AFTER MORE than six months in office, the Biden administration seems inclined to adopt the utopian vision of democracy promotion as a guiding principle of U.S. global strategy. This doctrine, or, if you prefer, persuasion, holds that America should, as far as possible, bend the world in accordance with the preferences of the United States and its largely European allies. Fortunately, President Joe Biden is a man of experience and pragmatic instinct. Whatever his impulses, he so far has been careful not to burn America’s bridges and, to the contrary, has taken steps to improve ties with key European allies, to restart dialogue with Russia, and to reduce somewhat the intensity of confrontation with China. Such tactical flexibility, however, does not change the fundamental direction of U.S. foreign policy, which at times is almost Orwellian in its tendency to emulate concepts of the former Soviet Union. It was a core belief of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky that the USSR, for its own security, could not tolerate the existence of the so-called “capitalist environment.” They assumed that capitalists would never accept coexistence with the new communist state and therefore rejected the status quo as an unrealistic option. Today, alongside the European Union, the United States has adopted the position that its mission is to promote democracy worldwide. Leaders in Washington regularly argue that if they fail to take up this mission, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces—not just to undermine American power, but to destroy democracy itself, depriving the United States of its cherished freedoms.

It is remarkable that this concept has become a key tenet of American foreign policy without any serious debate in Congress, in the media, or within the foreign policy community. At the heart of this approach is the presupposition that democracy is inherently superior to other forms of government, both morally and in terms of its ability to deliver prosperity and security. Democracy promotion is assumed to be a longstanding part of the U.S. foreign policy tradition rather than a radical departure from it. The Biden administration talks as though the world at large—apart from evil tyrants—will welcome its push for democracy and accept the self-evident righteousness of America and the European Union, rather than put up powerful resistance that may damage American security interests, American freedoms, and the American way of life.

YET DEMOCRACY does not have a stellar record throughout history. The best that can be said of it, as Winston Churchill once observed, is that under most circumstances it remains superior to all other tested forms of government. But for that to be true, democracy must be truly liberal, based on law, and include credible protections for minority rights. Such safeguards often are not taken. From its very conception, democracy has been marred by the original sin of slavery. Ancient Athens, the earliest known democracy, not only tolerated slavery, but was in fact founded on it. Citizens and slaves formed two sides of the Athenian political system. As historian Paulin Ismard writes, “slavery was the price to be paid for direct democracy.” Slaves allowed citizens to step away from work and to directly participate in government, attending assembly meetings and holding public office.

In the United States, the Founding Fathers similarly tolerated slavery, making its implicit incorporation in the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional concept of relations between the states presupposed the existence of slavery, and it required a civil war to bring about Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves in 1863. The Russian Empire remarkably—and without any bloodshed—abolished serfdom altogether in 1861, unlike in the United States where slavery was, for the sake of political expediency, permitted to exist in some Union states until the end of the Civil War. Even thereafter, American democracy continued to deprive women and African Americans of the right to vote for several more decades. It is not self-evident that a democracy that limits political rights to a minority of white men is inherently so superior to a “benevolent” authoritarian state that possesses some elementary rule of law and embraces the concept of equal protection for its subjects. Contemporary examples include Russia under Alexander II, whose legal reforms introduced for the first time in Russia the concept of equality before the law, or Germany under Otto von Bismarck, who established the first modern welfare state by offering health insurance and social security to the working class. Closer to our own time, the enlightened authoritarianism of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew lifted millions out of poverty and maintained harmony in a multi-ethnic country.

UNTIL THE end of the Cold War, democracy promotion was not a constituent element of the U.S. foreign policy tradition—the term “democracy” does not even appear in the U.S. Constitution. The United States did not wage war to spread democracy, even in its own sphere of influence in the Americas. The NATO alliance, at its very inception in 1949, was directed squarely against the Soviet geopolitical threat and willingly embraced authoritarian members such as Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar, whom many considered fascist. Other American allies of the early Cold War period included South Korea and Taiwan—neither of them a democracy at that time. Why did the United States ensure the protection of these non-democracies? It was to protect them from takeover by U.S. adversaries. In the process, this policy allowed American allies to have the freedom of choice, democratic or otherwise. After World War II, America positioned itself as the true leader of the free world—allowing nations with different interests, systems of government, and traditions to determine their own destiny.

The democracy promotion credo is, by contrast, quite different. It goes far beyond the protection of the international status quo and advocates an openly revisionist policy, one that is designed not simply to contain other top non-democratic nations but to change their systems of government. When it comes to major powers, profound transformations of this nature usually arise through internal change or outright military defeat; economic and diplomatic pressures alone typically do not accomplish that much—unless, of course, as in the case of Japan before Pearl Harbor, they trigger a war with clear winners and losers. The Biden administration does not talk about regime change, but its words and actions contribute to a suspicion in Beijing and Moscow alike that regime change would be precisely the result of yielding to American pressure. At a time when the United States is deeply polarized—not only over its foreign policy priorities, but over its fundamental values—pursuing such an ambitious, setback-prone foreign policy while simultaneously undertaking a transformational domestic agenda is reckless.

Most importantly, democracy promotion is unnecessary (at least on geopolitical grounds) because there is little evidence that China and Russia, when left to their own devices, would be eager to form a global authoritarian alliance. Neither power shows much inclination to view geopolitics or geoeconomics primarily through the prism of a presumed great democracy-autocracy divide. China seems perfectly willing to establish close economic ties with the European Union and, for that matter, even the United States. Chinese objectives appear quite traditional—gaining influence, developing friends and clients, without being particularly concerned one way or the other about their standard of liberty. Unlike the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, China isn’t championing an international network of communist movements. When it comes to bullying neighbors, particularly in the South China Sea and beyond, Beijing makes little distinction between relatively democratic countries like the Philippines and autocratic ones like Vietnam. Despite the common challenge they face from the United States, Beijing and Moscow remain reluctant to conclude a formal political or military alliance. Their actual military cooperation goes little beyond largely symbolic military maneuvers and limited exchanges of military information. Both countries emphasize that they are aligned against the United States and, to some extent, the European Union, but they have not formed any meaningful alliance. China, for instance, did not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea and even became the number one trading partner of Russian adversary Ukraine. Russia is likewise rarely reluctant to sell advanced military hardware to China’s rival, India. It therefore remains a fundamental American interest not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that pushes China and Russia closer together.

EVEN IN the relatively stable U.S. political system—where institutional safeguards have usually functioned under the most difficult circumstances, from Watergate to the Trump-Biden transition—it is widely agreed that foreign meddling is unacceptable. Why then do U.S. officials and politicians expect that China and Russia, without similar democratic legitimacy and without legal safeguards to protect their elites in case of defeat, are prepared to accept foreign interference in their fundamental internal arrangements? China and Russia are hardly natural allies, but this fact does not mean that the creation of an assertive “alliance of democracies” would not push a reluctant Xi and Putin together. The perception of an imminent common threat might force both leaders to conclude that whatever their differences in tactics, political cultures, and long-term interests, in the short run at least, they must work together to oppose the danger of democratic hegemony. If Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin reach this conclusion, it will be increasingly difficult for them to speak to the United States with different voices—even on issues where it would be perfectly logical in terms of their substantive interests to do so.

Quite appropriately, today the United States views China and Russia as adversaries, but there is little appetite for examining the roots of American disagreements with them. Putting aside U.S. distaste for Chinese and Russian authoritarian practices, in the foreign policy domain, democracy is hardly the key issue. In fact, since the Soviet collapse, Moscow has never used military force against any nation to suppress democracy. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, but only after Georgian forces had attacked South Ossetia which was protected by Russian peacekeepers. In 2014, Russia used force to annex Crimea and to support separatists in Donbass, but only after a pro-Western rebellion in Kiev that removed from power the corrupt, but legitimately elected, President Viktor Yanukovych. In each case—with President Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia and the new Ukrainian government—Russia found itself confronted by hostile forces eager to join NATO, intent on exploiting their membership as a protective shield against Moscow. The struggle originated in territorial disputes and grievances over the Soviet inheritance. Democracy itself played, at best, a peripheral role—except in one very important regard. As George F. Kennan warned in 1997, NATO expansion into the former Soviet republics threatened to “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion” and “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy.” Russia itself must bear primary responsibility for its drift from democracy and its move in an autocratic direction. But the way NATO and the European Union handled Russia in the 1990s contributed mightily to its subsequent disillusionment with democracy. It was not difficult to discern that deepening confrontation with Russia would not make it more tolerant or pluralistic but, on the contrary, discredit pro-Western elements and provide more authority to the security forces. The West’s policy of broad sanctions provided Putin patriotic justification to consolidate political control and to bring many educated, successful people—people who would have otherwise been eager for more political and economic freedom—into his camp.

In the case of China, it is similarly difficult to demonstrate any instance when Beijing attacked a neighbor to overthrow democracy. Hong Kong—which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997—is the notable exception. Even here the major crackdown came only after protracted rioting. Certainly, China has been rather heavy-handed with many of its neighbors, but such actions have never been about democracy. They arose from disputes over territory, mineral, and energy resources, and the broader desire to stem American dominance in the region. As in the case of Russia, in the post-Mao period, military interventions have been rare—just once in 1979, when communist Vietnam invaded communist Cambodia.

This history undermines the notion that a global authoritarian challenge now emanates from China and Russia. It is rather the United States and the European Union that aim to make the world “safe for democracy,” to the extent that even great powers like China and Russia would have to abandon their chosen political systems.

SENSIBLE RESTRAINT is not tantamount to appeasement or surrender; quite the contrary, it must become a central element of U.S. global strategy if America hopes to continue to play a leading role in the world for years to come. A leading role does not require hegemony or an attitude of “our way or the highway,” which offends the dignity of countless other nations, even ones that are perfectly democratic. Instead, it requires that the United States maintain its military superiority, strengthen its alliances, and avoid unnecessary disputes with allies—all while being ever mindful of the fact that alliances are instruments of U.S. foreign policy rather than ends in themselves. The enhancement of alliances, in other words, must not become a paramount foreign policy objective that comes at the expense of larger U.S. strategic interests, such as the preclusion of a Chinese-Russian condominium. No help from Ukraine or Georgia can compensate for America being confronted with a new, most dangerous alliance dominating Eurasia. Both China and Russia should be strongly reminded, too, of America’s commitments to its allies, particularly to NATO members protected under Article 5 and to Taiwan. On the issue of trade, it is perfectly legitimate to defend assertively American interests and to push back when necessary. The Chinese, incidentally, understand that this kind of pushback is a normal part of conducting global business. Unlike in the area of democracy promotion, here they are willing to cut deals. Beijing and Moscow would certainly prefer something better than a cold peace with Washington, but given America’s democratic system, it is only appropriate to remind them clearly that brutality at home is not compatible with friendship with the United States. In most cases, this positive leverage may be more effective than sanctions.

At the same time, the American quest for democratic hegemony tends to forget that many governments throughout the world have grievances of their own with Washington and would not necessarily take the U.S. side in a confrontation with China or Russia. Taking stock of the failure of democracy promotion in the Middle East, Brent Scowcroft once aptly observed: “the notion that within every human being beats this primeval instinct for democracy has not ever been demonstrated to me.” Contrary to America’s democratic triumphalism, there is no iron law in history that dictates that democracies will always prevail over their autocratic opponents. Periclean Athens learned this the hard way when it waged war against Sparta and its allies and, in the process, forfeited its regional dominance and its own democratic rule. The pursuit of an unnecessary, even if appealing, triumph at the expense of a nation’s fundamental interests is self-defeating.

Dimitri K. Simes is president of The Center for the National Interest and publisher & CEO of The National Interest.

Image: Flickr.