31. Navigating the Democracy-Security Dilemma in U.S. Foreign Policy: Lessons from Egypt, India, and Turkey
- Author:
- Thomas Carothers and Benjamin Press
- Publication Date:
- 11-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- As President Joe Biden and his team seek to put the defense of democracy and protection of human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, they confront the stubborn fact that the United States maintains cooperative security relations with a wide range of undemocratic or democratically backsliding governments. Powerful security interests, especially countering terrorist threats, maintaining stability in the Middle East, and managing competition with a rising China, underlie many of these partnerships. Such situations frequently give rise to a policy dilemma: confronting partner governments over their political shortcomings risks triggering hostility that would jeopardize the security benefits that such governments provide to Washington. Yet giving them a free pass on democracy and rights issues undercuts the credibility of U.S. appeals to values, bolstering the damaging perception that America only pushes for democracy against its adversaries or in strategically irrelevant countries. Already in the first year of Biden’s presidency, such tensions have emerged in relations with countries as diverse as Egypt, Hungary, India, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. While the Biden administration has publicly and privately raised democracy and rights issues with various security partners, its cautious approach toward some of them has started to attract criticism from those who feel that near-term security interests have been too strongly prioritized compared to democracy and human rights concerns. This paper looks in depth at the democracy-security dilemma with a view to helping U.S. policymakers deal with it more systematically and effectively. Case studies of U.S. policy toward Egypt, India, and Turkey over the past twenty years highlight the complexity of the democracy-security dilemma. In Egypt, U.S. concerns with the country’s authoritarian politics have surfaced periodically over the years yet struggled to find a meaningful place in a relationship dominated by deeply rooted security cooperation, including extensive U.S. security assistance. In India, a strong U.S. push, warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, to further strengthen the U.S. -Indian security partnership has unfolded alongside a distinctly illiberal turn in Indian politics. By contrast, democratic decline in Turkey has coincided with—and contributed to—a major deterioration in Ankara’s relations with Washington, including significant divergence on a range of foreign policy issues.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- Turkey, India, Egypt, and United States of America