“We’ve got to prove democracy works,” Joe Biden declared in his first press conference as president. He has dedicated his administration to this task. Biden took office weeks after his predecessor tried to overturn an election and sparked an insurrection. The violent transition of power confirmed America’s spot in the “democratic recession” that has beset dozens of countries since the mid-2000s. Several times since, Biden has remarked that future generations will see that the global contest between democracy and autocracy was in no small part decided during his presidency. Democracies, as he told world leaders at the inaugural Summit for Democracy, which he convened in December 2021, must show that they “can deliver for people on issues that matter most to them.”
Yet what matters most to the American people? Not the fortunes of democracy overseas. During the same nearly two decades in which democracy has declined globally, the public has turned against attempts to remake other countries in America’s image, especially through military intervention and nation building. In surveys, Americans rank democracy promotion among their lowest foreign-policy priorities. Biden may think he’s unifying the country by defending distant democracies, but his democracy-first framing is divisive—and may be making overseas conflicts worse.
Biden and his team are aware of the public’s long-simmering discontent. Even before he took office, they had formulated a response. The national-security establishment would finally heed what the American people were demanding: no more long and bloody campaigns to “make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy,” as Donald Trump put it in 2016. Instead of promoting democracy in new lands, the United States would protect democracies where they exist. The costs of American global leadership would fall, public support would rise, and Trump and his fellow populists would lose a rallying cry.
Biden has tried to act accordingly. After terminating America’s nation-building mission in Afghanistan, he has framed each focal point of U.S. foreign policy—Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and Taiwan—around the imperative to defend democracies against forces that seek their destruction. The problem is that his approach is not delivering, either abroad or at home. The war in Ukraine has reached an impasse and is shedding domestic support. The war in Gaza is a humanitarian disaster and even threatens Biden’s reelection by repelling a segment of his voters. And a catastrophic war over Taiwan looms as a larger prospect than ever.
Biden’s “defend democracy” credo did not create these challenges, but it has aggravated them. It fosters one-sided, maximalist policies that intensify conflicts without resolving them, while entangling the United States within them. Not since George W. Bush has a president so tightly linked democratic ideals with military instruments. And Biden’s effort is failing for similar reasons as Bush’s did, only in a more divided America and a more competitive world.
Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in Russia undoubtedly seeks to undermine Ukrainian democracy. But that does not mean the war is best understood as a “battle between democracy and autocracy,” as Biden casts it. Ukraine was a fledgling democracy for decades, mixing competitive elections and a vibrant civil society with entrenched corruption, before Putin sent his forces toward Kyiv. He invaded mainly because Ukraine was drifting out of Moscow’s orbit, in reaction to Russia’s own actions, and closer to the institutions of the West. Such aggression is illegal and unacceptable, not because one party is an autocracy and the other a democracy, but because one state invaded another and then sought to overthrow its government and absorb some of its territory. Russia’s aggression implicates two vital principles of international life: that disputes should be resolved peacefully and that sovereign states should enjoy independence.
When Biden instead appears to make democracy his first principle, much of the world hears that an aggressive war is wrong only when conducted by an autocracy against a democracy. Many countries outside the West have little interest in supporting such a principle. They would like to resist an illegal invasion of their country regardless of whether their form of government meets with Washington’s approval. It should be no surprise that dozens of nations have stayed neutral toward the war in Ukraine, finding fault with both Russia and the West; several countries have even shifted away from Kyiv’s side since the fighting began. Having avoided international isolation, Russia has weathered Western sanctions and ramped up production of artillery rounds, missiles, and drones.
Worse, Biden’s democracy framing inhibits U.S. policy. After the past year of fighting barely moved the battle lines, the government of Ukraine insists that its objective is still to eject Russian forces from every inch of territory occupied since 2014. Rather than induce a sense of realism in its partner, the Biden administration has vowed to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” and refused to put forward territorial aims of its own. It has not, for example, ruled out U.S. support for a campaign to recapture Crimea, which Russia has controlled for a decade and might plausibly resort to nuclear weapons to retain.
Biden’s “defend democracy” rhetoric has boxed him in: If democracy is the central value at stake, the notion of pressuring Ukraine’s elected leaders sounds illegitimate, even if Kyiv should adopt more achievable goals or explore negotiations with Russia. Indeed, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has stated that “we’re not going to pressure” Ukraine into negotiations, as though the U.S. should keep supplying Ukraine to do as it likes, as long as it likes, without regard for costs, risks, effectiveness—or American interests.
The United States does in fact require Ukraine to use U.S.-provided equipment as Washington prefers, and policy makers appreciate that U.S. and Ukrainian interests are not identical. But Biden’s democracy rhetoric makes it harder to apply overt leverage or contradict Kyiv’s positions, steps that may be needed to show that he is serving his own citizens and steering the war toward an acceptable close in the coming months or years. Already, Trump, Biden’s presumptive challenger in this November’s presidential election, has accused Biden of “sending American treasure and weaponry to fuel endless war,” and Republicans in Congress are holding up Ukraine aid as public support for it wanes. For the sake of American democracy, Biden should say less about Ukraine’s democracy and more about a strategy to preserve its independence and end the killing.
The idea of defending democracy has played a more superficial but still damaging role in the wake of the heinous October 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas, which massacred about 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Weeks later, Biden appealed to the American people from the Oval Office to support his request for $105 billion of emergency aid, mainly for Israel and Ukraine. Those two countries deserve America’s support, he argued, because they are democracies facing foes who seek their annihilation. The claim was arguably accurate but beside the point (which is perhaps why U.S. officials under the president have tended not to invoke democracy to rationalize U.S. policy). Hamas seeks through terrorist violence to establish a Palestinian state on land Israel controls. It opposes Israel because Israel is a Jewish state, regardless of whether it is a democratic one. Israel, in turn, seeks to protect itself and preserve control over the occupied territories. The conflict is principally about who gets what land, not about which form of government they establish on that land.
Biden has wielded the defense of democracy as a justification to back Israel as Israeli forces have bombarded and invaded Gaza. Yet Biden’s touting of Israel’s status as a democracy, without qualification, is questionable given the country’s recent backsliding. For most of last year, the right-wing government attempted to curtail the independence of Israel’s judiciary, provoking huge protests in the name of saving Israeli democracy. Biden himself had reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to rush his reforms.
Biden’s democracy-mongering deflects not only from the reality of the problem but also from how to solve it. A more farsighted American president would oppose Palestinian terrorism and Israeli occupation as mutually reinforcing injustices that must be challenged together. The United States could still provide significant support for Israeli retaliation after October 7, but only if Israel created conditions for peace—by using far greater discrimination in targeting Hamas leaders and minimizing the killing of civilians, by freezing settlements and halting settler violence in the West Bank, and by announcing a multiyear plan to facilitate a viable Palestinian state. The watchwords of this approach would be statehood and security for Israel and Palestine alike. Anything less than this, after all, would almost certainly perpetuate the conflict, at great cost to the United States.
As the Israel Defense Forces lay waste to Gaza, one should hope that the world takes Biden’s democracy rhetoric no more seriously than Netanyahu has taken his suggestions that Israel exhibit restraint. Israel’s democracy does not justify its brutality. Democratic wrongs are still wrongs, and if democracies act with impunity, autocracies can do so more easily. Indeed, by being too tolerant of the occupation and annexation of Palestinian land, Biden has undercut his principled stand against the occupation and annexation of Ukrainian land. The world has noticed, and so have Americans. Since he linked the two conflicts under the dubious banner of “defending democracy,” Biden has not united the country to support both causes but has seen it divide further: Young and progressive Democrats have grown more critical of backing Israel’s war, while conservatives have become more hostile toward Ukraine’s.
The misguided moralism that has intensified two conflicts also increases the risk of bringing about a third and even worse one. Taiwan, a self-governing island of nearly 24 million people, is a thriving democracy and held its latest free and fair election earlier this month. But Taiwan became democratic only after the Cold War, whereas its dispute with China dates back to 1949, when the Communists took over the mainland and sent their Nationalist opponents fleeing to Taiwan. For decades, the two governments—one in Beijing, the other in Taipei, and both one-party dictatorships—each claimed to be the legitimate ruler of all China and threatened to invade the other.
Beginning in the 1970s, the United States devised a policy that has helped the fraternal adversaries live and let live. Washington recognized Beijing as the sole legal representative of China and acknowledged that only “one China” exists. The U.S. also agreed to maintain strictly unofficial relations with Taipei, while sending it arms for self-defense. Under this evenhanded, pragmatic framework, the U.S. has prevented both sides from upsetting the status quo—deterring Beijing from launching an invasion across the strait and deterring Taipei from making unilateral moves toward independence. This policy has allowed Taiwanese democracy to emerge and flourish, but as a by-product of the main priorities: stability and peace.
Biden has degraded this successful approach by framing U.S.–China relations around an “ongoing battle in the world between autocracy and democracy.” Although he has avoided applying this terminology specifically to Taiwan, members of Congress in both parties have done so—most notably former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California. “Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” Pelosi declared when she met with Taiwan’s president in 2022. “America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.” Her visit induced China to conduct major military exercises around the island.
The president himself has risked the stability achieved by America’s long-standing policy. Twice he has said that the people of Taiwan should decide whether to declare independence, remarking in 2022, “That’s their decision.” (On top of this, Biden has vowed four times to use military force if China invades Taiwan, contradicting the U.S. policy of maintaining “strategic ambiguity” over whether to intervene.) Biden’s principle is unimpeachably democratic, but its consequences could be calamitous. For the president to assign such a prerogative to Taiwan’s public risks giving Taipei license to take provocative actions and making Beijing fear it cannot achieve unification peacefully. Overwhelmingly, experts believe that if Taiwan declared independence, China would promptly invade.
Thankfully, the official policy remains that the U.S. “does not support Taiwan independence,” a formula that Biden has used subsequently, including immediately after Taiwan’s latest election. Yet the president’s supposed gaffes, when repeated, become difficult to ignore, and Chinese officials complain that the U.S. is adopting a “hollowed out” and “fake” one-China policy. If they conclude that Washington and Taipei seek the island’s permanent separation from the mainland, Beijing could resort to war as the only way to prevent an unacceptable outcome.
That is why many U.S. partners in Asia bridle at Biden’s democracy rhetoric. Putting democracy first increases the odds of a terrible war, one that countries in the region might blame the United States for provoking.
Americans, of course, should not be indifferent to the fate of democracy abroad, but their government needs to get the order of operations right. Channeling investment and aid to countries already moving toward democracy, as the administration is doing through its Democracy Delivers Initiative, is a constructive measure. Likewise, Biden served the cause of democracy well by publicly affirming the integrity of Brazil’s presidential election in 2022 and privately warning military leaders not to back a coup. When supporting democracy aligns with countries’ sovereign status and serves U.S. interests, the U.S. can play a positive role.
But privileging democracy above sovereignty leads to grief. It injects an endlessly destabilizing principle into international relations, implying that states do not have legitimate rights unless they are democracies, as defined by Washington. Under Biden, the United States has abandoned the disastrous foreign-policy choices of the post-9/11 era—invading other countries to overthrow their governments and install democratic ones—yet it continues to speak as though it reserves the right to do so. The point is not lost on states around the world. And one day, Americans will not want a yet more powerful China to assert the same principle of intervening abroad on behalf of the form of government it favors.
Right now, as Biden rightly urges, Americans must preserve their own democracy. This is the overriding imperative, and it won’t be decided in Ukraine, Israel, or Taiwan. Large majorities of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going and find the federal government unresponsive to their needs. In that context, national leaders who choose to send billions of dollars to fund other countries’ wars had better have realistic goals and high odds of success, and ensure that core U.S. interests guide their policy.
The “defense of democracies” concept does the opposite of that. It inclines the U.S. to over-identify with certain foreign countries and become partisans in their fights. This kind of global leadership divides not only the world but also the nation it is supposed to serve. The United States needs a foreign policy that helps democracy deliver for Americans, not one that asks Americans to deliver ever more for democracies abroad.