Trump’s Cynical Use of Human Rights

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/opinion/trump-human-rights.html

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President Trump usually makes no effort to disguise how little he cares about human rights. In May, during his first overseas trip after his inauguration, he assured Arab despots and Muslim leaders in Riyadh, “We are not here to lecture.” He called President Xi Jinping of China “a very special man,” praised Egypt’s military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for doing “a fantastic job” and hailed the bloodstained President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, with whom he boasted of having a “great relationship.”

Yet as bad as Mr. Trump is when he ignores human rights, he is also corrosive when he speaks up. Perhaps the most disingenuous moment in his State of the Union address last month came when he condemned North Korea’s dictatorship and saluted Ji Seong-ho, a brave man who escaped famine and persecution there. Put aside the most obvious hypocrisy: Refugees like Mr. Ji are imperiled by Mr. Trump’s contempt for immigrants and slashing of refugee quotas. Rather, the deeper problem is how Mr. Trump sporadically invokes the suffering of foreigners when he thinks it promotes United States strategic priorities — in this case, the nuclear crisis with North Korea.

Mr. Trump rarely condemns repression overseas, except when Christians are being persecuted by Muslim extremists, or when human rights are abused by longtime foes of the United States — particularly Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September, he denounced “the depraved regime in North Korea,” “the corrupt, destabilizing regime in Cuba” and the “socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro” in Venezuela, while also calling Iran “a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.”

Instead of viewing human rights as a universal ideal, Mr. Trump invokes them only strategically, when they are useful as a geopolitical cudgel.

His deep cynicism about human rights is longstanding. In 1990, he offered respectful words for the bloody crushing of protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989: “The Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.” Unmoved by the Arab Spring, he tweeted in September 2012, “We threw our ally Mubarak overboard and Egypt is now our enemy.” While campaigning for president, he enthused about torture and suggested killing the family members of terrorists.

As president, Mr. Trump has welcomed thugs from Egypt, Turkey and Vietnam to the White House. In October, he hosted the leader of Thailand’s military-controlled government, who had been spurned from White House visits since leading a coup in 2014. Mr. Trump swoons when his autocratic Chinese or Saudi hosts welcome him with displays of military pageantry. Notwithstanding his recent rhetoric about North Korea, he praised Kim Jong-un — the murderous, dynastic tyrant of a totalitarian Stalinist regime with a gulag — as “a pretty smart cookie.”

To be sure, some of Mr. Trump’s underlings have occasionally taken advantage of his shambolic mismanagement to sneak human rights into policy. In January of last year, Mr. Trump, while insisting that torture works, announced that he would defer on interrogation policy to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who like most United States generals opposes torture. In December, the administration singled out some individuals and entities for economic sanctions and visa restrictions, using an innovative 2016 law aimed at those who engage in human rights abuses or corruption around the world. But these flickerings of conscience do little to prettify Mr. Trump’s overall record.

Of course, Mr. Trump is hardly the first United States president to be hypocritical or selective about promoting human rights. Yet he presents a special threat, for several reasons. For one thing, he is more overtly hostile to human rights than any American president since Richard Nixon, which makes his intermittent admonitions in their name ring particularly hollow. And he is an inveterate liar, which makes it all too easy for the despots he chooses to scold to dispute his statements.

In addition, because Mr. Trump is so hated abroad, his fitful embrace of human rights is most likely only to further tarnish the cause. In Europe, according to a Pew poll released in June, Mr. Trump came into office roughly as reviled as George W. Bush became in the aftermath of the Iraq war. In a recent Gallup survey of 134 countries, the median approval of United States leadership plummeted from 48 percent in Barack Obama’s final year to just 30 percent — and that was before it was revealed that Mr. Trump had vulgarly insulted Haiti and the nations of Africa.

Finally, Mr. Trump’s own kleptocratic, norm-shattering administration spoils any moral authority he might have on human rights. He excoriates the judiciary, independent law enforcement and the free press — which he has called “the enemy of the people,” a Stalinist phrase. Having branded Democrats as “treasonous” for not applauding him, he craves a military parade in Washington. His “fake news” catchphrase has caught on among tyrants worldwide, with Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Maduro and Mr. Duterte all gleefully using it. Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman, recently praised Mr. Trump’s “fake news” awards.

Mr. Trump can’t credibly encourage demonstrations in Iran while berating protesters at home. And he could hardly criticize a dictator for imprisoning political rivals while pressing to prosecute Hillary Clinton and jail her aide Huma Abedin.

It falls to more decent democratic leaders — including Angela Merkel of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France, Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Justin Trudeau of Canada — to champion freedom. The United States has sidelined itself from being taken seriously about human rights by electing Mr. Trump, and its global reputation will not begin to recover until he is sent packing.