As a foreign policy realist, a liberal realist of the Hedley Bull school, I fully understand the importance of individual states pursuing their interests on the world stage.
Realist thinking can help states prevent quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there is a good reason, even from a realist standpoint, to shine a light on democracy in its different forms. Writers Daniel Green and Daniel Twining stress this point in “The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia: How the Spread of Liberal Values Gives America a Competitive Edge Over China.”
The People’s Republic of China’s grand strategy undoubtedly focuses on dominating the Indo-Pacific, controlling the development and production of the most advanced technologies, and making China the hub of the global economy. Green and Twining stated: “Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ambitions are also ideological: he aims to shift global opinion toward an admiration for authoritarian rule and thereby forge a world safe for his autocracy and eager to welcome Chinese influence. This ideological campaign does not yet pose an existential threat to well-established Asian democracies such as Japan and South Korea. It creates great risks, however, for smaller Chinese neighbors whose economic and political fragilities Beijing seeks to exploit.”
Throughout American history, the country’s sharpest thinkers knew of the importance of the form of government known as the democratic republic. President Thomas Jefferson argued that supporting well-governed republics in the Pacific Northwest would be the best way to prevent European imperial expansion. In the second half of the nineteenth century, US naval commander Matthew Perry and the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan made the same arguments about the western Pacific, determining that American interests in the region depended on the ability of Japan and other maritime states to self-govern and resist European imperial ambitions.
Nearly two hundred years later, President Ronald Reagan – a right-wing idealogue - concluded that weak democratic governance rendered our strategic partners in Asia unstable and vulnerable to hostile influences. Encouraging democratic transitions in the Philippines and South Korea helped our country contain the Soviet Union in its waning days, said Green and Twining. To create democratic partnerships in our foreign policy, however, the US must ensure that regional nations take the lead, putting Washington in a supporting role. Fortunately, powerful democracies in Asia are rising to this challenge. The Indo-Pacific is bucking the global trend of democratic backsliding. Green and Twining said: “Leading Asian democracies evince an increasing determination to make values the center of their foreign policy. In recent surveys run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Asian policy experts—excepting only Chinese and Singaporean respondents—ranked ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ and ‘free and fair elections’ as critical to the future of their entire region. In a shift, Japan and South Korea have added support for good governance to their foreign assistance portfolios, recognizing that accountability and the rule of law undergirds security in the Indo-Pacific.”
The US can promote democracy, not by military action (Iraq), but by supporting civil-society watchdogs that fight against corruption, which corrodes national sovereignty and threatens US interests in countries where they exist. Of course, many Asian countries remain only partly free, and some still have authoritarian governments. However, most of Asia’s one-party states still support a free and open Asia rather than China’s revisionist autocracy. Preserving freedom in the Indo-Pacific is a vital interest for many Asian nations that have transitioned from colonial rule and don’t want to go down an authoritarian path. US strategy should stress siding with these countries and Asia’s broader trend toward growing popular participation and forging democratic partnerships.
The US policy toward the Philippines had many flaws. Still, US efforts to encourage the country to develop stronger democratic institutions on its path to independence made the Philippines much more capable of resisting Japan’s appeals during World War II. Our postwar project to set Tokyo down a democratic path helped ensure that communism did not take root in Japan. Reagan began his term critical of President Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights and democracy with allies such as the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. Initially, he believed any country that could serve as an anti-Soviet ally—democratic or not—should be embraced, but Secretary of State George Schultz and other advisers convinced him—based on the United States’ experience in Vietnam—that corrupt, authoritarian leaders tend to lose legitimacy and prove brittle allies in the long run. Reagan, in a strange sort of way, went down Carter’s path and embraced pro-democracy reformers in the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Some Asian leaders are supporting the value of democracy in foreign policy, as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its 2022 South Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy emphasized the importance of human rights and the rule of law. Green and Twining said of China’s strategy: “If the United States merely follows a realist strategy in Asia, that would play into China’s hand. China, after all, is not leaving ideology off the table. The CCP sanctions pro-democracy groups, politicians who stand up for human rights, and independent activists abroad precisely because it believes that appeals to accountability, transparency, and democratic values undercut China’s geostrategic advantages. Leaked CCP documents show that China is actively pursuing a strategy of disrupting democracies and democratic alliances in Asia, as well as in the rest of the world.”
The writers also recommend that the US support Asia’s democratic infrastructure by encouraging Tokyo and Seoul to continue leading the region’s democratic development. In Asia, Washington should pursue programs to help combat corruption, give sanctuary to persecuted political dissidents, and empower democratic reformers, offering new possibilities for partnership with Asian allies beyond traditional forms of military and economic cooperation.
Green and Twining wisely said that the US should continue to work with non-democratic partners and democracies that have democratic shortcomings. Thanks to population powerhouses such as India and Indonesia, more people live under democratic governments in Asia than in any other region. However, American citizens should be worried about declining democratic ways in the US with the rise of right-wing populism and should reject this trend.
Samual Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” pointed out that nations of the same civilization often feel more comfortable working together, and sometimes, two different civilizations work together if they feel threatened by another civilization. Democratic Asian countries have absorbed parts of Western culture. Remember, the first semi-democratic societies were in ancient Greece, and Western culture has its roots in Greco-Roman culture. In other words, being pro-democracy is being pro-Western.
This story’s concepts are important for the idea of world peace. World peace? Yes, Hugo Grotius – a Renaissance thinker – and the Renaissance came about with the rediscovery of Greco-Roman thought – was the progenitor of the idea of international law. If democratic ways spread to non-democratic countries, then perhaps the nation-states and city-states – of the world can cooperate to establish more forms of international law. Perhaps we would see a world that would make both Bull and Grotius proud. However, should our country see an opportunity to establish international law with non-democratic nations, it should do so.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer of the Peace Economy Project