America, Ally of Autocrats
This is not isolationism. It is America reorienting foreign policy to engage with autocracies as an ally.
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Here is a sobering truth: the Trump administration will bring America into the orbit of an autocratic axis that is gaining strength in the world. President Trump and unelected co-leader Elon Musk are already at work dissolving America’s ties to organizations that stand for democratic internationalism and humanitarian assistance.
In some ways, this backing of autocracies is nothing new. The United States has been an ally and promoter of many past dictatorships. My book Strongmen includes the case studies of the U.S.-backed 1973 coup in Chile, and American support for Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracy in Zaire. More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has retained American support despite becoming openly authoritarian at home and overseeing war crimes in Gaza that resulted in the issuance of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.
Now all of American foreign and other policy is undergoing a wrenching reorientation as the Donald Trump administration signals its openness to having closer relationships with authoritarian states and extremist parties across the political spectrum. Many of his Cabinet choices, from Tulsi Gabbard to Kash Patel, are designed to facilitate this shift.
Vice President J.D. Vance showed his own apparent sympathies with the far-right party Alternative for Germany, which harbors neo-Nazis and was also recently hailed by Musk.
Anyone surprised by this open embrace of authoritarianism has a short memory, since Trump made his affinity for dictators a campaign theme. This is what he said at a campaign rally in Virginia in June 2024, referring to Russia, China and North Korea: “If you have a smart president, they’re not enemies. You’ll make them do great.”
Now he is in office, the goal of making the enemies of American democracy “do great” will increasingly influence policy. Already, some democracies have been threatened with military invasions, and the people who write the executive orders Trump signs with a flourish have been busy thinking up ways to make it easier for foreign entities to exert influence in our country and U.S. entities to enjoy cozy relations with bad actors.
This is the rationale behind the decision to stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. corporations from bribing foreign officials to advance their interests, disband the TaskForce KleptoCapture, which targeted Russian oligarchs, disband the FBI’s Foreign Influence Taskforce, and relax enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
To prove your worth to Putin, it’s not enough to be on good terms with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a longtime ally of the Kremlin and the muse of the Heritage Foundation and the GOP. It’s time to open the door to the more hardcore criminal elements of the Russian sphere of influence. Cue the news that Trump Department of State officials have met with murderous dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko to warm up US-Belarus relations.
Trump doesn’t only admire dictators: in the authoritarian tradition, he seems to despise democratic leaders as weak because they allow voters to determine their destiny.
This scorn for democracies extends to America. As I wrote in a recent New York Times essay, Trump has internalized “an autocratic view of geopolitics that blames democracies for creating international conflict. When Mr. Trump suggests that President Joe Biden’s support of Ukraine’s bid to join NATO provoked Russia’s invasion, for instance, he too justifies the Kremlin’s autocratic aggression as a legitimate response to the hostile actions of a democracy.”
Trump’s history of seeing America and democracies as the problem is important for understanding what is happening now. The “Trump deal” to “end” the war in Ukraine is actually Putin’s deal. It benefits only Russia to exclude Ukraine from NATO, and it empowers autocrats everywhere to let Russia’s territorial seizures stand. Trying to exclude Ukrainian President Zelensky from leader-level negotiations about the fate of Ukraine is part of a Putin-pleasing strategy that will have vast ramifications for world stability and our national security. Trump’s idea of “peace” is autocratic domination.
What can we nobodies do about this?
I hold no office. I live on my veteran’s disability compensation; hence, I have very little to donate. I’m disabled so cannot take part in physical protests; I would be a liability to those around me. I call, email and write my three Congressional reps but all three are trump lapdogs so my contribution goes straight into the round file. So far, nothing I do matters one iota.
However, I did not serve my country so I could watch it be destroyed and then aligned with despots. What can I do to help stop the deliberate, gleeful destruction of America?
What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk have signaled – unmistakably and ever so darkly – through their chosen errand boy, JD Vance, is that evil can indeed triumph and that they're in it to win.