TWIB: Democracy Summit fails

Plus: New China threat inflation, Putin's world view, Iran deal on life support

Welcome to The Week in Blob, our Friday take on international news and the nefarious doings of the US foreign policy establishment. (And stay tuned for news, a week from now, about the next step in the evolution of the Friday edition of NZN.)

Whether intentionally or not, Nicaragua and China chose the opening day of President Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy to break some news that demonstrates how self-defeating America’s approach to democracy promotion is.

Nicaragua announced on Thursday that it has broken diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of China—and China, on the same day, conspicuously hosted a delegation of Nicaraguan officials. This development was unwelcome news for Biden administration democracy promoters for at least three reasons:

(1) It was a setback for Taiwan—a democracy that is participating in the summit—in its aspiration to be widely considered a sovereign nation. (2) It was a gain for autocratic and authoritarian China in its aspiration to be considered the one true China, with Taiwan considered a mere renegade province. (3) By binding Nicaragua to China, it represented exactly what Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan say they fear: a growing global network of countries that aren’t liberal democracies, aiding and abetting one another in their authoritarian and/or autocratic tendencies.

And this democracy promotion setback trifecta is exactly the kind of thing that is rendered more likely by America’s approach to democracy promotion. Just consider:

Suppose you’re Nicaragua—or Venezuela or Cuba or any other small country that the US chooses to levy economic sanctions against on grounds that you’re authoritarian or anti-democratic. Don’t you think you might look for a great power to cozy up to that doesn’t impose sanctions on you? Like China or Russia?

Or suppose you’re China or Russia—which would mean that the US periodically tries to rally its friends, especially liberal democracies, to join it in either imposing economic sanctions against you or deploying some symbolic shaming of you. Don’t you think that would only strengthen your incentive to forge ties with nations that aren’t going to join in America’s sanctioning and shaming of you—which will tend to be countries that aren’t liberal democracies?

Or suppose you’re any of these countries—or any other countries that weren’t invited to Biden’s democracy summit—and you’re observing the democracy summit. Don’t you think you might think, “Hmmm… If America is organizing a kind of international league that excludes countries like ours, maybe we should join some kind of alternative international league”? And don’t you think that alternative league would, by definition, have authoritarian and autocratic tendencies?

There are of course other criticisms of the Summit for Democracy and of the Biden administration’s broader crusade on behalf of liberal democracy. There’s the abject hypocrisy of not just excluding brutal autocracies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia from the sanctions suffered by the Cubas and Venezuelas of the world but actually keeping those brutal autocracies stocked with advanced weapons. There’s the awkwardness of including authoritarian-leaning democracies like Brazil and the Philippines and India in your democracy summit. And there are subtler problems, as well, such as those highlighted by Anatol Lieven in Responsible Statecraft this week.

But surely there’s no greater indictment of the Biden administration’s Manichaean vision of a worldwide struggle between the forces of light and of darkness than the fact that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Actually, there may be one indictment that’s even greater than this one:

There’s actual work that urgently needs doing on this planet—solving problems like climate change and pandemic disease, keeping a teetering global economy on track, heading off potentially catastrophic arms races in space, bioweapons, AI, etc. The urgency of these challenges doesn’t mean we have to forget about goals like fostering democracy and human rights. But it does mean we pay a high price for approaches to those goals that deepen international tensions and impede diplomacy. And when those approaches have the added effect of encouraging exactly what they’re designed to discourage—well, you’d think a fundamental rethinking of our approach to democracy promotion would be in order. 

China threat inflation update

Have you heard about the latest threat to America emanating from China? According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, US intelligence reports “suggest China intends” to build a military base in the African country of Equatorial Guinea. And “the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the US” is “a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon.”

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I’d like to focus on the phrase “opposite the East Coast of the US.” If you sailed due west from Equatorial Guinea, you would find yourself on the east coast of South America. Which helps explain why the distance from Equatorial Guinea to Miami is around 6,000 miles, whereas the distance from Beijing to Seattle is 5,400 miles—which in turn helps explain why I’m not feeling terrified at the moment. (Alternative headline for the WSJ piece: “The Chinese military isn’t getting closer!”)

Another nitpick: