The Waning of America's Mission

                                                     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.

 

Post-Soviet Russia has abandoned utopian communist dreams. Moscow no longer proselytizes to the world but mostly to itself, nursing a grievance-laden, ethnocentric nationalism whose main tool is territorial expansionism. Its most prominent proponent and influencer of President Vladmir Putin is Aleksandr Dugin, whose 29-year-old daughter was assassinated by car bomb outside Moscow last weekend. He might have been the intended target.

Russian nationalism shares key attributes with Soviet communism, including chauvinism, authoritarianism, an appetite for territory, and paranoid suspicion of the West. But while communist and socialist ideas had international appeal in certain quarters, the new Russian ideology cannot be readily layered onto the global terrain. Its anti-Western and anti-democratic components attract supporters, even in European politics, but reestablishing the Russian/Soviet empire doesn’t get a lot of takers outside Russia’s borders.

Dugin has popularized the notion of “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” exciting part of the Russian elite demoralized by the country’s loss of global stature following the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991. The yearning to revive Russia’s greatness is pitched as a bulwark against what is seen as Western aspirations for world domination. While the ingredients of the greatness include Russian Orthodox religion and a spiritual pride, its primary tool has been military and its prize, territorial.

Ukraine has been a focal point of those aspirations. Back in 2008, Dugin advocated the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and even after Putin did just that in 2014, Dugin nudged him to do more. Speaking in English in a BBC interview, Dugin called for a more aggressive posture, urging Putin to send troops directly into eastern Ukraine, where the Kremlin was fomenting a civil war.

“The liberals are against Putin,” Dugin told the BBC, “and the patriots support him, but only if he continues with his patriotic politics. While he is hesitating, he is losing the support of both sides. It is a dangerous game. But maybe he has a solution.” We now know his “solution.”

Much of Dugin’s historical passion for a greater Russia found its way into a long essay by Putin last year arguing that Ukraine and Ukrainians were essentially Russian, which set the conceptual stage for the invasion six months ago.

Putin is trying by force, not persuasion, to create a “New Russia” that would look very much like the old, but without any pretense of human betterment broader than its own borders, however expansive he can make them. This is a threat, but geographically constrained, not one likely to filter into the politics of farflung nations in the manner of Marxism.

 China, too, while preaching the virtues of socialism and disparaging political pluralism, appears less interested in proselytizing to the world than in expanding its economic ties and securing itself against any infection by Western reforms. Indeed, both Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping appear motivated by a danger that no longer exists, namely, the missionary spirit of America to spread its democracy, capitalism, and military power. For both leaders, demonization of the U.S. mobilizes their own citizens’ patriotism.

There is no such mobilization of Americans, though. To be an ideological missionary probably requires an ideological adversary. The U.S. doesn’t really have one now. Both Russia and China are adversaries, but they pose risks that are more about state power than global ideology, despite their anti-democratic forms of government.

And Americans are pulling inward, drawn into their own domestic problems, weary of foreign wars that are never won, inflamed more by hatred of other Americans across political lines than of foreign enemies.

Furthermore, it has become clear how many Americans are naively unaware of democracy’s vulnerabilities. It is as if the schools systems’ mandated courses in history and civics had not bothered to teach how democratic government functions, how it needs to be preserved, and how dictatorships have arisen elsewhere in the world. As Trump and his Republican collaborators have worked to erode confidence in the electoral process, and to corrupt the process, they have exposed America’s ignorance about itself.

Democracy is not the natural state of humankind. Authoritarianism is the default, generated by apathy, alienation, and fear--all allies of the dictator. To revive America's mission for democracy, it needs to be done on its own soil.