By Daniel DePetris
Biden and other liberal internationalists warn about the fragility of the rules-based international order at every opportunity. That fragility, however, is less a consequence of waning US power and more a result of what classical realists have prescribed as a clash of interests. Therein lies Biden’s second major fault: he assumes ideology, not interests, drives America’s adversaries and competitors to behave the way they do. China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Putin are categorised as fellow authoritarians teaming up in a quasi-alliance to undermine democracies worldwide. Biden even attributed Hamas’s October 7 assault to its hatred for Israeli democracy.
Back on planet earth, political philosophy likely has little to do with how Russia, China, or Hamas conduct themselves. Xi and Putin may be fellow autocrats who want to maintain their position at the top of their respective systems, but they are also two men who have similar perceptions of what the US and its Western allies represent: established powers trying to maintain their dominance by keeping others down. The sentiment is widely shared throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia, which look at the West and see a two-faced entity that often breaks the very principles it claims to defend.
This piece was originally published in The Telegraph on October 28, 2023. Read more HERE.