The Fight for Democracy Needs Some Hypocrisy

It doesn’t take a genius to see that a subtext of President Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” last week was an effort to raise the ideological stakes in the competition between the U.S. and China. And only a fool would believe that the strategy will work without a healthy dose of diplomatic hypocrisy.

The notion of an “alliance of democracies” (in part to counteract an alliance of autocracies) is neither crazy nor new. Assisting fellow democracies is a rationale for U.S. defense commitments to South Korea and Japan. The democratic nature of Taiwan is what makes it a sympathetic cause.