The Cost of Biden’s ‘Democracy’ Fixation
It alienates allies his foreign policy needs both domestically and around the world.
Walter Russell Mead
April 3, 2023 6:25 pm ET
From his 2021 address through the Munich Security Conference to last week’s Summit for Democracy, President Biden has been clear. He wants to frame world politics as a contest between liberal democracy and autocracy. That’s unfortunate. While not completely misguided, this approach hampers America’s diplomacy overseas and further erodes the weak consensus at home behind a strong American foreign policy around the world.
Mr. Biden is invoking an old American tradition here. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt framed the world wars as conflicts between democracy and dictatorship. And from Harry S. Truman to Ronald Reagan, America’s Cold War presidents used similar language.
Mr. Biden isn’t all wrong. If the U.S. and its allies lose the contest, and people like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and their hangers-on in countries like North Korea and Nicaragua get to determine the world’s future, democracy isn’t going to flourish.
Nevertheless, the president and his team need to think again. Defining the current contest as one between democracies and autocracies is a flawed strategy. Abroad, this approach weakens America’s ties with key allies and exposes us to devastating charges of systemic hypocrisy. At home and abroad, the widespread unpopularity of the expanded version of democracy Mr. Biden expounds—including controversial stands on issues like trans rights—is too polarizing and divisive to support the long-term consensus American foreign policy needs for success.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cost-of-bidens-democracy-fixation-autocracy-summit-freedom-house-ideology-foreign-policy-middle-east-86638fc5?mod=opinion_featst_pos1
