Degrees of Power: How Education Became the Frontline of Global Influence
Craig Buying
Education is a cornerstone of national power, and projects influence and legitimacy beyond borders. Now a new frontline in the global soft-power competition, education is shaping ideologies that determine the rise and fall of nations. General Martin Dempsey (former CJCS) called education “the most powerful weapon in the world.” Xi Jinping has declared that “to educate the people is to secure the future.” These statements, born of different systems, share a strategic truth: education determines advantage.
Education has become a vector of strategic influence, and a means of transmitting governance models, building dependency, and reshaping global alignment. In strategic locations across Africa, China is constructing Mandarin language centers and subsidizing international tuition fees for Africans seeking elite Chinese university placement. China is also educating local African communities, financing Huawei-run information and communications technology to provide curated internet access. These actions are not cultural outreach; they are advanced statecraft building strategies designed to create populations deeply rooted in Chinese propaganda technologies.
For much of the twentieth century, the United States leveraged education as a soft-power capability. American universities continually imported intellectual capital from across the world, cultivating leaders who slowly built and refined worldviews aligned with U.S. interests. The soft-power impact from the continued development of tactical-level student partnerships is not simply a theoretical talking point. Intensely studied by RAND, the Fulbright Program was described as “a strategic multiplier embedded in the global knowledge system,” producing enduring affinity for the United States.
In a parallel national line of effort, the Department of Defense was also employing education as an instrument of cooperation. Since 1976, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, National Defense University and Naval War College, have trained over 15,000 foreign officers. Alumni returned to home countries to rise in rank and lead their countries’ defense establishments. Embedded in doctrine, Joint Publication 3-20 cites that these programs “build(s) partner capacity and interoperability through shared professional military education.” Military scholars note that this soft-power deterrence is a “moral strength” where trust, doctrine, and professional understanding reside deeply in the psyche of allies.
Acting on its own strategic doctrine, China has revived and reinterpreted the power of educational influence for its own goals. In 2003, roughly 12,000 African students studied in China. By 2018, the number exceeded 81,000. Through the “10,000 African Talents” initiative, Beijing now funds degrees aligned to Belt and Road projects and other digital infrastructure initiatives. Since 2000, it has financed or built more than 60 universities and training centers, including the Malawi University of Science and Technology and the University of Dar es Salaam Library. Huawei and ZTE operate as educational auxiliaries, investing over $5 billion in African campus infrastructure between 2010 and 2020.
The outcome is a new generation of embedded economists and engineers who are educated in Mandarin and are now shaping national policy and planning. Networks such as the Rwanda–China Alumni Organization have already facilitated over $250 million in Chinese investment. These programs are not development assistance but scaffolding of long-term influence and dependence. The United States now permanently risks “ceding the initiative to competitors whose presence now includes banks, universities, and broadband.”
The National Defense Science and Technology Strategy (NDSTS) recognizes that “education and research pipelines form the foundation of enduring advantage,” yet the United States has been complacent in acting on this strategic line of effort for an integrated soft-power deterrence. Since 2023, more than half of African graduate-level visa applicants have been denied entry, with rejection rates exceeding 75 percent in Nigeria and Ethiopia. The result is a reversal of the very pathways that once sustained American soft power.
To reclaim the initiative, the United States must reframe education as a strategic instrument within the architecture of deterrence. This approach requires deliberate synchronization across the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the broader national security enterprise.
Education must be defined as an element of national power, not an adjunct to diplomacy. The Department of Defense should expand programs that directly link education and innovation. A ‘Fulbright for Future Builders’ program, jointly sponsored by DoD and the Department of State, could connect African innovators with U.S. universities, national laboratories, and defense accelerators. Similarly, ‘Security Innovation Fellowships’ in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and cyber could align emerging talent with U.S. technological ecosystems. Educational exchange must be recognized as an instrument of national soft-power. Reforming visa policy to facilitate legitimate academic exchange would strengthen U.S. influence far more efficiently than any temporary deployment.
These initiatives would operationalize the NDSTS’s premise that education and innovation constitute the intellectual infrastructure of deterrence. By curating educational partnerships designed to enhance soft-power, the United States can convert knowledge into strategy and partnership into presence.
Education, treated as development assistance, yields transient goodwill. However, when treated as a component of doctrine, education can generate enduring alignment. America’s influence was once built on the ideas it taught and the leaders it shaped. In this century, the state that educates the world will define it.
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Dr. Craig Buying is a musician and futurist, whose career spans academia, music, military service, and innovation. His work supports Air Combat Command Public Affairs. He was previously a project manager with AFRL Project Vanguard and director of the AFWERX Fellowship program. He earned his Doctorate in Music from Stony Brook University and holds a Master’s in Innovation from Arizona State University.
Select References
Department of Defense. National Defense Science and Technology Strategy 2023. Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
Department of Defense. Joint Publication 3-20: Security Cooperation. Washington, DC: Joint Staff, 2022.
RAND Corporation. Security Cooperation in the Age of Strategic Competition. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025.
RAND Corporation. Strategic Education Diplomacy. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022.
National Defense University Press. “No Competition Without Presence.” Joint Force Quarterly, 2020.
U.S. Department of State. 2023 Nonimmigrant Visa Statistics. Bureau of Consular Affairs, 2024.
Xi Jinping. “To Educate the People Is to Secure the Future.” State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2014.
General Martin E. Dempsey. “Education Provides the Foundation of Democracy.” Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), 2012.