America Needs a President Who Will Take on Autocrats

The conflicts raging in Ukraine and Gaza rightly dominate international headlines and show no sign of ending anytime soon.  It is even more essential, therefore, that we elect a president who understands the importance of U.S. leadership in world affairs.  The stakes are too high to retreat to isolationism.

The United States cannot afford to elect someone such as Donald Trump who lacks the discipline and the focus to take foreign policy seriously.  He prefers, instead, subservience to the policies of strongmen such as Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine he called “genius.”  As a CNN analysis pointed out, “Trump’s praise for Putin is a feature, not a bug. He has long admired Putin’s strongman tendencies and the power he exerts over his people.”

Trump’s attitude toward the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine (which his running mate, J.D. Vance, enthusiastically shares) is apparently “Russia First and America Last.”  This is absolutely the wrong policy for protecting U.S. interests in the world.  As Anne Applebaum astutely notes, “Putin hope[s] not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.”

In sharp contrast, Vice President Harris traveled to Europe the week before the invasion to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an important gesture of U.S. solidarity.  During the same trip she rallied European support by meeting with the NATO Secretary-General, the president of the European Commission, and the German chancellor.

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Looking southward, Trump had a similarly dismal record dealing with North Africa while president.  But North Africa requires sustained attention due to its strategic location between our NATO allies in southern Europe and the Sahel.

As 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith famously said, “let’s look at the record.”

The Egyptian people are enduring longstanding economic problems.  The well-respected Peterson Institute reports that poor governance, policy deficiencies, the entrenched military, and cronyism are to blame.  Egypt’s human rights record is equally dire.  Freedom House classified Egypt as “not free” and gave it a dismal rating of 18 on a scale of 100.

Standing by idly while conditions deteriorate precipitously in the most populous Arab nation – a key U.S. partner in the region, despite all of the flaws of its leadership – is yet another example of Trump’s shortsightedness.  He is an enabler rather than a leader, so instead of trying to help the Egyptian people he called Abdel Fattah el-Sisi his “favorite dictator” and said “he’s done a fantastic job.”  He made these odious and widely-reported remarks while representing the United States at the 2019 G-7 summit.

Trump’s dealings with Libya during his term in office provide yet another example of his habitual deference to strongmen.  He disregarded his own administration’s Libya policy when he called Libyan warlord Khaled Haftar in April 2019 to lavish him with praise even as Haftar’s forces were besieging the capital in an effort to replace the internationally recognized government.

Compounding this stunning example of diplomatic malpractice, the United States then joined Russia – Haftar’s benefactor – in blocking a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.  This sudden shift in U.S. policy confounded the Libyan people as well as our closest diplomatic partners.

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Birds of a feather flock together.  Autocrats are no different; Putin, Sisi, Haftar, Kim Jong Un would undoubtedly applaud Trump’s return to the White House.  Max Boot’s recent Washington Post column hit the nail on the head.  Boot wrote that when Trump bragged about praise he received from Hungarian demagogue Viktor Orban, he did not realize “that he was thereby providing yet more evidence of just how easily he is manipulated by shrewd foreign strongmen.”

Vice President Harris’s election, by contrast, will give strongmen pause because they fear she will stand up to them just as she stood up to the drug traffickers she prosecuted while she was California’s Attorney General.  They know that Kamala Harris will draw on her experience on the Senate Intelligence Committee and as Vice President to make informed foreign policy decisions, unsusceptible to their flattery.

Most importantly, autocrats understand that Kamala Harris believes that the United States is strongest – at home and abroad – when it leads in national security and when it values its alliance partners.  They know that she understands that the United States is weakest when it withdraws to isolationism and allows its adversaries to shape the international environment.

Boot asked “if Trump comes unglued when Harris questions his crowd size, how would he perform in negotiations with actual strongmen such as Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin?”  Voters need to ask themselves the same question when they cast their ballot this fall.

About the Author: Ambassador Gordon Gray

Gordon Gray was a career Foreign Service officer who served as Deputy Commandant of the National War College, U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.  Follow him on X (Twitter) @AmbGordonGray.