TRANSCRIPT:
So my experience is that Voice of America is important to Americans because Americans can’t physically be present everywhere all at once. And Voice of America can bring American ideals, American values even to places that are denied to us in terms of physical presence.
This came home to me very vividly when I was the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2013 to 2017. And when I spoke to my allied partners, my allied counterparts, other ambassadors or ministers from our NATO allied countries, invariably one or more of them would bring up their personal experience with VOA. So this is diplomats in their mid-40s or mid-50s who listened to VOA as kids or learned of VOA from their parents or their grandparents. So across multiple generations. Often [they were] allies who had previously, before joining NATO, been behind the Iron Curtain and been been denied freedom of press, been denied the voice of liberty and the hope that VOA presents.
So they were very fond of VOA and often many of them retain that hope for freedom even when locked behind the Soviet block. They retain the hope of freedom because of the Voice of America.
Published
Lute was the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2013–2017, serving under President Barack Obama. An Army lieutenant general, he also served under President George W. Bush as a deputy national security adviser on Iran and Afghanistan.