RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro’s thuggish regime had enjoyed some success in repressing Juan Guaidó, who is recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela by more than 60 countries. But last week regime pressure failed to keep the National Assembly in line and 100 of its 167 members defied Mr. Maduro to support Mr. Guaidó’s re-election as the assembly’s president.

Tehran’s attempts to gain greater regional hegemony haven’t gone smoothly either. In Iraq, anti-Iranian protests shook up the political system late last year. Iraqi security forces and Iranian-backed militias killed hundreds of demonstrators but failed to quell protests in the strongly Shiite south against political corruption and Iranian influence. Lebanon has seen its own wave of protests also aimed at a corrupt political elite and Iranian influence.

In Iran itself, where authorities hoped the American killing of Qasem Soleimani would unite ordinary Iranians behind the regime, the opposite has come to pass. Waves of antigovernment protests spread across the country as authorities first launched an awkward and unconvincing effort to cover up Iran’s shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet—killing 176 people—then tardily admitted it. Cities all over Iran witnessed spontaneous demonstrations with crowds chanting, “America is not our enemy,” ripping down posters of Soleimani, and calling for death to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Friends of freedom can take heart that so many ordinary people remain willing to take great risks for liberty, but it is much too soon to break out the champagne. History tells us that most protest movements fail to take power and that even when despots fall, it’s rarely a constitutional democracy that emerges. Still, the fight for freedom is hardly doomed.

Despots have argued for centuries that authoritarianism is more efficient and effective than democracy. Xi Jinping stands in a long line of rulers stretching back to Louis XIV who contended that absolute power combined with technocratic planning gives the best results.

Yet despite the achievements to which some autocratic regimes can point, there is something in human nature that resists. America’s Founding Fathers weren’t wrong to speak of “unalienable rights.” The hunger for liberty is innate and indestructible. Given the least opportunity, people will seek the freedom to worship, speak, pursue happiness as they see fit, and participate in the decisions that affect their lives.

America’s alignment with the principles of freedom is both a major foreign-policy advantage and a source of confusion and distress. On the positive side, despite America’s flaws and inconsistencies, people all over the world know that the cause of freedom and that of the U.S. are aligned. This association helps legitimate U.S. power around the world and creates allies in the unlikeliest places—as when Hong Kong protesters carried the American flag or Iranian protesters refused to step on it.

Yet that association brings problems as well. Rulers like Mr. Xi and Vladimir Putin sense that American power constitutes a threat to their own security. This remains true even when U.S. presidents consciously play down ideology. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon might have embraced détente with the Soviet Union, but the ideological struggle continued all the same—and the freedoms embraced by the U.S. and its European allies continued to undermine the foundations of Soviet power. Messrs. Xi and Putin see and fear the ideas America exudes, and this makes it much more difficult to manage economic and diplomatic relations.

At the same time, the U.S. continually debates ideology’s role in our own policies. Should we maintain relationships with states that trample human rights? Are we morally compelled to protect the liberties of people abroad? Can we make alliances with countries whose rulers oppress their citizens?

From administration to administration, Americans answer those questions in different ways and the resulting oscillation between cynical realpolitik and naive moralism confuses allies and adversaries alike without necessarily advancing American interests.

The Trump administration must now struggle with these questions. Coming to power, it celebrated an “America First” realpolitik. Yet the necessities of U.S. foreign policy continue to drive the Trump administration toward the advocacy of human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, across the Middle East, in Venezuela and elsewhere even as much of Mr. Trump’s electoral base remains staunchly noninterventionist.

Managing these tensions effectively in the run-up to the November election will have a significant effect on the president’s campaign. In the event of a second Trump term, they will grow more acute. There is no simple, elegant answer. But whatever he chooses, for good or ill the U.S. will remain a beacon of liberty, if sometimes a flickering one.