There are problems with this. President Trump’s national security documents make “competition” sound like an inevitability rather than a choice. Thus, they skip over a critical question: When can America best achieve its interests not by competing with China and Russia but by trying to cooperate with them? It’s no coincidence that the same National Security Strategy that downplays the importance of great cooperation also omits the words “climate change.” [...]
It’s the latest evidence that, in the words of Freedom House, “China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent years. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tightening its control over the media, online speech, religious groups, and civil society associations while undermining already modest rule-of-law reforms.” Last summer, Beijing became the first regime since Nazi Germany to have a Nobel Prize winner, the heroic intellectual Liu Xiaobo, die as a prisoner of the state. [...]
Not many people around the world likely saw the Axios report. But many have noted that the United States, under Trump, exhibits less respect for the liberal and democratic norms they admire. Over the past few years, Pew has asked people around the world, “Do you think the government of the U.S. respects the personal freedoms of its people?” Between 2013 and 2017, the percentage answering “yes” dropped 12 points in the Philippines, 13 points in Indonesia, 16 points in Japan and 25 points in Australia. By vast margins, non-Americans also disapprove of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership and his threats to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, ban Muslims from entering the United States, and build a wall along America’s southern border. In Trump, they see a leader who respects neither human dignity nor the rule of law at home or abroad. Which is perhaps why, between Obama’s last year in office and Trump’s first, the percentage of non-Americans who expressed confidence that America’s president will “do the right thing regarding world affairs” dropped a massive 42 points.
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