Since taking office, President Donald Trump has eagerly embraced foreign autocrats, portraying brutal dictators as allies to be courted and celebrated. He has backed Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite evidence that he ordered the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; praised North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as a “tough guy” with whom he has “very good chemistry”; congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on successfully pushing through a referendum that granted him vast new powers; applauded Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for waging his bloody drug war “the right way”; and, of course, repeatedly said that he’d welcome a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Trump has shaken America’s longstanding alliances with Western European nations like France and Germany, spurning the idea of global cooperation in favor of a rising nationalism that threatens to overturn the liberal democratic order. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist,” Trump famously told supporters at a rally in October. “Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!”

For all the attention that such outbursts garner in the media, the alignment of Republican support behind autocratic right-wing leaders across the globe long predates Trump’s elevation to the presidency, an investigation in partnership with Type Investigations reveals. For years, Republican members of Congress, lobbyists, and political consultants have worked to forge bonds with far-right leaders across Europe—in Hungary, Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Macedonia, and beyond. You might call this loose federation of fellow travelers for the nativist global right the strongman caucus.

Sometimes these alliances have taken shape off the public radar. In other cases, though, U.S. Republicans have paraded their connections to far-right political figures, inviting them to meetings with lawmakers; major conservative events, including the Republican National Convention; gatherings at influential think tanks like the Heritage Foundation; and agenda-setting confabs such as the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The lines of influence run both ways. Republican political consultants have exported their battle-tested campaign theme of liberalism as an elite assault on traditional values to European far-right candidates. Powerful K Street lobbyists, including Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager and convicted felon, have made their fortunes by burnishing the images of strongman leaders in the eyes of Washington policymakers. Some Republican lawmakers, including diehards of the party’s right flank, such as Dana Rohrabacher of California, Steve King of Iowa, and Louie Gohmert of Texas, have openly forged alliances with leading figures in the European far right.

All these unsightly charm offensives might have escaped sustained public notice had Trump not swept into power and lent them the tacit legitimacy of the nation’s highest office. The inner workings of a lobbying firm like Manafort’s might have remained obscure had special prosecutor Robert Mueller not swept him up into his two-year probe of the Russia-Trump nexus. Indeed, for the most part, Republican leaders in Congress have been passive enablers of the strongman caucus, standing by as Trump demolishes global alliances and the infrastructure of U.S. diplomacy, unraveling America’s commitment to promoting human rights, democracy, and civil society—however imperfectly—in the young, postcommunist democracies of Eastern and Central Europe.