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Discussion on a Grand Strategy of Democratic Solidarity
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Overview
Throughout the history of U.S. foreign policy, American leaders have been forced to weight support for democratic values against realpolitik calculations of national interest. Most recently, the Biden Administration has adopted a foreign policy that places democracy and human rights at its center, with many discussing a possible 鈥淪ummit for Democracy.鈥 Yet questions remain as to the best means of incorporating support for democracy into American grand strategy, especially related to issues that demand cooperation with authoritarian regimes.
Dr. Hal Brands and Dr. Charles Edel lay out 8 pillars crucial for defending the world鈥檚 democracies from rising authoritarianism and discussed their forthcoming article in The Washington Quarterly, 鈥,鈥 with discussant Dr. Kori Schake and moderator Abraham Denmark.
Selected Quotes
Hal Brands
鈥淭he time for this is right because democracies are increasingly threatened by illiberal influences within their borders and also by autocratic regimes, principally China and Russia, that are increasingly ambitious in their efforts to change world orders.鈥澛
鈥淭he historical irony here is that after the Cold War, the strategic premium on democratic solidarity seemed to decrease because the democracies were so utterly dominant and because the world鈥檚 remaining autocracies often seemed like they were destined for historical oblivion. It became relatively common I think to believe that globalization and liberalization and economic integration were going to tame and ultimately transform autocratic regimes.鈥澛
鈥淎 strategy focused on cooperation with democracies, if it is paired with efforts to fortify American democracy itself, can help mitigate that damage, by showing that America can still provide principled leadership on behalf of a liberal world order.鈥
Charles Edel
鈥淒emocracies can forge productive, if somewhat mercenary, relationships with illiberal countries even as they cultivate鈥攁t the heart of the strategy, as Hal talked about鈥攇eopolitical and ideological unity of the democratic community. The fact that NATO was an alliance explicitly rooted in shared democratic values didn鈥檛 prevent it from including necessary partners such as Portugal or Turkey at certain points during the Cold War. Similarly, the United States can pursue democratic solidarity while also cooperating with partners such as Singapore or Vietnam today.鈥
鈥淭oo early of a summit of democracies could backfire if democratic states are economically dependent on China, think of Indonesia and Malaysia for instance. Yet, the approach that we took to advocating for, seeks to focus instead on a more flexible approach that prioritizes concrete cooperation over high-profile public signaling [鈥 it allows more reticent members to participate selectively at first and hopefully expand their involvement over time.鈥澛
鈥淒emocratic perfection at home has never been a prerequisite for democratic leadership abroad. If we think of Truman, when he spoke to congress in 1947, the U.S. was still practicing state-sponsored segregation in large parts of the country. During the Cold War in fact, an ideological struggle against the Soviet Union created the exact pressures for the United States to improve its own democracy and thereby decrease the perceived hypocrisy of its diplomacy.鈥
Kori Schake
鈥淭he first thing I really like about Hal and Charlie鈥檚 article is that they don鈥檛 treat the international order as though it鈥檚 a status thing, in fact they outline the metric that should show us whether it鈥檚 succeeding or failing, and I want to quote it from the article, 鈥業ts measure of success should be progress in expanding democratic collaboration against concrete problems.鈥欌
鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 mention the West鈥檚 self-congratulatory hypocrisy, the times where we pretend we are doing this, but are not. The reason I think it鈥檚 significant is because it looks to me like a lot of the way our authoritarian challengers are picking up ground in opposition to this idea is by playing the gap between what we say we are going to do and our actual risk tolerance. The most egregious example might be President Obama on Syria鈥攄rawing a red line that we wouldn鈥檛 honor. There are a dozen examples from the Trump administration as well [鈥 The Chinese and the Russians are really good at delegitimizing the liberal international order by playing into those gaps with their own interventions.鈥澛
鈥淲e are treating democratic difficulties as fixed constraints on ourselves and the other strongest powers in the international order, but we鈥檙e expecting countries like Indonesia and Malaysia or smaller middle-way countries that run much greater risk than we do of countering China to make big brave choices before we do.鈥
Speakers
Hal Brands
Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
Charles Edel
Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
Kori Schake
Hosted By
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