6/15/18
Even for a president long known for flattering autocrats, President Trump's open envy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — one of the world's most brutally repressive dictators — stood out. "Hey, he's the head of a country. And I mean he is the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different," Trump told Fox News on Friday. "He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same." Since Trump's election, foreign policy experts have noted a dramatic shift away from America's traditional role as a promoter of democracy and human rights around the world. "It's been a troubling week for America's credibility in the world," said Nicholas Burns, a former undersecretary of State and NATO ambassador. "Our leadership of the West has long been a moral leadership, that we will be the country that defends democracy." In practice, presidents have often fallen short of the lofty rhetoric that has long defined America's self-conception. But Trump has gone further, all but shedding the democratic aspirations long touted as the bedrock of U.S. foreign policy. His exaltation of Kim's enforcement of order in North Korea recalled Trump's praise last year for President Rodrigo Duterte's anti-drug war in the Philippines, which has been responsible for numerous extrajudicial killings.
Coming off the contentious G-7 summit last weekend in Quebec, Canada, many of America's closest allies are reconsidering their relationships with the U.S. While Trump's proposed steel and aluminum tariffs were the issue that provoked dissension, that spat only deepened frustrations among allies already upset by the president's abandonment of the Paris climate change accord and Iran nuclear deal. In a speech this week, Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas, framed the new world order in stark terms, stating that Europeans must now act "as a conscious counterweight" to the U.S. in certain situations. "The world order we were used to — it no longer exists," he said. This week, Trump was caught on camera in a North Korean propaganda video saluting one of Kim's generals at the Singapore summit, despite his past criticisms of Obama for shows of respect to the likes of the Japanese emperor. His remarks on Friday extolling Kim's gun-barrel grip on power ratcheted up similar laudatory comments since Tuesday's summit. At the same time, Trump again excused Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea, blaming Obama. "They went into Afghanistan with us," Burns said. "You can't buy that kind of allegiance in the world. It comes from 70 years of being faithful, not casting that aside because we've got a trade deficit with one of them. If you throw this away, there are direct consequences for the American people."