At first glance, the war in Ukraine would seem to confirm President Biden’s oft-expressed view that the world today is marked by a contest between democracies and autocracies. After all, autocratic Russia is waging a savage assault on democratic Ukraine, and the latter enjoys the staunch support of Western democracies. On closer examination, however, that framework turns out to be neither accurate nor helpful as a guide for U.S. foreign policy.
It’s true that many of the world’s democracies have lined up to support Ukraine. But the world’s most populous democracy, India, has neither condemned the Russian aggression nor promised to abide by the sanctions against Moscow.
And it’s not just India. Asia’s second-largest democracy, Indonesia, has been reserved in its stance on Russia. The largest successful democracy on the African continent, South Africa, has also refused to condemn Russia and has even blamed NATO expansion for provoking Moscow’s invasion. The two largest democracies in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, have mostly remained neutral, and abstained from voting to remove Russia from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. Iraq, the Arab world’s only functioning democracy, voted to abstain on the resolution condemning Russia. Most people who live in democracies have chosen, in this great ideological struggle, to sit on the fence.
At one level, this might seem a simple case of national interest trumping idealism. Many of these countries have economic interests that would suffer were they to cut ties with Moscow. India, for example, gets most of its advanced weaponry from Russia. South Africa and Brazil have trade relations with the Russians that, although not crucial, are significant. Yet the idea of a grand ideological crusade against autocracies leaves most developing countries very nervous. Many of them have strong economic ties to China and are closely allied to other autocracies in their neighborhoods.
A much better way to frame the division in the world is between countries that believe in a rules-based international order and those that don’t. Russia has revealed itself to be the world’s leading rogue state, intent on attacking the heart of this order: the norm that borders do not get changed by force. Moscow is seeking to return to a realm of pure power politics, one in which, in the words of Thucydides, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
If the West were to rally the world against this effort, it would find it has many allies. As former British foreign secretary David Miliband said to me, a division based on the rules-based order is much more inclusive than one based on democracies versus autocracies. A country such as Singapore, for example, which is not a full-fledged liberal democracy, is nonetheless staunchly supportive of international norms and values. At the beginning of the Russian invasion, it decided — for the first time in more than 40 years — to enforce international sanctions, even though they had not been imposed by the U.N. Security Council (due to a Russian veto). Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are unlikely to join an appeal to battle autocracies — since they are absolute monarchies — but a call to uphold an open international system might well have more traction.
For India or Indonesia, this framing could force them to think harder about the consequences of allowing Russia’s aggression to stand. If countries can get away with military incursions and the annexation of their neighbors’ lands, New Delhi will have a weaker case against potential Chinese moves in its borderlands with India. As Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations pointed out shortly before the invasion, African countries have chosen to accept colonial borders precisely because they understand the chaos that would be unleashed if they tried to redraw them along purely cultural or ethnic lines.
Such a framing also places much greater pressure on China, which is arguably the greatest beneficiary of the rules-based international order. It is this open framework that has allowed China to rise peacefully in a stable, prosperous Asia. Beijing has often spoken out forcefully against violations of countries’ sovereignty, and yet sides with Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. It is this aspect of Chinese hypocrisy that would be worth highlighting and emphasizing.
Of course, for this strategy to work, the West — and the United States in particular — must adhere to a rules-based international system more zealously. U.S. actions, particularly the Iraq War, often prompt accusations of Western hypocrisy. The Biden administration has called for war crimes investigations against Russia, but the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The United States rails against China’s violations of the Law of the Sea treaty in the South China Sea, although it is not a signatory to that treaty.
If Washington wants the world to support a rules-based international order, it must get better at practicing what it preaches.
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for the Atlantic.