2022 brought Western democracies together, but internal divides remain

The US succeeded in strengthening global alliances in 2022 while opponents like Russia face growing exclusion, making for a better year for Biden than many would have expected
That said, the US-led order will continue to face hurdles from within in 2023

Robert Delaney

Published: 3:30am, 3 Jan 2023

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Is it too early to predict that 2022 was the beginning of the end of the democratic recession that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps warning us about? Was it the year that autocracy began to collapse under its own weight?

The most obvious indicator is Russian President Vladimir’s Putin’s vastly diminished position following setbacks in Ukraine. Instead of swallowing Ukraine, he’s made the world wonder why Russia was granted a higher geopolitical stature than its economy would justify owing to a now-disproved perception of military invincibility.

Beijing’s about-face on what was one of the world’s strictest Covid-19 containment regimes, too abrupt to be anything based on science or epidemiology, is another case in point. Given the Chinese government’s history of meticulous planning ahead of any changes capable of causing instability, we’re left to conclude that – for the first time in recent history – popular grievances forced Xi Jinping’s government into retreat.

Its decision to step back and let Covid-19 rampage through the country without stockpiling vaccines, antivirals, pain relievers or other basic medication ahead of time was not, in the philosophy often attributed to Deng Xiaoping – “crossing the river by feeling the stones”. The move was a dive off a cliff in hopes that the water was deep enough.

Iran’s hardline leaders, whose supply of drones to Russia underscores how much Tehran has drawn closer to Putin, are also on their back feet amid an uprising over their government’s atrocious treatment of women.

Blinken and his boss President Joe Biden must be heading into 2023 with more hope than they had at any point in the year, despite the news of Putin’s continued bombardment of Ukraine. Cold as it might be, the one comfort that they and other defenders of democratic rule can take is that the Kremlin’s acting out of desperation and not because it has the upper hand.

President Joe Biden welcomes Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House in Washington on December 21, 2022. Photo: AP

We’ve heard plenty from Beijing over the years about the flaws of the Western world’s democratic rule, with all of its pesky checks and balances. Putin, for his part, has assailed the West for its embrace of civil society and sexual diversity.

The West has given the world plenty of examples of its deficiencies, such as Washington’s seemingly endless foreign policy failures in the Middle East, not to mention the many botched responses to Covid-19 in its early stages.

But as 2023 starts, with Sweden and Finland poised to join Nato – which for the first time specifically identified Beijing as a threat – the world’s Western-aligned democracies do not appear as divided and ineffective as Beijing and Moscow would have the world believe.

Is the current state of play more about the inherent weaknesses of autocracy or the various initiatives led or championed by Biden, such as Aukus, the Quad, and the US-EU Trade and Technology Council? It’s all of the above.

But the ideological war between a Washington-led coalition of democracies on one side and Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and other autocracies is far from over. Anyone paying close attention to US politics can see that the Republican Party’s transformation away from one that’s laissez faire on business and hawkish abroad is the latter group’s best hope.

And with Republicans taking control of the US House of Representatives this week, Putin’s fans in the US government will do everything they can to undercut Biden’s efforts.

Don’t expect US-China relations to improve in 2023

Former president Donald Trump may have lost big in November, but his brand of race-baiting Christian nationalism remains in the same kind of ideological competition with traditional Republicans that Biden is in with Xi and Putin.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, declared in November that Ukraine would not receive more US military aid under the leadership of her party, putting her and allies like Florida Representative Matt Gaetz at odds with the likes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican traditionalists.

This year will be crucial as the 21st century’s global competition between autocracies and democracies plays out worldwide, but the most important battle is being fought in Washington.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief