Allies Fear Trump Is Eroding America’s Moral Authority
PARIS — When the State Department released its annual human rights report last week, it contained many of the usual tough American judgments of other countries. Iran was criticized for restricting freedom of religion and the media; Russia for discriminating against minorities; Eritrea for using torture; Bulgaria for violence against migrants and asylum seekers. The list went on.
What was notably missing this year, however, was the usual fanfare around the report and a news conference promoting it by the new secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, as Democratic and Republican administrations have almost always done...
“What is very different is that the Trump administration says very bluntly that ‘America has no responsibility in the world and it will pull back,’” said Laurence Nardon, who runs the North America program at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, a prominent think tank.
“Trump will still do things, but in a transactional way,” she added. “He will fight ISIS because it’s perceived as a true and real danger to the United States, and he’ll do deals that benefit the country, but not out of any sense of moral responsibility to help the rest of the world.”
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