Despite promising not to lecture other countries on “how to live,” the Trump administration is intervening with increasing frequency and force in the political affairs of other countries.
Immediately upon taking power, President Donald Trump and his team set about pulling the United States away from its longtime stance as a supporter of democracy globally. They dismantled U.S. pro-democracy assistance programs, dissolved most of the State Department’s institutional capacity on democracy issues, and disabled most of U.S. global broadcasting, a traditional linchpin of democracy support. Trump put a ribbon on this course change in Riyadh in May when he criticized his predecessors as “interventionists” and declared that the United States would no longer give other countries “lectures on how to live.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio underlined this new policy stance in a cable to U.S. embassies around the world in July, stating that the State Department would sharply restrict commentary on foreign elections.
Yet despite this rhetorical embrace of non-interventionism, the Trump administration has repeatedly involved itself in the domestic affairs of other countries. In some cases, this involves pressuring other countries to change policies in the economic domain, such as on investment into or from the United States, on technology regulation, or on climate change, where the administration is exerting leverage to discourage other countries from moving away from reliance on fossil fuels. But in a growing set of cases, the new U.S. interventionism is directly political, aiming to influence core political-legal processes, like elections; to affect the political fortunes of other countries’ leaders or their main political opponents; or to shape outcomes on major political issues, like disputes over basic political rights.
The most common thrust of the administration’s political interventionism is support for politicians or political parties that Trump and his team favor—right-wing, illiberal, or anti-democratic populists, often with ties to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Some of these political actors are in power, like those in Argentina, El Salvador, Hungary, and Israel; some are not, like those in Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The administration often justifies these actions in terms of protecting democracy, even though the target countries are democracies and many of those the administration goes to bat for are widely viewed internationally as threats to democracy.
