It is impossible to know for certain what approach President-elect
Donald Trump will take to supporting democracy and human rights abroad.
So far, he has offered only scattered hints—expressions of instincts and
impulses that largely point toward a disinclination to engage in
democracy promotion but remain far from being elaborated into concrete
policy plans. In addition, Trump’s leadership style and the overall
troubled state of U.S. democracy will clearly hurt U.S. efforts to
advance democracy’s global fortunes in the years ahead. While all of
this points almost uniformly in a negative direction, it is likely that
as Trump and his team move to actual policymaking, their actions in this
domain will prove less consistently negative than their initial signals
might indicate.
Throughout his campaign, Trump emphasized his intention to take a purely
transactional approach to other international powers. Underlying this
approach is the idea that the United States will define its interests
narrowly and thereby focus on U.S. economic interests and core security
concerns (above all, counterterrorism). Democracy and human rights in
other countries, and other “soft” interests, are to be put aside in the
pursuit of a get-tough, America-first foreign policy. According to Trump
and his advisers, their
counterterrorism strategy will rest on stepped-up military efforts
and possibly harsher treatment of suspected terrorists who are detained
or imprisoned. They have shown no interest in longer-term political
approaches to undercutting the roots of state fragility: for example,
Trump declared at a public event in December that “we’re going to stop trying to build new nations in far-off lands” that “you’ve never even heard of.”
In line with his promise of transactionalism, Trump has taken a
strikingly friendly approach toward various foreign strongmen. His
favorable statements about Russian President Vladimir Putin have
attracted the most attention but are only one part of a larger pattern
that includes a recent sympathetic statement about
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal crackdown
on undocumented immigrants and drug traffickers, a backslapping meeting
with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in New York in September,
and an effusive postelection telephone call with Hungary’s Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán. He has made it clear that in pursuing warmer
relationships with such leaders, he does not intend to raise unpleasant
truths about their democratic shortcomings. Of course, the United States
has long maintained cozy ties with various nondemocratic governments
for the sake of security and economic interests; but Trump has been
offering a kind of lavish praise that generally does not characterize
such relationships and that extends to strongmen leaders who are not
even strategically important to the United States (like Orbán).
Another serious negative signal related to democracy policy is
Trump’s deep-seated doubts about the value of core U.S. alliances—both
with NATO partners and other crucial longtime
allies such as Japan and South Korea.
He has exhibited a lack of appreciation of these alliances, which are
foundational elements of a broader international order that the United
States helped establish and has led for more than a half century—an
order rooted in liberal political values. Without anchoring specific
democracy policies and programs in a larger strategy to preserve this
international order, such efforts will lack real weight.
Of course, U.S. democracy promotion relies not just on actions the
United States takes abroad, but the power of the example it sets at
home. Various problematic features of U.S. political life in recent
years—the institutional gridlock, the ever-rising role of money in
politics, and the frequent skirmishing over basic electoral rules and
procedures—have already tarnished the United States’ image abroad. But
the recent U.S. presidential election process damaged this image much
more widely and deeply. Although this damage had many sources, numerous
actions that Trump took during the campaign and since the election—from
his vows to prosecute his main opponent to his baseless postelection
assertions of massive electoral fraud—figure significantly in the
dispiriting diminishment of America’s global political brand. Trump went
so far as to mock the idea of
the United States as a democratic exemplar,
declaring in July that “when the world sees how bad the United States
is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a
very good messenger.”
Moreover, highly visible elements of Trump’s leadership style—from
his propensity to engage in personal attacks against journalists and
even average citizens in response to minor perceived slights to his
unwillingness to seriously address the linkages between his business
interests and his political position—set a devastating example to
strongmen leaders around the world. In taking such actions, he is
drawing from the playbook of these vindictive leaders, who have undercut
democracy in a growing number of countries that once enjoyed
considerable political space, such as Hungary, the Philippines, and
Turkey. Many democratically dubious leaders are observing these actions
emanating from the president-elect and undoubtedly saying to their
critics: How can you object to my efforts to defend myself? When I reach
out to slap those who dare criticize me, I’m only doing what the new
president of the world’s greatest democracy does.
In short, the prospects for serious, effective U.S. engagement by Trump
to support democracy and human rights abroad look dismal. But in
practice, the picture will likely end up being at least somewhat less
negative than the initial signals indicates.
Read more: US Trump Presidency: Prospects for U.S. Democracy Promotion Under Trump
