Dividing the world into ideological blocs isn't smart diplomacy

SINCE the start of the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden has defined the conflict between the Western alliance and Russia as a global "battle between democracy and autocracy", as he put it during a recent speech in Warsaw, Poland.

Other politicians and pundits in Washington have been promoting a broader narrative under which Russia and China are united in one geopolitical and ideological bloc that threatens core American interests and values, while Washington plays the role of a leader of a bloc of democratic nations that stand up to the authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

In fact, President Biden has, upon taking office, embraced that kind of binary approach that assumes democracies are by definition allies of the US while autocracies threaten American global interests, although earlier it was China that was seen in Washington as the chief of the alleged anti-Western bloc.