Is Democracy a “Compelling U. S. Interest”?

The editors of the Washington Post, condemning the announcement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that State Department officials “should avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question”, declaim:

Through it all, though, promoting democracy abroad has been seen as a fundamental U.S. interest, especially by Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Calling out election fraud put useful pressure on corrupt regimes to shape up, emboldened democratic opposition movements and strengthened America’s moral stature as the shining city upon a hill.

Under the circumstances it’s ironic that in that editorial they should quote de La Rochefoucauld’s famous Maxim that hypocrisy is the tribute that virtue pays to vice which they are exemplifying here.

The Yanukovych government in Ukraine was elected in 2010 in an election certified as “free and fair” by multiple observing international organizations (one of which included President Jimmy Carter). Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 by what was to become the present Ukrainian government. Present Ukrainian President Zelensky was elected in 2019 in an election certified as “free and fair” by at least one international organization. That is absurd on its face for any number of reasons not the least of which is that areas of Ukraine in which the voters would reasonably have been expected to vote against Zelensky were excluded from the vote. There have been no elections since.

It is an odd sort of democracy in which the government picks the voters who will participate. If you support Ukraine in its war with Russia, better to say nothing about it which is what Sec. Rubio’s announcement advocates.

My own view is that although democracy is one among many American interests it is not a “compelling U. S. interest” as the editors claim but a contingent one.