The United States’ global standing has plummeted under the Trump administration, according to Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) annual report and an international Gallup survey regarding the country’s reputation as a world leader.
The “authoritarian populist agenda” promoted by President Donald Trump along with lawmakers in several European Union countries, and those leaders’ promotion of xenophobia and racism, has left a vacuum that leaders including Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have taken advantage of, asserting their own anti-rights agendas.
Trump “displays a disturbing fondness for rights-trampling strongmen,” wrote Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, in his introduction to the group’s World Report 2018. The report details the president’s warm relations with Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, who has spearheaded a “war on drugs” that’s killed thousands; and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has waged attacks on his opponents and the press.
Meanwhile, Roth wrote, “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson largely rejected the promotion of human rights as an element of U.S. foreign policy while more broadly reducing the role of the U.S. abroad by presiding over an unprecedented dismantling of the State Department,” as possible reference to the departure of 60 percent of department’s career diplomats since Trump took office.
The administration’s abandonment of human rights, Roth added, “makes it much more difficult to stigmatize these authoritarian leaders when Trump says these are great guys.”
The report also denounced the president’s threats to human rights within the U.S., noting that “Trump has targeted refugees and immigrants, calling them criminals and security threats; emboldened racist politics by equivocating on white nationalism; and consistently championed anti-Muslim ideas and policies,” and cataloging his administration’s threats to women’s rights and Americans’ right to healthcare as well.
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