The Biden administration's National Security Strategy frames the current international order as one in which the world's democracies are locked in a dual Manichaean conflict with authoritarian regimes: their people and the world. It pledges to promote democracy at home and defend democracy abroad, but offers no real details about what such The strategy or how it can promote democracy beyond the borders of the United States. Is American military power used to protect all democratic systems in the world, including many semi-democratic systems that do not necessarily share American political traditions or cultural values? How strong is the encouragement of countries? What if countries resist becoming more democratic? Does the United States use military force to impose democracy on countries that do not want it? What is democracy in reality? The most authoritarian, democratic and even one of the most totalitarian countries in the world calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
It is a superficial worldview that presupposes that all democracies share national interests, and that democracies and non-democracies must inevitably conflict with each other. No this is the case.
Such a democracy promotion strategy is inconsistent with actual American foreign policy and self-interest. US foreign policy must be consistent with its national interests, not the interests of other countries. It may sometimes be in the United States' interest to partner with a democracy, just as it may sometimes be in the national interest to partner with a nondemocratic country. So be it. What the United States should not do is automatically assume that every authoritarian regime is an enemy and every democracy is a friend. Nor should they go out of their way to forcibly install new “democratic” governments elsewhere in the hope that they share our interests.
In the past two decades, the United States has tried to impose American-style democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has failed in both cases, leaving the United States worse off in terms of spending money. It must learn the right lessons from those failures, and instead of trying to do it again in the future (better this time) learn that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside. It must be built and fought for by those who will live within this system, not the United States. Pretending otherwise can only lead to tragedy and loss for all concerned.
Likewise, we must acknowledge that the United States has many close partnerships with non-democratic countries; For better or worse, Saudi Arabia, an anti-democratic and repressive state, is a close partner. Current major allies of the United States also include Pakistan and Qatar, which are not models of liberal democracy. The United States has close relationships with many other semi-democratic countries that have some semblance of democracy without free and fair elections, protection of civil liberties, and other basic components of democracy. It would be better if these countries shared American values, but they do not, and likely never will.
The idea that the United States can, can, or should have only positive relations with democracies is also ahistorical. Since the dawn of the Cold War, the United States has interfered in democratic elections to overthrow duly elected socialist governments and partnered with dictators who were loyal to the United States. (One of the CIA's first covert actions after its founding in 1947 was to interfere in the 1948 democratic elections in Italy, because it feared a left-wing coalition of political parties would win.) This does not mean that these interventions were necessarily necessary. They are positive or applaudable, but they are so deeply ingrained in American political history that, unfortunately, they are likely to remain potential policy options for future administrations. The United States has never acted in a purely idealistic manner in dealing with other countries, and it is disingenuous to say that it is or will act in this way now.
The idea that the United States should spread democracy around the world is based on two deeply flawed assumptions: first, the apparent success in cases of regime change and democracy promotion in West Germany and Japan after World War II, and second, the controversial “democratic peace.” International relations theory.
The United States has a poor record of imposing democracy. Two cases in particular – West Germany and Japan – are usually seen as successes, examples of what can be achieved by forcibly transforming autocracies into democracies. The unique factors found in both societies have been present in few other societies since World War II. Both were organized, disciplined, and homogeneous societies, genuinely interested in liberalization, reform, and embracing Western values and institutions. Compare these cases to the last two that the United States attempted: Afghanistan and Iraq. Both attempts failed disastrously and did not result in the creation of Western-style liberal democracies. The main problem here is that many countries and societies do not currently want to be democratic. Imposing democracy on these countries would be an undesirable imposition and would likely require the use of US military force.
In democratic peace theory, the idea is that democracies do not go to war with each other, so the more democracies there are, the more peaceful the world becomes. If every country in the world were democratic, there would be no more wars. Unfortunately, the theory of democratic peace is fatally flawed. There are dozens of cases in which democracies have gone to war with each other. In addition, democratic peace theory does not claim that democracies do not go to war with non-democratic states. And they often do, as American history attests. Newly emerging democracies are particularly vulnerable to war with other countries, a record that suggests that nascent democracies are more dangerous and aggressive toward their neighbors than stable, non-democratic democracies.
So what should the United States do instead? It is clear that democracy and the creation and maintenance of a free society are of enormous value and should be encouraged. However, we should not encourage it at the point of a spear, not only because such forced democratization is likely to fail, but because the very idea is antithetical to a free, open, and democratic society. Other countries must be encouraged to transition to democracy if they choose to do so. Instead of looking abroad for opportunities to impose democracy, the United States should look inward and focus on improving democracy at home, serving as a model for others. As an example, the United States could focus on developing a world-class set of election security infrastructure, practices, and standards to ensure absolute voting integrity that non-Americans can emulate. It can also focus significant additional law enforcement resources on rooting out corruption by elected officials and civil servants (regardless of political party) to detect, punish, and deter political wrongdoing.
Such an approach would pay dividends in the competition in which the United States finds itself with alternative models of governance. The United States of America must demonstrate that its values and system are superior to authoritarian and illiberal regimes, and must strive to become closer to that metaphorical city on the hill, a beacon not only of strong democratic traditions, but also of just and limited government that exists. To preserve the freedom of its citizens.
Andrew Byers
Andrew Byers is currently a non-resident fellow at the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at Texas A&M University. He is a former professor in the Department of History at Duke University and former director of foreign policy at the Charles Koch Foundation.
