By David K. Shipler
Here is
the problem: The United States cannot campaign for democracy around the globe
when too few Americans are willing to defend democracy at home. And since one
of the major political parties has internalized Donald Trump’s authoritarian desires,
making them its own, no serious foreign leader or activist can look upon the
United States as a reliable model. No matter what President Biden says about
the worldwide contest between dictatorship and democracy, the age of American
evangelism appears to be over—or at least headed for a long pause.
During
the First Cold War, from the end of World War II in 1945 to the late 1980s, Soviet
communism and American democracy staged an ideological rivalry across
international boundaries in practically every region of the world. These were
two irreconcilable theories of government and economics, both driven by strong
moral arguments and deep cultural beliefs.
Few
Americans would have seen the Soviet Union as a moral enterprise, but that is
exactly how many Russians saw themselves, as carriers of a torch of social
justice. All countries, all peoples, would be better off in socialist,
centrally planned economies, so the argument went, which would level the gross
disparities under capitalism. And that could be done only with a one-party
system, not the messy chaos of pluralistic democracy.
The Soviet Union itself had
achieved nothing close to communism’s shared wealth, of course, with warrens of privilege reserved for the few at the expense of the many. Karl Marx would have
been appalled. But no matter: Myths can be inspiring, and Moscow worked
feverishly to spread that one to allies and client states, often as a condition
of aid. After the Vietnam War, for example, it successfully pressed North
Vietnam to snuff out the vibrant private entrepreneurship of the South
Vietnamese, which took many years to recover.
The United States, meanwhile, was
crusading for both private enterprise and pluralistic democracy, also as a
moral enterprise. Not that either country neglected its national security
interests; both Moscow and Washington were circling each other warily in many
corners of the international arena, jockeying for influence wherever possible.
The U.S. didn’t mind cozying up to dictators that were anti-communist, and even
helping overthrow duly elected leftists who threatened Western business
interests, as in Chile, Iran, and Guatemala, for example.
Many pro-democracy activists abroad
saw through the hypocrisy yet also counted on the U.S. to support human rights,
at least rhetorically. Inconsistency, a hallmark of foreign policy, doesn’t
erase basic lines of belief. And the First Cold War was marked by an intriguing
symmetry: Both the Soviet Union and the United States were inspired by the evangelical
drive to spread their own systems for what each saw as the good of humanity.
Now, as the Second Cold War takes shape, the ideological landscape is quite different. The United States is losing faith in its own democracy. The Republican Party is placing partisans in key positions to undermine future elections, which will make the U.S. look familiar—but not inspiring—to those in countries where voting is manipulated by strongmen.
