A NYT opinion discusses a topic that gets little attention. The opinion is by Michael Posner a lawyer and human rights advocate. He was assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2009-2013. The State Department’s Bureau Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is the heart of America’s soft power influence in the world. MAGA has intentionally destroyed it. Posner writes (not paywalled):
Trump Is Destroying a Core American Value.
The World Will Notice.
In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who died this month, developed the concept of “soft power.” His central premise, that the United States enhances its global influence by promoting values like human rights and democracy, has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations.Donald Trump has made clear that he fundamentally rejects this vision. As president, he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of the State Department that will cripple its capacity to promote American values abroad. At the center of this effort are drastic cuts to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — the State Department’s core institution for advancing soft power, which I led under President Barack Obama. Unless Congress intervenes, the debasement of the bureau’s role will impair America’s ability to challenge authoritarianism, support democratic movements and provide independent analysis to inform U.S. foreign policy. The long-term result will be a United States that is weaker, less principled and increasingly sidelined as authoritarian powers like Russia and China offer their own transactional models of global engagement.Its purpose was always practical: to ensure U.S. foreign aid and trade decisions were informed by credible assessments of human rights conditions around the world. That’s why every year, the bureau prepares congressionally mandated human rights reports.
In its early years, it struggled to defend its existence. Foreign governments resented being called out in its annual reports and attacked its legitimacy. Many State Department traditionalists viewed its focus on human rights as an unhelpful distraction from the realpolitik topics they were much more comfortable addressing.
Under the guise of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls streamlining, the administration plans to eliminate two offices, one that oversees grants, the other focused on promoting internet freedom in closed societies and on championing human rights in corporate conduct and international bodies like the United Nations. As part of a departmentwide downsizing, the bureau’s overall staff will also be cut by at least 15 percent.Inevitability, the effect of this shift will be to relegate human rights to the sidelines of U.S. foreign policy.
This is more evidence of the ruthless authoritarian intent of MAGA’s morally rotted wealth and power politics. Why give up soft power if MAGA elites say they put America first? They would not. Instead, the truth is that they put themselves first, hate democracy everywhere and want to make war on democracy to forever make the world safe for kleptocratic tyranny.
That’s the core goal of American MAGA politics. It is not just the civil liberties that protect the American people from tyranny and state-sanctioned theft that MAGA wants to kill. MAGA wants the entire world to be dominated by corrupt tyrannies.
Q1: Posner asserts that the world will notice the death of American soft power, which is probably true, but will most Americans notice?
Q2: Is it evidence-based and plausible or lies-based nonsense to argue that MAGA elites hate democracy and civil liberties in the US and abroad? If it is nonsense, how can one explain what MAGA elites are doing to democracy and civil liberties in the US and everywhere else? Why do American MAGA elites adore and want to emulate corrupt dictators like Hungary’s Viktor Orban?