Can US Republicans stop party’s authoritarian drift under Trump?

The former president, who looks set to win the party nomination for another White House run, can be expected to bring the US more in alignment with Putin’s Russia, with help from the likes of senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz

Robert Delaney

Published: 5:30am, 20 Feb 2024

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For anyone with a stake in the remains of the geopolitical and economic order established and enforced by Washington and its allies, the US$450 million rulings against Donald Trump in New York state are a problem.

They have pushed the former president’s declaration that any Nato ally not spending enough on defence should be attacked by Russia almost entirely out of the news cycle.

Only in the vortex of controversy that constantly surrounds Trump can a statement that portends the possible end of the post-WWII order if he wins back the White House fade so quickly. Had any other US president said this, Washington, Ottawa, London, and Brussels would have convulsed.

Never mind that Nato is not a dues-collecting entity, but rather a grouping that pledges defence spending levels. These expenditures have increased across the bloc since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. But in Trump’s telling, Washington’s most important allies are deadbeats, better off in the Kremlin’s clutches.

Not all Republicans are watching their party’s drift into the orbit of authoritarian nationalism with a shrug, however.

Nikki Haley, who’s still far behind Trump in polling for the party’s presidential nomination, has blasted her front-running opponent’s praise for Putin after the death of Alexei Navalny. Unfortunately, the majority of her party is now so comfortable with ideological contradictions that her stand will underscore her differences with Trump.

US Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on February 18. Haley has bashed Donald Trump for his continued silence over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his recent outburst over Nato. Photo: AFP

Putin’s bloody campaign to spread a militarised, Christian nationalist conformity is the new Republican Party’s idea of progress.

That’s why the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has blocked American aid to Ukraine through a supplemental emergency funding package passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate. They throw up demands for more funding transparency while Ukrainian soldiers die fighting the battle that Republicans of an earlier era would have been fully behind.

And here’s where the racism of the Republican Party comes into play. Compare the lack of outrage over Putin among Republicans to the backlash against Beijing we saw from them after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died seven years ago. Senator Ted Cruz pushed to rename the address of the Chinese Embassy in Washington to “1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza”, a goal that was a “major priority”, the Texas Tribune quoted the lawmaker’s spokesperson as saying.

In short, Putin gets a pass to repress dissidents; the Chinese government does not. We got a fresh reminder of this in Senator Tom Cotton’s grilling of TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi recently.

Cotton, by the way, voted no on the aid for Ukraine, arguing that the economic and budget support for Kyiv in the package was too much even after his party managed to cut that amount by about a third.

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On the same note, Cruz stood behind pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong while he was in the city and then killed legislation that would have given them an easier path to refugee status in the US.

His statement about Navalny’s death did not name Putin as the likely perpetrator, and by saying “the [Russian] regime interprets weakness from the United States as appeasement and has only escalated its oppression in recent years”, he turned the tragedy of Navalny’s demise into an attack on President Joe Biden.

But China bashing is getting more complicated for Republicans because Beijing and Moscow are each other’s closest allies, and the longer this is the case, the more economic ties will grow to reinforce that relationship.

Why the US-China detente won’t last despite a Biden policy tweak

Unless and until Trump and the Republican machinery manage to forge the alliance with Putin that they so obviously pine for, they are stuck with Beijing in a complicated ménage à trois. This isn’t a problem for Trump, who has never been able to fully mask his affinity for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He has already signalled a willingness to treat Taiwan with the same transactional approach that he uses with Nato allies, underscored by his whining about how the self-ruled island “took our business away”.

Forced to choose between alignment with Moscow and Beijing on one side and Ukraine and Taiwan on the other, there is no question which side Trump will choose. Taiwan’s progressive, democratic and technologically advanced society is everything that the new American Republican Party is fighting against.

Haley is now the only person capable of blocking the knockout punch that Trump wants to deliver to Republicans still willing to stand up to authoritarians. With less than five months before the Republican National Convention, they need to muster the kind of resolve that a plurality of them managed in the Senate to get the aid package for Ukraine passed.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief