Four days after the Fox event, the left-wing journal The New Republic (TNR) sent out a fundraising email exposing “Donald Trump’s favorite dictators.” But their guilt-by-association play failed when one looked at the policies being discussed.
Vladimir Putin was first, with flashbacks to the discredited “Russian collusion” hoax. What better way to smear an avowed nationalist candidate who wants to make his country great again than to allege he is a pawn of a hostile foreign power? But thrown at Trump it was unbelievable from the start. TNR cites Trump saying how “clever” Putin was in handling President Barack Obama on Crimea and deserves “a lot of credit” for taking over that strategic territory for “two dollars’ worth of sanctions.” But this does not mean Trump backs Putin. Trump’s point is that Obama was too weak to deter Putin. As was President Joe Biden who opened the door for the Russian invasion of the rest of Ukraine by declaring Kyiv was outside the NATO defense perimeter.
As Trump has said repeatedly, there would have been no invasion had he been reelected. His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirms in his memoir Never Give an Inch. Fighting for the America I Love the “shows of strength that President Trump put on in private conversations with Putin.” Trump also sent weapons to Ukraine along with special forces trainers, something Obama refused to do. Pompeo laments that the “partisan hysteria” regarding the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call and impeachment fiasco weaken efforts to further strengthen Ukraine. As a vocal advocate of impeachment, TNR played a part in Putin’s aggression even before backing the election of a known appeaser in 2020 who spent his first two years waving a white flag around the world. The results have been wars on multiple fronts that threaten to spread because of lackluster responses by a Biden Administration only reluctantly waking up to an extremely dangerous world.
Putin thus still thinks the U.S. will abandon Ukraine and give him a victory that will cement his revanchist regime in power for another decade. And China believes this too. A recent editorial in state media outlet Global Times asked readers to “Imagine if the US, the largest single donor to Kiev.... reduces its Ukraine aid. Amid the growing war-weariness in the West, this will certainly deflate Europe's willingness to support Ukraine. In that case, how the war will end is quite obvious.” And a “war-weary West” will eventually abandon Israel, Taiwan, and a long list of other targets to an axis of evil bent on overturning a world order upon which free people depend.
TNR’s other dictators can be dealt with just as readily. The charm offensive with Kim Jong Un was a diplomatic ploy to appeal to an isolated, immature ruler. Kim did agree to halt nuclear and long-range missile testing. On denuclearization, Trump held firmly to the position that there would be no sanctions relief until North Korea had fully dismantled its nuclear program.
It is policy disagreements that are at the core of TNR’s complaints about its last two “dictators.” Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016 and left office at the end of his constitutionally limited four-year term. During his 20 years as mayor of Davao City he “transformed the city from a haven of lawlessness into one of the safest areas in Southeast Asia. Duterte’s harsh crime-fighting tactics earned him the nicknames ‘the Punisher’ and ‘Duterte Harry.’” This was the main issue that led to his landslide election as president. He waged a ruthless campaign against drug cartels, using vigilante and counterinsurgency tactics in a true war on crime. This won Trump’s respect and the Left’s hatred, as we see today in America.
William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who served on the professional staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications.
Image: National Archives