{"id":45884,"date":"2024-02-07T16:21:26","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T00:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=45884"},"modified":"2024-02-08T07:54:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T15:54:24","slug":"the-cynicism-of-bidens-defense-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/07\/the-cynicism-of-bidens-defense-of-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cynicism of Biden’s ‘Defense’ of Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Poast is half-right in his assessment<\/a> of Biden\u2019s foreign policy:<\/p>\n

To put it bluntly, the Biden administration\u2019s approach to foreign policy is <\/i>realpolitik<\/em> from top to bottom. This isn\u2019t necessarily bad. A realpolitik<\/em> approach to foreign policy enables Biden to do what he can in the face of constrained U.S. capability. Liberal hegemony is easy when it\u2019s easy to be a hegemon. But when it\u2019s not, ideological purity is often sacrificed for the sake of national interests.<\/i><\/p>\n

Poast gets the cynicism of Biden\u2019s foreign policy right, but he underrates the importance of the president\u2019s ideological framing of the conflicts that the U.S. is supporting. It\u2019s true that \u201cthe protection of democracy doesn\u2019t appear to be driving Biden\u2019s foreign policy in practice,\u201d as Poast says, but Biden does wrap up the same old hegemonist status quo in that packaging. For Biden, \u201cdefending democracy\u201d is a convenient way to distinguish himself from the strongman-admiring Trump rhetorically and also pose as democracy\u2019s global champion without having to act differently from the way that his predecessors, including Trump, acted on the world stage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Biden often relies on the \u201cdemocracy vs. autocracy\u201d framing in his speeches and op-eds as a way of explaining and justifying U.S. policies in different parts of the world. He has even used this framing to pretend<\/a> that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are part of the same larger global struggle. According to the president, Americans are the \u201cessential nation\u201d and \u201c[w]e rally allies and partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress toward a brighter, more peaceful future.\u201d<\/p>\n

That framing has negative consequences of its own, as Stephen Wertheim argued in the article<\/a> Poast is responding to, by encouraging the administration to be hardline and inflexible in its approach to current conflicts involving the U.S. Wertheim says this of Biden\u2019s \u201cdefend democracy credo\u201d:<\/p>\n

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.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Poast is half-right in his assessment of Biden\u2019s foreign policy: To put it bluntly, the Biden administration\u2019s approach to foreign policy is realpolitik from top to bottom. This isn\u2019t necessarily bad. A realpolitik approach to foreign policy enables Biden to do what he can in the face of constrained U.S. capability. Liberal hegemony is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-45884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"The \u201cdemocracy vs. autocracy\u201d framing is just a new version of dividing the world up into opposing blocs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45884"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45889,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45884\/revisions\/45889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45884"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=45884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}