Spreading Democracy May Not Be in the United States’ Best Interest

The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy frames the current international order as one in which the democracies of the world are locked into a Manichean, dualist struggle with autocracies: “Democracies and autocracies are engaged in a contest to show which system of governance can best deliver for their people and the world.” It pledges to strengthen democracy at home and defend democracy abroad but offers no real specifics on what such a strategy means or how it might foster democracy outside US borders. Will it use US military force to protect every democracy in the world, including the many quasi-democracies that do not necessarily share American political traditions or cultural values? How strongly will it encourage other countries to become democracies, or improve their systems of government along democratic lines? What if countries resist becoming more democratic? Will the United States use military force to impose democracy on countries that don’t want it? And what, actually, is democracy? Most countries, including the most autocratic, claim to be democracies. Even one of the world’s most totalitarian states calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

This is a facile view of the world that presupposes that all democracies share national interests and that democracies and non-democracies must inevitably be opposed to each other. Neither is the case.

Such a democracy promotion strategy is at odds with actual American foreign policy and self-interest. US foreign policy must be in accord with its own national interests, not the interests of other countries. It may sometimes be in the US interest to partner with a democracy, just as it may sometimes be in the national interest to partner with a non-democracy. So be it. What the United States must not do is to automatically assume that every autocracy is an enemy and that every democracy is a friend. Nor should it go out of its way to forcibly install new “democratic” governments elsewhere in the hope that they will share our interests.

In the past two decades the United States has attempted to impose American-style democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan, failing in both instances and leaving the US worse off in terms of money spent. It should learn the right lessons from those failures and, rather than trying to do it again in the future (only better this time) learn that democracy cannot be imposed from without. It must be built and fought for by those who will live within that system, not the United States. Pretending otherwise can only lead to tragedy and waste for all concerned.

Likewise, we must acknowledge that the United States has many close partnerships with non-democracies; for better or worse, Saudi Arabia, an actively anti-democratic and repressive state, is a close partner. Current US major allies also include Pakistan and Qatar, not exactly exemplars of liberal democracy. The United States has close ties with many other semi-democratic states that have some trappings of democracy without free and fair elections, protections of civil liberties, and other core components of democracy. It would be better if these countries shared American values, but they do not, and likely will never.

The idea that the United States does, can, or should, only have positive relationships 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 otherwise pro-United States. (One of the first covert actions undertaken by the CIA after its founding in 1947 was to interfere in the 1948 democratic election in Italy because it feared that a leftist coalition of political parties would win.) This is not to suggest that those interventions were necessarily positive or advisable, but they are deeply embedded in American political history and, sadly, are likely to remain as potential policy options by future administrations. The United States has never behaved in a purely idealistic way toward other countries, and it is disingenuous to suggest that it does or will behave in such a way now.

The idea that the United States should spread democracy around the world is predicated on two deeply flawed premises: first, the apparent success of regime change and democracy promotion cases in West Germany and Japan after World War II, and second, the controversial “democratic peace theory” of international relations.

The United States has a dismal track record of imposing democracy. Two cases in particular — West Germany and Japan — are usually held up as successes, the exemplars of what can be achieved by forcibly transforming autocracies into democracies. Unique factors present in both those societies are present in few others since World War II. Both were orderly, disciplined, homogeneous societies already interested in liberalization, reform, and embracing Western values and institutions. Contrast those cases with the two most recent ones attempted by the United States: Afghanistan and Iraq. Both efforts failed catastrophically and have not resulted in the creation of Western-style liberal democracies. The key problem is that many states and societies don’t currently want to be democratic. To impose democracy on these countries would be an unwanted imposition, and one likely to require the use of US military force.

In democratic peace theory, the idea is that democracies don’t go to war with each other, and so the more democracies there are, the more peaceful the world would be. If every country in the world were democratic, there would be no more war. Unfortunately, democratic peace theory is fatally flawed. There are dozens of cases in which democracies have gone to war with each other. Additionally, democratic peace theory does not claim that democracies don’t go to war with non-democracies. They often do, as American history attests. Newly emerging democracies are especially prone to going to war with other states, a track record that suggests that fledgling democracies are far more dangerous and aggressive toward their neighbors than stable non-democracies.

What then, should the United States do instead? Clearly democracy and the establishment and maintenance of a free society has enormous value and should be encouraged. It should not, however, be encouraged at the point of a bayonet because not only is such a forced democratization likely to fail, but the very idea runs counter to a free, open, democratic society. Other countries should be encouraged to become democratic if they choose. Rather than looking outward 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 one 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 could be emulated by non-Americans. It could also focus significant additional law enforcement resources on rooting out corruption of elected officials and civil servants (regardless of political party) to detect, punish, and deter political malfeasance.

Such an approach will pay dividends in the competition in which the United States finds itself in with alternative governance models. The United States of America must demonstrate that its values and system are superior to authoritarian and illiberal systems, must strive to become closer to that allegorical City on a Hill, a beacon of not just strong democratic tradition, but a just and limited government that exists to safeguard the liberty of its citizens.