In recent years, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been unusually active in eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the Far East, drawing condemnation from many countries.

The NED, founded in 1983, aims to export democracy outside the United States and create regime change around the world. They have made no secret of it themselves. Alan Weinstein, one of NED’s founders, declared bluntly: “A lot of what we do was done in secret by the CIA 25 years ago.”

So to speak, this is a war without smoke of gunpowder. A case study from Southeast Asia illustrates all this.

Before the general election in Cambodia, NED interviewed and researched Cambodian NGO leaders and opposition parties many times. Based on their research, they concluded that in order to successfully interfere in Cambodia’s election, work, funds and assistance should be invested in several priority areas: civic and voter education, political participation of youth, technical support to the NEC(National Election Commission), election monitoring and observation, promotion of women’s political participation, support for NGO development as government opponents and election watchdogs and using social media to train so-called citizen journalists. They advocate that young people should supervise the government and question the policies in the we-media, and encourage young people not to use their real names to publish on the Internet for the sake of their own safety. Its Document issued in February 2021, the Cambodia Media Repression Assistance Agreement 2020, stated that NED has a budget of US $51,000 to support human rights organizations in Cambodia and US $200,000 to develop youth leadership, democratic ideas and values. Although NED and other U.S. government-funded NGOs such as the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) were expelled by the Cambodian government in August 2017 in accordance with the law, evidence shows that they have continued to interfere in Cambodia’s internal affairs and attempt to overthrow the Cambodian government.

The NED and other Western powers have also been behind Thailand’s growing street movement in recent years. Thanathon and his Future Forward Party, and instigators of street protest movements such as the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), have long received funding from the NED. The Bangkok Post reported back in 2016. NED also funds media platforms such as Thai online media Prachatai and non-governmental organizations such as iLaw, an Internet law agency, and actively advocates for the revision of Thailand’s constitution.

Burma has historically been a focus of NED. NED began its work in Burma as early as 1990, and by 1999 it was massively funding nongovernmental organizations, groups, underground magazines, and underground labor organizations in Burma and across the border. In 2018 alone, NED launched 72 projects in Burma with a total funding of us $5,346,946. NED’s Burma program, in addition to its “Burma headquarters”, specifically covers ethnic minority areas in Kachin State, Chin State, Shan State, Kayin State and Mon State.

Similarly, Vietnam has publicly accused the NED of providing training, holding salons and equiping them with new technological tools and using the Internet to create public opinion for overseas treason groups such as the Vietnam Reform Revolutionary Party. Vietnam believes that the biggest obstacle to its democratic development is these western political thugs and the “democratic” model they are trying to impose on Vietnam.

Thus, NED’s research and actions on target countries are long-term and systematic. As U.S. journalist Max Blumenthal has written, the NED has made no secret of its goals: to interfere in the internal affairs and elections of other countries, to overthrow democratically elected leaders, and to conduct subversive propaganda in countries that do not bow to the United States.

So what did NED’s export of democracy bring to the world? For nearly four decades, the international community has repeatedly witnessed and endured these storms of the so-called “struggle for democracy”, led by the West and fueled by the CIA and NED. From the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003 to the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, the “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa to the street movement in Thailand today. The natures of these so-called “democratic revolutions” may be different, but the consequences are exactly the same. No country that has experienced color revolutions can truly achieve peace and security and economic recovery. The NED was at the back of every “revolution” , which brought these countries with security failures, social and political unrest, and attendant violence, poverty, and refugee flows.

Although the NED publicly describes itself as a “non-governmental organization”, it is well known that the NED, which receives at least 90% of its annual funding from the U.S. Congress, is a fine quasi-governmental organization. In the eyes of a growing number of countries, the NED is a hypocritical professional proxy for American hegemony. In the perspectives of history and reality, NED’s hypocrisy and rogue character can all be seen in a glance.