Governments can rebuild budgets and reopen institutions. Rebuilding trust is far more difficult. This article explores how the dismantling of diplomacy, development cooperation, and other instruments of soft power creates an accountability vacuum, eroding relationships, institutional memory, and influence that have taken decades to build.
It’s become almost routine: news stories about billionaires growing their fortunes while wages stagnate, public services erode, and democracies falter. While it’s easy to point fingers at individuals, Elon Musk’s antics, Jeff Bezos’s warehouse policies, the political donations of Charles Koch, or the global health campaigns of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, the real…
