Every time Donald Trump says something nice about an autocrat, Washington loses its cool. Whether he is complimenting Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator; Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ strongman; Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s semi-autocrat, or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Mr Trump has found a perfect way to provoke US globalists. It works every time. Say something pleasant about a thug and watch everyone foam at the mouth. From Republican neoconservatives to liberal humanitarians, the uproar is bipartisan. Expect Mr Trump to keep doing it as long as he lives.
Yet he is treading in well-worn footsteps. It may tempt fate to compare Mr Trump with Barack Obama. It would be hard to find two camps who revile each other more than Trump and Obama supporters. Yet they share an important trait. Neither likes exporting democracy. Both leaders opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Trump discovered his opposition long after the invasion took place. But that is detail. He helped forge a new Republican base by attacking the Bush family for sacrificing American lives in pursuit of Middle Eastern democracy. Mr Obama thought much the same thing. Both made electoral hay out of the US public’s waning appetite for spreading democracy.
For the first time since it rose to global power in the 1940s, the US has produced not one, but two consecutive presidents who spurn the democracy-promoting creed. Their motives could not be more different. Mr Obama was deeply ambivalent about the US’s ability to implant democracy beyond its shores. He tended to filter his views through the Iraq debacle.