The twilight of human-rights diplomacy

This sunny worldview couldn’t long withstand the cold realities of geopolitics. After Libya, Mr. Obama’s appetite for human-rights interventions diminished abruptly. Here he was reflecting public sentiment. Americans still believed in human rights and democracy, but they had lost confidence in the ability of policy experts to advance these principles effectively on the world stage.

Meanwhile, the rise of powerful states actively hostile to open societies changed the international calculus. American human-rights sanctions mean less when Russia and China stand ready to lend autocrats a hand. And the U.S. cannot, for example, simultaneously undermine the military leaders of Thailand and ask them to help limit China’s influence.

In a world of heightened geopolitical competition, Wilsonian idealism began to seem at best a distraction and at worst an obstacle to sound strategic thinking. By 2016 many Americans were tired of spending money and sometimes blood on humanitarian interventions and democracy initiatives that rarely went well. This is one reason Mr. Trump, whose “America First” sloganeering seemed to some voters like a refreshing burst of common sense, overthrew both the Republican and Democratic establishments in 2016. The neoconservatives and liberal internationalists who staffed previous administrations were sidelined. The president delights in ostentatiously rejecting their advice.