A Donald Trump presidency would be a triumph for dictators and autocrats, Vladimir Putin chief among them. Ukraine would be de facto relegated to a region of Russia under President Trump, not an independent nation. Trump has said that he can find no reason to criticize Putin and doesn’t want to lecture other world leaders about democracy and human rights because America has its own problems to fix. He might even recognize Crimea as part of Russia and move to drop U.S. sanctions against the Kremlin for its war against Ukraine that has killed 10,000 people and counting.
His top foreign policy and campaign aides – Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn – have demonstrated deep ties and business relationships with the Kremlin or pro-Kremlin politicians, such as overthrown President Viktor Yanukovych.
With respect to NATO, Trump is correct that the 28 allies should be spending the agreed-upon 2 percent of national gross domestic product on national defense. But to suggest that the U.S. would not honor its commitment to defend allies under attack gives Russians “a green light” for invasion, as former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright aptly stated.
There is strong evidence that Russian hackers were behind the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee, a theft that amounts to blatant foreign intervention in U.S. elections and a modern, high-tech version of the Watergate break-in of Democratic headquarters. Rather than condemn, Trump encouraged Russia to hack away even more.
Morality matters in foreign policy and in personal relations; morality is Trump’s major failing. Not even fellow Republicans support him. “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug,” U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s correctly said on July 27. Electing Trump would give the world another global menace and quite possibly a new devious thug.
Unfortunately, an anti-democratic axis is entrenched in most of the former Soviet Union, in China and much of the Middle East. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an autocrat cozying up to Putin again. Another autocrat, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is for Trump because he won’t “export democracy,” but Clinton will try.
America doesn’t have the power to stop dictatorships and human rights abuses globally. But its political leaders do need to take sides. America must stand with people who strive for freedom against tyranny, domestic and foreign, a choice that puts it on the side of most of the world’s 7.4 billion people, including 43 million striving but embattled Ukrainians.
