"Democracies vs. Autocracies" Can Be a Useful Framework for American Foreign Policy
Critics Miss a Fundamental Aspect of Leadership
This is a piece I published on another platform a year ago. It has not been updated to reflect more current events, but I believe the ideas in it are important and provide a path to reconcile America’s ideals with pursuing its interests as a nation-state.
It is currently in-vogue in the foreign policy community to criticize the “Democracies vs. Autocracies” framing of U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy. It’s argued that this unnecessarily drives wedges between America and its less democratic allies and gives an appearance of hypocrisy when we must work with autocracies like Saudi Arabia.
This overstates the concern strategic allies feel about this framing and understates the rallying effect it can have with fellow democracies. And, even if the criticism can be taken as accurate at face value, it still exaggerates the downsides of possibly alienating autocratic nations in comparison to the upside of uniting a coalition of democratic states. We also cannot ignore the rallying effect it can have domestically within America.
A state obviously has interests that go beyond ideological concerns. But it is largely impotent in pursuing those interests without an ability to rally its population, policy elites, and international partners behind them. Some countries with deep historical roots and a common history can manage without ideological appeals. America, which is founded on a set of common democratic ideals divorced from the history of its constituents, is not such a country.
Democracy unites America’s most important strategic partners, beyond the obvious strategic interest in containing the Eurasian powers Russia and China. This includes the East Asian democracies of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Singapore. It includes our Indo-Pacific allies Australia and India. And it also includes NATO. This club combines a total of 63% of global GDP and a nearly equal share of global military spending. China and Russia together are 20% of GDP and 17% of military spending combined.
As a trading and security bloc, the democracy club is by far the more powerful, and in a great position to dictate the future of the international order. Is cold, rational self-interest the best way to build solidarity among this block? Or is it a genuine, transcendent principle? The answer is obvious.
From the perspective of American strategic interests, our goal should be to maintain a status quo where Eurasian powers are strategically balanced and global markets remain open for American trade. Solidarity among the world’s democracies is essential to achieve this.
So, there is tremendous strategic upside in rallying the world’s democracies. What about the downsides?
Given the logic of great power competition, there is little reason to think America and its most powerful autocratic antagonists, namely China, Russia, and Iran, would warm up to each other if the United States became more accommodating of autocracies. Not to mention the notion of giving up emphasizing democratic values in its foreign policy would not be politically practical in the United States. It has always been an aspect of our foreign policy.
Even most critics of Biden’s foreign policy would concede this point. But, the argument goes, we should not emphasize democracy more than necessary. The term “necessary” is doing some heavy lifting.
Take Ukraine for instance. Standing up to Russia after its brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine and preserving the principle of national self-determination was necessary to preserve the rules-based international order America has thrived in. The best way to do that was to rally NATO to the cause around the one thing all NATO members have in common: democracy. The unity on display on this issue has been remarkable, and it's largely due to the foreign policy framework of the Biden administration.
The same applies to deterring a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan. The antagonism between China and the East Asian democracies, whose security would be threatened by China controlling the East and South China seas, is not due to differing systems of government.
It is due to conflicting interests. But democracy can be the rallying cry that unites these countries to the cause of containing China. This has already manifested in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the AUKUS alliance.
Despite the current icy diplomatic environment between China and America, the two countries are still cooperating in areas such as the environment where they have a shared interest. The Chinese are even showing signs of being a constructive partner in creating peace in areas of the world where America would be less effective. Trade ties are becoming worse, but that is arguably more a result of disagreements over the distribution of the fruits of that trade, and geopolitical tensions in general. “Democracy” is not our culprit.
A historical precedent exists for this viewpoint. During the height of the Cold War, with ideological polarization at a level much greater than today, the United States and the Soviet Union managed to cooperate on important international issues.
When anti-communist rhetoric from American policymakers reached a crescendo in the 80s, when Ronald Reagan referred to the USSR as an “evil empire”, cooperation did not cease. In fact, this period was a precursor to the rapprochement of the late 80s when Mikhail Gorbachev was negotiating nuclear treaties with the United States and opening his country politically and economically.
What worked then, and will today when the stakes are much lower, is rallying the free world around democracy and boldly asserting its value. Under the logic of great power competition, which governed even the Cold War era at some level, unilaterally moderating our position will leave us at a strategic disadvantage. If America wants to reinforce a rules-based international order and national self-determination, it needs to assert this position with as much strength as possible with as large a coalition of nations as it can muster.
The concern that autocratic nations will be resentful of being left outside the democracy club is based on a fundamentally Western-oriented viewpoint. Most analysts and policymakers in the West would be distraught about being characterized as anti-democratic. That is akin to heresy in the American civic religion.
However, countries like China are not democratic and do not aspire to be. In fact, they emphasize the supposed orderliness of their countries in contrast to the chaos of democracy. Xi Jinping and Mohammed Bin Salman are not sitting up at night worried because Joe Biden called them anti-democratic, and they are not pursuing antagonistic policies on that basis. What they will respond to is strength and self-assurance.
Showing that we will moderate simply because we fear for the feelings of the Chinese and Russians will only embolden them to continue to challenge the current international order that has produced unprecedented peace and prosperity for the world since the end of the Cold War.
If America is eventually displaced as the undisputed superpower or becomes merely another great power in the community of nations, now is the time to set the terms of the global order to the extent possible while we still have the most leverage to do so. Democracy is a fulcrum of that leverage.
There is a temptation among many analysts to minimize the importance of idealistic-sounding language and emphasize realpolitik. It is understandable to pursue a line of argument that makes one seem more worldly in contrast to naively sticking to principles. But humans are not reducible to calculating machines pursuing self-interests. A foreign policy that ignores this will fail, as it ignores a fundamental aspect of the human beings it purports to manage: the need for self-transcendent purpose.