Standing up against dictators is good and may rally support in the developed world. Mere containment of evil, however, is not a recipe for the long-term security of our way of life.
The madness of Vladimir Putin has restored not only the stature of President Joe Biden on the international stage, but that of the Western Alliance itself. Even before we know the outcome of the current Ukraine crisis, we can credit the residual strengths of the ‘liberal world order,’ while also lamenting its evident weaknesses.
Worldwide condemnation of Russia’s naked aggression against the independent state of Ukraine shows that muscle memory for the rules of non-aggression and positive engagement, established to govern the post-World War II order, is still at least partially intact. The Atlantic Charter of 1941, renouncing territorial aggrandizement and the use of force in settling disputes, proved the foundation of that world order. Those principles became the root of the United Nations four years later.
Less formal but equally important was the commitment by both the Communist bloc and the anti-communist West to avoid direct superpower confrontation — especially, the renunciation of nuclear weapons — in the ensuing Cold War. An effective red line against the violent transfer of territory has since then generally held sway among the big powers.
By renouncing the U.S. contribution to the ‘endless war’ in Afghanistan, re-engaging with NATO partners and pivoting to new alliance-building across South Asia, President Joe Biden has given the U.S. new room to maneuver in world affairs. The military outlook in Ukraine looks murky at best, but the brave resistance of the Ukrainian people and the expanding Western sanctions on Russia remind us of the value of the liberal world order that Putin has so brazenly challenged.
For the moment, at least, Biden has re-captured a moral and political high ground for U.S. foreign policy.
Aside from aligning the U.S. and its allies with the forces of peace vs. war, and exacting a tangible price for aggression, Biden has also breathed new life into the American message on democracy. For years, totalitarian and right-wing populist rulers have belittled Western democracies for multiple “sins”: weakness, inefficiency, and utter lack of vision. A stumbling response to the pandemic only exacerbated such charges. By the end of 2019, the semi-official Democracy Index reported its worst score since the index was first produced in 2006. In the U.S. alone, President Donald Trump’s racist bombast and contempt for electoral norms, which culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, kept liberal democrats on the defensive. Political differences across the European Union, and a Britain now separated from the EU, looked potentially crippling.
A new framework
Notwithstanding such adversity, a newly-elected President Biden, leading a party clinging to the barest of congressional majorities, promised to revive the spirit of democratic social reform. Some were openly skeptical when his online December 2021 Summit for Democracy called the defense of democracy “the defining challenge of our time.” The Russian invasion and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s stirring appeal to the right to self-determination make Biden’s message not only worthy but remarkably prescient.
And indeed, China’s all but explicit alliance with the Russian crime in Ukraine offers Biden and the West yet another opportunity in a global political war of position: Between revanchist authoritarianism and democratic self-government, which side are you on?
Having resuscitated the best of World War II-era principles, Biden has a chance now to re-think the framework for liberal-democratic foreign policy. American intentions in the original postwar years — however grandiose and corrupted by the misidentification of all revolutionary movements with Soviet expansionism — were wrapped in plans for extended peacetime partnerships and economic development. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, Harry S. Truman’s Marshall Plan, and John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps all found ways to mix longterm national self-interest with tangible outreach to democratic allies and struggling peoples around the world.
Too often in recent years, however, the watchword for U.S. policy has been crisis management rather than coordinated planning for political or economic ends. As the embarrassment in Afghanistan demonstrated, military might, backed by no matter how many bases around the world, is futile without the development of consent on the ground.
The Afghan conundrum, not so unlike that of U.S. policy across the global south, reveals the emptiness of a democratic promise for millions mired in poverty and locked out of any visible stepladder to meaningful self-government.
Standing up against dictators is good and may rally support in the developed world. Mere containment of evil, however, is not a recipe for the long-term security of our way of life. A new Cold War between democratic and authoritarian regimes requires a readiness that stretches beyond military hardware and battlefield tests of strength.
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Leon Fink is distinguished professor emeritus in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of “Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Visions and Political Realities” (Columbia University Press, 2022),