Many other countries, however, have not chosen sides. They are willing to work closely with both Washington and Beijing, depending on the issue. These countries tend to be flawed democracies (like Brazil, India, Israel and Nigeria) or autocracies (like Saudi Arabia and Vietnam). If the U.S. suggests that only democracies are welcome in its alliance, that alliance will shrink.
“Defining the current contest as one between democracies and autocracies is a flawed strategy,” Walter Russell Mead, a foreign policy expert at the Hudson Institute, wrote in The Wall Street Journal this spring. “Abroad, this approach weakens America’s ties with key allies and exposes us to devastating charges of systemic hypocrisy.” Mead is a conservative who often criticizes Biden, but some members of the administration have had similar concerns, as Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, has reported.
In June, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, acknowledged the tension. “I do think we are dealing with the gathering and march of autocratic forces in ways that are not in the United States’ national interest, and that we do need to rally the values, norms and forces of democracy to push back against that,” Sullivan said. But, he added, Biden “has also been clear that in that larger effort, we need constructive relationships with countries of all different traditions and backgrounds.”
The C.I.A. and Stalin
There is, of course, a long history of the U.S. working with autocracies as part of a stated strategy of fostering democracy. Sometimes, this history has been tragic, as during the Vietnam War. Other times, the practice has aged well, such as the alliances with Stalin’s Soviet Union during World War II or with Persian Gulf kingdoms to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait during the 1990s.
The democracy-vs.-autocracy dichotomy has probably been most helpful in energizing Western Europe to come to Ukraine’s defense and persuading Japan and…
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