Discussion on a Grand Strategy of Democratic
Solidarity
DATE & TIME
March 29, 2021
Monday
Mar. 29, 2021
3:30pm – 4:30pm ET
DISCUSSION ON A
GRAND STRATEGY OF DEMOCRATIC SOLIDARITY
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 “Summit for
Democracy.” 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’s democracies from rising
authoritarianism and discussed their forthcoming article in The
Washington Quarterly, “A Grand Strategy of Democratic Solidarity,”
with discussant Dr. Kori Schake and moderator Abraham Denmark.
Selected Quotes
Hal Brands
“The 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.”
“The 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’s
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.”
“A 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.”
Charles Edel
“Democracies can forge productive, if
somewhat mercenary, relationships with illiberal countries even as they
cultivate—at the heart of the strategy, as Hal talked about—geopolitical and
ideological unity of the democratic community. The fact that NATO was an
alliance explicitly rooted in shared democratic values didn’t 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.”
“Too 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 […] it
allows more reticent members to participate selectively at first and hopefully
expand their involvement over time.”
“Democratic 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.”
Kori Schake
“The first thing I really like about Hal
and Charlie’s article is that they don’t treat the international order as
though it’s a status thing, in fact they outline the metric that should show us
whether it’s succeeding or failing, and I want to quote it from the article,
‘Its measure of success should be progress in expanding democratic
collaboration against concrete problems.’”
“They didn’t mention the West’s
self-congratulatory hypocrisy, the times where we pretend we are doing this,
but are not. The reason I think it’s 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—drawing a red line that we wouldn’t honor. There are a
dozen examples from the Trump administration as well […] The Chinese and the
Russians are really good at delegitimizing the liberal international order by
playing into those gaps with their own interventions.”
“We are treating democratic difficulties
as fixed constraints on ourselves and the other strongest powers in the
international order, but we’re 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.”
SPEAKERS
Global Fellow;
Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
Director of Foreign and Defense
Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
MODERATOR
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