Are Democracies Actually United?

I’m seeing a flurry of articles and posts questioning some of the assertions underpinning U. S. policy, especially with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They range from panicked realization to laments. One of them is Anne Applebaum’s article in The Atlantic urging democracies to unite to oppose autocracy. It amounts to a longer form of the witticism frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin but which there is no record of his ever having said: “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately”:

There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others. We might not want to compete with them, or even care very much about them. But they care about us. They understand that the language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice is dangerous to their form of autocratic power—and they know that that language originates in the democratic world, our world.

More pointed is the piece by Shivshankar Menon in Foreign Affairs:

The war is no doubt a seismic event that will have profound consequences for Russia, its immediate neighbors, and the rest of Europe. But it will neither reshape the global order nor presage an ideological showdown of democracies against China and Russia. After all, many of the world’s biggest democracies, including India, have so far not joined the U.S.-led economic campaign against Russia or even explicitly condemned the invasion. Far from consolidating “the free world,” the war has underscored its fundamental incoherence. In any case, the future of global order will be decided not by wars in Europe but by the contest in Asia, on which events in Ukraine have limited bearing.

It isn’t just India, the world’s largest democracy, that isn’t falling in behind the United States in its reaction to Russia’s invasion. Neither is the world’s third largest democracy (Indonesia), the fourth largest (Pakistan), the fifth largest (Brazil), the sixth largest (Nigeria), Bangladesh, or Mexico. So, at the very least the notion that the world’s democracies are united in opposition to Russian aggression is an exaggeration and at worst a fantasy.

I believe that Ms. Applebaum’s article misses some basic things. For one thing consider her example, Estonia. Is Estonia a liberal democracy? On paper, yes it is. However, I suspect that were the United States to move to disenfranchise a third of its citizens, which Estonia has done, Ms. Applebaum would express her outrage. In Estonia half of its ethnic Russian citizens think they are discriminated against and that the Estonian government isn’t doing enough about it. That as well as its political corruption are why the country is frequently considered a “flawed democracy”. My point here is not that Estonia has no right to exist but that it is not quite as liberal as advertised. The world is messy and complicated. The world isn’t “us” vs. “them”. It’s actually “us”, “them”, and those in between.

The even more fundamental misconception in Ms. Applebaum’s article is that there isn’t much of an “us”, either. We didn’t force our European allies to diminish their military spending to the point where their armies are comic opera armies. They did that under their own steam. Presently, the only European military at the highest level of readiness is France and the French military is pretty overcommitted already.

And what makes Ms. Applebaum think that the Russian people are not the enemy, Putin is?

But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too.

The sole independent Russian polling organization has determined that Putin’s approval rating has actually increased since the invasion of Ukraine. What is it that makes her think that President Putin isn’t doing what Russians want him to?

So, what do I think we should do? Our first priority needs to be rebuilding our own military capabilities, reducing our present dependence on China’s goodwill in the process. In the meantime we should keep supplying the Ukrainians but both they and we need to understand that’s where our support ends. So far that’s just the line the Biden Administration has tried to tread, to its credit. Our media are pushing for more, playing on Americans’ emotions with back to back stories of Ukrainians’ victimization.

And support for the Ukrainians has become a valence issue: it’s less whether we support them than how much.