listeners” program, an operation that helped record details using bugging devices to pick up conversations among German military leaders. They collected important intelligence information to help the war effort, including the location of the facility where V2 rockets were being built.
Traugott was sent to France where with his unit, Mobile Field Interrogation Unit #2, he later traveled behind American troops moving into Germany, interviewing prisoners of war. He was at the Battle of the Bulge, not as a combatant, but working feverishly to collect intelligence from German prisoners. And just after Germany’s surrender, he was billeted at the Wannsee villa from July to September 1945. His unit was housed at the former SS guesthouse that– although his unit may not have been initially aware of it– had been the site of a pivotal Nazi summit a few years prior to plan “the final solution.”
The Summer of 1945
Traugott spent more than two months at the Wannsee villa, a site referred to as “Himmler’s guesthouse,” during this early post-war period. He bought a camera in Berlin and sent pictures and daily letters to his wife in Providence, often on “souvenir” stationery from “the Führer’s adjutant’s office” he had found in the Reich Chancellery.
Based on the photos taken by Fritz Traugott, this artist rendering of the Ritchie Boys at the Wannsee villa was created for the museum by Mathis Eckelmann. Courtesy of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site.
The photos and letters, now on display as part of the special exhibit at Wannsee, include snapshots of soldiers and prisoners of war at Wannsee, the nearby interrogation center, and the ruins of his former home he took on a visit to Hamburg.
His letters communicate his affection for Lucia and infant son, Michael, born in his absence. One personal account to his wife, written on pilfered Nazi letterhead on Aug. 10, 1945, describes how the normalization of persecution made it difficult to communicate and for outsiders to understand it:
You see sweetheart, when you live in danger, or misery, or any other extreme state, you kinda get used to it, or at least it loses most of the effect it has on outsiders.
From the Traugott archive, a letter home on the pilfered stationary of the “Adjutantur Des Führers,” August 10, 1945.
Traugott took two short visits to Hamburg to see his sister and the city he fled in 1938. On his second visit, his sister Hedwig wrote a letter to her parents describing what had happened to them under the Nazi regime. That letter, which is lost today, included details so troubling that Traugott and his brother decided not to deliver it, Michael Traugott said.
Traugott returned home in the fall of 1945.
Unearthing the Past
Traugott went on to rear three children in Providence– Michael, Mark, and Kathryn. He established his own jewelry company and later worked as a sales manager for the Colonial Knife Co.
Traugott seldom spoke to his children about his life in Germany or his time in the war. He had likely signed nondisclosure agreements during his service, his son said, and there were memories unwanted. Traugott avoided speaking German for a long period after the war and didn’t return to visit Germany for more than 25 years.
Traugott died in Palm Beach in 1995.
Lucia preserved the letters, photographs, and documents displayed in the exhibition.
It was only after her death in 2018 that their children discovered these historical sources: Over 300 letters and a few dozen photographs.
Michael initially made contact with the Wannsee Conference House with an emailed photograph of the villa with the American flag hoisted above it.
After two years of research and contact, the museum is presenting a special exhibit that centers on Traugott’s materials and experience.
History, Memory, and Extrapolation
The upcoming exhibit, which includes an audio tour in the gardens of Wannsee, brings with it a convergence of past and present, and of personal and global history that invites exploration into the legacy of perpetrators, victims, and liberators.
“Fritz Traugott’s biography, letters, and photographs provide us and our visitors with a different and new perspective on the history of the House of the Wannsee Conference,” said exhibit curator Judith Alberth. “His parents, his brother and he himself were expelled due to antisemitic persecution, and his sister, his brother-in-law, and his nieces survived the Shoah in Hamburg in desperate circumstances. Their stories add a significant perspective to the sources and biographies of perpetrators that the House is mostly linked to.”
“L’dor vador,” which translates to “from generation to generation,” is a central concept in Jewish culture, which places weighted emphasis on the passing of stories and traditions across time.
“Part of this journey recently has been a deeper recognition of this Jewish history, which we never lived, but has been brought to the forefront through the development of the exhibition,” said Michael Traugott, who had little exposure to religion aside from Catholic sacramental ceremonies growing up. “…There’s also an element of realizing opportunities that we lost to have extended conversations with our father – which he might not have wanted to participate in.”
Michael, Mark, and Kathryn Traugott, retracing their father’s steps at the Wannsee House
Traugott’s descendants– who will all attend the opening of the exhibit– have used the photographs and documents to plumb their family history. In 1994, Michael Traugott also took a trip to Berlin to retrace steps his father had taken and to reproduce photos his father had taken on the same grounds, 50 years prior.
“Sifting through the valuable sources and sorting them together can reconstruct a piece of family history,” Alberth wrote of the exhibit. “Further research, which we carried out in American and German archives, can add to the puzzle – but it will always remain fragmented.”
“This project has involved memory, but also extrapolation,” said Michael Traugott. “It’s both trying to reconstruct events of the past with relative accuracy, but thinking about how behavior, events, and belief systems might be extended forward in time to other events, and other periods.”
Traugott’s story invites us to imagine what it might have been like for a refugee to return to Germany in what his son described as “a strange re-immersion.”
Museum director Deborah Hartmann writes, for example, of what it might have meant for Traugott to appropriate stationary and souvenirs from places like the Chancellery: “The men demonstrated their own personal victory over the Nazi dictatorship,” she writes.
For Hartmann, the exhibit is also an occasion to consider how we remember past events, and the impact of memory on our political actions and national and community identities.
Research on collective memory distinguishes history and memory. French scholars Jean-Francois Orianne and Francis Eustache write that “history separates the past from the present and future, whereas memory links them together. Memory always operates in the present: it is a continual rewriting of the past in the present for future use.”
The exhibit ends with a photograph of Vice President J.D. Vance, visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp on Feb. 13, 2025. The next day, at the Munich Security Conference, Vance demanded that Germany’s far-right parties, including the AfD, not be excluded in coalition governments. AfD leaders have specifically repudiated the idea that we should educate future generations about atrocities in Germany’s past, as a safeguard to our future.
“The open and critical discourse on history is a core element of free, democratic societies,” said Hartmann. “Authoritarian governments therefore see it as a threat and seek to impose only the narratives they have set as valid. This repeatedly leads to distortions in the history of the Holocaust, which we must counter. When the leader of the far-right AFD party, in a conversation with Elon Musk on X, refers to Adolf Hitler as a ‘communist,’ and Musk agrees with her, they are denying the ideological origins of the Holocaust in racist antisemitism.”
The exhibition, which will run until next summer, opens June 19, 2025, with free daily admission from 10 to 6. The museum’s registration for the opening– which can be attended live or online– is now open.
This post was written by Tevah Platt, a communicator for the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Michael Traugott is a research professor affiliated with the Center for Political Studies and an expert on campaigns and elections, voting behavior, and political communication.
Apr 28, 2025 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, expert analysis, Foreign Affairs, International, National, Policy
By ANNE PITCHER
What do the following activities, organizations, and companies have in common:
- The Soybean Innovation Lab in Illinois
- The delivery of food aid in Ukraine
- The provision of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV in South Africa
- Neonatal care in Ghana
- John Deere tractors, and
- Land grant universities like Michigan State University?
All of them have benefitted from partnerships with, and/or funding from, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Most of them have been significantly affected by stop-work orders affecting USAID that were issued after President Donald Trump took office.
The gutting of USAID within the first 100 days of the Trump administration has upended the aid sector around the world.
This post provides a brief overview of USAID: What does the agency do? What has happened, and what are the consequences?
So What Is USAID?
USAID was created by Congress in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy to administer humanitarian aid and programs on behalf of the US government. In recent years it has distributed some $40 billion annually in aid to 120 countries, providing support to address illness and hunger, neonatal care, clean water, electricity, and disaster relief. Among its many tasks, it promotes democracy all over Africa, conservation efforts in the Amazon, and awareness campaigns about clean air across Southeast Asia. Its spending, procurement, and project implementation procedures are subject to rigorous oversight and compliance regulations administered by the USAID Office of the Inspector General.
USAID does not give aid directly to governments. Instead, it often provides “tied aid,” meaning that the aid is conditional on recipients spending aid funding on American goods and services. For example, USAID might partner with a for-profit company like John Deere, which makes agricultural equipment, or agricultural seed companies like Corteva Agriscience, to deliver agricultural aid. USAID also provides funding to international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as CARE, World Vision, Doctors Without Borders, or Catholic Relief Services, or domestic NGOs in Benin, Thailand, or Nicaragua that offer assistance in sectors from health care to education in developing countries. Some of these NGOs depend on USAID for a large percentage of their budgets. Finally USAID has partnered with US land grant universities like MSU to engage in research on water, electricity provision, or food security.
And although the much loved Peace Corps is a separate government agency it has worked closely with USAID. The Peace Corps was created in 1961 under the administration of President John F. Kennedy after he proposed it on a campaign stop at the University of Michigan when he was running for President. The Peace Corps has partnered with USAID on projects such as the Small Project Assistance Program to support community-driven projects such as the prevention of malaria or human trafficking, or disaster preparedness. Many Peace Corps volunteers often go on to serve rewarding and productive careers at USAID.
Washington, DC, USA- March 1, 2020: One of the entrance of United States Agency for International Development in Washington, DC, USA, an independent agency of the United States federal government.
What Has Happened?
On returning to office for his second and last term as President, Donald Trump signed an executive order that froze almost all international spending for a 90-day review. Cuts to foreign assistance were spelled out in detail on January 24, 2025, followed by the filing of termination and leave notices to USAID employees. In a lightning speed process, thousands of employees had been terminated by late February. As of last month, an estimated 50,000 US citizens and twice as many foreign service nationals had lost their jobs due to cuts. It has now been reported that many termination letters contained a number of serious errors which has affected severance pay and pension payouts for some USAID employees.
Besides domestic workers, thousands of people were contracted from all over the world to work for USAID. Many had loyally served USAID for decades. Those employees who work for USAID on annual contracts (as many who work abroad do) cannot file for unemployment. Some have been stranded in Egypt, Mozambique, Togo, and Cambodia, without a clear path for planning or paying for a return to the U.S. of themselves, their families, and their belongings.
With regard to USAID funds, approximately 5800 out of 6200 multi-year contracts, to the tune of $54 billion, have been cancelled. Waivers have been provided for life-saving humanitarian aid, but other requests have faced the problem that, with the dismantling of USAID, there are no staff in place to review them. Further directives issued in recent months have put exemptions on hold and another 42 of the remaining 900 contracts have been canceled. A USAID internal report notes that the stop work order was implemented so quickly that food aid was left rotting in ports and warehouses en route to its destination. Vehicles were impounded. Buildings shuttered.
After Elon Musk made a show of remedying an apparent error in DOGE’s massive cuts to foreign aid, the Trump administration quietly doubled down on its decision to stop sending emergency food to millions of children who are starving in Bangladesh, Somalia, and other countries, The Atlantic reported in April.
The Trump administration announced plans in March that USAID would come fully under that State Department and reduce its staff to about 15 positions. An email to USAID employees titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission” detailed the plan despite lawmakers’ objections that the efforts to downsize the agency were unconstitutional. USAID employees were also ordered in March to shred and burn personnel documents.
What Are the Consequences?
Most affected by cuts to USAID include patients receiving drugs for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and children in developing countries who get vaccines. In addition, they include women in Ghana receiving neonatal care, and approximately one million Rohingya from Myanmar whose rations in a refugee camp in Bangladesh will likely be cut in half if more funds are not raised soon. They include almost half of the population of Sudan who face acute hunger. Within weeks of the cuts to USAID, 80% of community kitchens across Sudan closed, leaving millions at risk of dying from starvation or preventable illness. Finally, they include Ukrainians receiving corn from American farmers.
Children around the world are already dying as a result of the cuts, and experts are projecting hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of anticipated deaths in coming months and years from hunger, AIDS, and tuberculosis. Until recently, around 27 million children benefitted from nutrition programs that USAID funded; 4 million received antiretrovirals and 13 million others received treatment from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a health program started under President George Bush, which has now been halted.
Now, around 1,400 infants are being infected by HIV every day, an infection rate that might have been prevented had the new US administration not cut funding to USAID and HIV/AIDS organizations. About 3 million more children and adults will die from HIV-related causes before 2030 because of global aid cuts, according to projections published in HIV Lancet.
With respect to conflict prevention, Andrew Natsios, the former head of USAID under President George Bush, who identifies as a “conservative internationalist” has argued that there is a connection between rising food prices and conflict. He worries that without the food aid provided by USAID, we could witness an alarming rise in conflicts in developing countries that are vulnerable to spikes in food prices due to shortages or climate change. This could have demonstrable effects on our own national security and stability.
Several scholars have observed that these cuts also affect US national security by undercutting our reliance on soft power. Soft power relies on humanitarian relief, food aid, and democracy promotion that strengthens our alliances with other countries. An unintended aspect of soft power is that many of the foreign service nationals who work for USAID abroad often end up as members of parliament, heads of NGOs, or ministers in their own countries. This means the United States already has linkages and allies that serve national governments in other countries which has potential benefits for the US. Such connections will be weakened with the demise of USAID.
Finally, as we saw last month with the earthquake in Myanmar, the US retreat means our replacement by China and Russia, which ultimately undercuts our national interest and our moral standing in the world.
This post is based on a presentation by Anne Pitcher given at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Anne Pitcher is Associate Chair of Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and Director of Graduate Studies, and is the Joel Samoff Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies. CPS faculty have offered ongoing expert analysis on political events of 2025. Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies contributed updates to this report.
Apr 3, 2025 | 2025 Analysis, Economics, expert analysis, Foreign Affairs, International, National
By James D. Morrow
January 19, 2025 was the last day of the American Century.
More precisely and less melodramatically, the liberal international order created by the United States in the aftermath of World War II is gone.
Some would say, “Good riddance.” But my comments will focus on what has been lost with the demise of an order that sought to advance a world of democratic polities united in an open global economy.
I am focusing on the open global economy and specifically trade because I think the change there is clear and dramatic. (Questions about the security side of the liberal international order in practice are also worth asking, but the changes there are not yet as clear.)
The ascent of the liberal international order
The goal of an open global economy formed, in part, as a response to the Great Depression where the collapse of trade between 1929 and 1933, driven in large part by tariff walls and competitive devaluations, helped make the Great Depression a worldwide event. It was achieved through the lowering of tariffs, the creation of a stable exchange rate regime, and eventually the creation of the World Trade Organization to limit non-tariff barriers to trade.
Since World War II, the global economy has grown larger and faster than any other period in history. And trade has grown faster than the world economy, making it a larger proportion of the world economy. This growth has lifted billions of people around the world out of dire poverty.
Two things to understand about international order: First, it is not a set of ironclad rules. Practical politics in some cases requires compromises with the rules, institutions, and values embedded in an international order. Second, an international order, like any political order, prioritizes some interests and values over others, so it is not neutral or equally beneficial for all.
An international order is driven by the major powers to suit their interests, but it is more sustainable when others gain from it. They have less reason to challenge that order and are more likely to operate within it.
The liberal international order advanced the interests and values of the United States for decades. But it also offered the opportunity for other countries to benefit from the open global economy through trade and investment.
Doing so required curbing the ability of the United States to use its economic dominance to advance its particular interests at the expense of an open global economy. Multilateralism in trade, a novel feature of this order, was key.
When the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in the late 1940s, 23 countries came together and offered reductions in their own tariffs and committed to non-discrimination among themselves. Negotiating in a multilateral setting reduced the ability of the U.S. to use its dominant economy as bargaining leverage.
Since then, the rounds of GATT leading to the establishment of the World Trade Organization used multilateralism and the rules and procedures of the WTO to limit the ability of large economies to flex their economic muscle to gain advantageous terms of trade.
The Cost of Tariffs
President Trump’s use of tariffs, in his first term and now, undermines both multilateralism and a rule-based order. It shifts trade negotiations back to a bilateral basis, between the U.S. and specific trading partners, and openly flouts WTO rules, instead of using those rules to justify them.
Although it is not clear yet whether Trump will erect permanent tariff walls around the U.S. economy or merely seeks to use tariffs as a negotiating ploy, either use threatens the open global economy.
In its place, they give him the power to use the leverage of access to the U.S. market to secure bilateral trade deals that favor the U.S. at the expense of its trading partners.
But the use of that leverage comes at the cost of alienating long-term trading partners.
One of the great advantages that the U.S. had during the Cold War was that most industrialized countries were aligned with it and not the Soviet Union. They did so in part because they benefited from the open global economy of the liberal international order. If that order is gone, they have less reason to align with the U.S.
Canada gives us a clear example of this shift. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he would step down because his Liberal party was headed into an election this year 20 points behind the Conservatives. By the time the Liberal party selected Mark Carney as their new leader and candidate to be Prime Minister, the Liberals had eliminated the 20 point gap. They are in a close race with the Conservatives. This happened because both candidates to replace Trudeau in the party adopted anti-Trump and anti-American positions, which are now popular with Canadians who feel they are being bullied by the Trump tariffs.
It is a sign of the cost of the demise of the liberal international order.
This expert opinion piece by James D. Morrow is based on his presentation at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The independent, non-partisan event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Dr. Morrow’s research addresses theories of international politics, and his published work covers bargaining, the causes of war, military alliances, arms races, power transition theory, links between international trade and conflict, the role of international institutions, and domestic politics and foreign policy. Dr. Morrow is the A.F.K. Organski Collegiate Professor of World Politics at the University of Michigan and is an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies contributed to the development of this post.
