By Ted Piccone —The Mark News —
How Donald Trump’s narrow-minded nationalism is bad for liberal democracies around the world while emboldening autocrats with deplorable human rights records.
President Donald Trump’s exaggerated “America First” doctrine elevates a zero-sum approach to pursuing U.S. interests that undermines both U.S. and global security. The era of Pax Americana, which brought seven decades of relative global peace and prosperity, has entered a new and more dangerous stage of decline thanks to Trump’s embrace of narrow-minded nationalism. The result will be a much more favorable environment for autocrats at the expense of liberal democracy and human rights.
These trends have already come to life in the first year of the Trump administration and will only get worse in year two. The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate change, the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear weapons deal, rising U.S. tariffs against America’s most reliable democratic trade partners, and ongoing appeasement of authoritarians in China and Russia – and now North Korea – are exacerbating the self-inflicted harm of a longer-term U.S. retreat from global leadership.
Meanwhile, respect for democratic governance and human rights continues to fall even in states once considered safe, such as Hungary and Poland. Few, if any, democratic allies are able to fill the growing vacuum left by the U.S. retreat, leaving the field of geopolitical competition open to the maneuvers of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Why should the survival of strong democracies matter to national and global security? Why not let each country decide how to govern themselves on their own terms, without regard to universal rights and democratic accountability by their citizens?
First, democracies historically have not gone to war against each other. If we want to avoid war and all its harms, therefore, we should support the consolidation of healthy democracies.
Empirical evidence shows that strong democracies are much less likely to experience civil wars, less likely to suffer deadly terrorism in comparison to non-democracies, have lower levels of violence, including against women, and generate fewer refugees. Strong democracies are also more transparent and accountable to their citizens and their neighbors and more likely to provide security through the rule of law rather than violating sovereignty through armed force, cyberattacks or terrorism. A world with more and stronger democracies is a safer world.
The reverse is true for dictatorships and other non-democracies, especially weak and failing states that fall in that messy middle between liberal democracy and autocracy. As authoritarians amass economic, military and technological leverage at home and abroad, they increase pressure on their opponents to expand their hold on power at the expense of more open societies.
The inevitable results have already come to pass: Russia’s growing interference in international elections, China’s militarizing international waters and artificial intelligence , Iran’s harboring and sustaining terrorists, and questions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Trump, despite his advisers’ best attempts to maintain the long-held bipartisan commitment of international leadership, seems determined to keep digging the United States deeper into the hole of populist nationalism and protectionism. The president continues to praise strongman rulers in countries around the world: el-Sisi in Egypt, Erdogan in Turkey, and the Philippines’ Duterte, despite their deplorable human rights records. The few times this administration has spoken out clearly in defense of human rights have been tainted by overt and covert messages calling for military coups and regime change, as in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. Longstanding U.S. programs designed to support free media, human rights defenders and women’s rights around the world face repeated White House attempts to cut funding, which Congress has rejected so far.
Worst of all, Trump’s rhetoric and actions against domestic opponents are the exact opposite of what are most needed if the United States is to lead a world safe for democratic peace. His record of undermining the separation of powers, attacking independent prosecutors and judges, demeaning journalists, and abetting racist and nativist forces sends precisely the wrong message to both struggling reformers and ambitious autocrats around the world. His partners in the Republican-controlled Congress are going along for the ride; looking the other way while advancing their own factionalized interests wherever possible. Such weaknesses at home will further America’s decline abroad as evidenced by recent polling showing a precipitous drop in U.S. standing around the world, which in turn makes it harder for our democratic allies to partner with us to solve global problems.
The good news is that there is nothing wrong with democracy that free citizens cannot fix themselves. The self-correcting features of popular accountability, coupled with respect for human rights and the rule of law, are antidotes to the current mood of retrenchment from globalization. The rise of Trump and his ilk should be a wake-up call not to take our liberties for granted. Democracies, especially the United States, should lead by example and urgently address their political and economic dysfunctions, in order to define a new agenda of cooperation to strengthen the international liberal order.
Ted Piccone spent eight years as a senior foreign policy advisor in the Clinton administration, including on the National Security Council staff, at the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. He is now a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.
As a US citizen of many years standing, I deplore the direction of what our nation is inflicting on the world and planet. My goal is to do everything in my power to fight against this direction and try to restore our moral and humanitarian leadership that perhaps once existed when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s.
HELLBENT ON DESTRUCTION OF ALL THAT’S GOOD
Time flies irreversibly away, and there is nothing on the part of the so-called “world leaders” but cheap talk, threats, and empty pompous promises to take the place of hope for those who bear the tug and tow the line of bare survival that makes the rich shamelessly richer, day in and day out. When Obama became president, it seemed to me that in order to eradicate extreme poverty and globalize peace in this century, and set the world on a course to prosperity, it was not enough to reform the national and international financial systems, or necessarily convenient to abolish banking secrecy, super-inflate the IMF, or to enact a massive world-wide deficit-spending scheme. And it was not enough for the United Nations to set lofty Millennium Development Goals, or to support the creation of additional tax-dependent multilateral financial institutions for their achievement. A real working partnership between the rich and the poor was obviously needed. It still is. In The Americas, the Partnership could be called, for instance, “A Partnership for Development with the United States of America” (“Sociedad para el Desarrollo con los Estados Unidos de América”). Time, indeed, does fly away: This idea was first proposed in 1993 to President Clinton, and in 2005 to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Perhaps its time had finally come, I thought. But in the era of Trump, things look utterly hopeless for the poor and the extremely poor. Just consider Thomas Pikkety’s Thesis.
https : //www.academia.edu/36724778/CNA_-_Leadership_For_Development_Calls_For_Deepening_Partnerships_With_Developing_Countries_-_2009082802
https : //www.academia.edu/13062623/Informal_Proof_of_Thomas_Pikettys_Thesis-2014060802
The sentiments expressed in the article are biased and manipulate the truth.
President Trump is restoring the US to prominence globally and inspiring the US economy to new heights.
We would expect the partisan hack author to disparage President Trump as his affiliation and loyalty is to Impeached former Pres. Clinton and Defeated Hillary Clinton despite election rigging.
My, my, P. Stachio has been watching too much of the universally recognized lies and disinformation of FOX News. Trump’s own mendacity, irrationality and downright infantile behavior has made him and the United States the laughingstock of the world. His administration’s policies have set back our country by decades in the areas of anthropomorphic climate change, international cooperation, peace and security, humane treatment of asylum applicants and immigrants, worker rights, diplomacy, dignity . . . the list goes on.
I totally agree with P. Stachio….The sentiments expressed in the article are biased and manipulate the truth. Trump is keeping his promises that he made when he was elected. We now have a deal with Mexico and Canada on a fair trade deal. Good talks with North Korea. Our economy has never been better. More jobs and more money in our pockets.. Health care is improving and hopefully soon get rid of Obama Care totally. Kabanaugh was elected to the Supreme Court. Trump’s rally’s are in the thousands with thousands waiting outside. Obama was giving a speech in a 7,000 arena and only 750 turned out….very embarrassing. Don’t think he will do that for awhile. Dems want to impeach Kavanaugh for unproved sexual harassment while in high school. Where were they when Clinton was having sex in the Oval Office with a young intern. Why were none of the women who charged Clinton with sexual harassment heard? No one to back up the Ford sexual harassment charge. Not even her family. Thank you President Trump for making America great again. The wall is being built. Thank you Senator Collins for your beautiful, strong speech in the Senate. I watch all US channels to get all opinions. So much fake news going on.
I love Trump. Globalism is the real enemy of freedom, and truth is the real enemy of bad science.
Anybody with a high school education in science, obviously NOT the author here, can tell you that climate change has been happening for 4 billion years on Earth, and will continue until we burn out in the super nova of the sun in another 4 billion years. Just thanks God that we won’t have to deal with global cooling YET. As that will wipe out most of the population in less than five years.
Mr. P. Stachio is nuts if he thinks his liberal bent is what’s good for America. Its not and President Trump is piercing through this sort of globalistic gobbledygook so that American taxpayers will not be supporting the world. In the list of things that he can withdraw from in the future is the United Nations and its leeches that depend on American dollars to keep that organization afloat. In the meantime, he is taking out the bad guys in ISIS. Good for him.
I am so amazed to read of the fake news comment on President Trump. So many wrong things have been said about the direction Trump would like to take America. And the ‘favourable press’ given ex-President Clinton is beyond words. Need I mention the total corruption with the Clintons? The many deaths of those that opposed them, the Clinton Foundation, the reign of Hillary in Obama’s Presidency? Since when democracies do not go to war with each other? Then what about the interference that Europe and America have had in other countries? Remember the Arab Spring movements? Lybia? The Assasination of other countries’ leaders? Remember the expression, ‘regime change?’ Oh my, the list of these democratic misdemeanours is too long for this article. You see, the liberals are too liberal to notice that it is only Trump who actually had meetings with NKorea, China and its unfair trade practices, Trump’s desire to meet with Iran, etc. But notice how the liberal Press seemed to have wished him to fail in these ventures. Just look at the false empeachment procedure they are try to put forward against Trump. And concerning Climate Change come global warming, I do not believe it is a threat to the world. The arguments of the pro global warming people are so weak and incorrect. I certainly agree that we need to look after our environment, but the lies and unscientific facts about our planet are a laugh! There’s so much more I can say. Mas basta! As regards Trump, let him alone! He’s doing a great job and the records show it. I know that the liberals hate him, but if you were truly democratic you would not hate, kill, riot, slander, and destroy society as we see happening in the US by the previous democratic leaders and their voters. If we are to succeed we are to do it together even if we do not like what others say. I sincerely hope that Peru would be very careful as it charts its way forward without any foreign interference such as we democracies of the first world love to do. God bless Peru.