Eurasia Press & News
America Must Rediscover the Ideological Flexibility That Helped It Win the Cold War
“It is clear, absolutely clear,” said Joe Biden, speaking about today’s key geopolitical contest at his first press conference as president, “that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies.” It was a striking statement, but one that should not have come as a surprise. Many U.S. analysts and officials believe that Washington’s struggle against Beijing and Moscow is fundamentally an ideological one.
As precedent, these analysts cite the United States’ triumph against its last great competitor: the autocratic Soviet Union. For example, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan argued in 2019 that “China may ultimately present a stronger ideological challenge than the Soviet Union did.” In this telling, Washington won the Cold War because it had better ideas about government and economics. The conflict was a contest between communism and capitalism in which free markets and elections prevailed.
But the notion that the Cold War was won simply because of the superiority of Western ideas is incorrect. What mattered to the outcome of the Cold War was not just that the United States had better ideas but that it was more ideologically flexible than the Soviet Union. This openness enabled Washington to be more successful in nurturing alliances, gaining adherents abroad, and maintaining legitimacy at home.
U.S. officials have forgotten this lesson. Instead, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has grown more rigid than either China or Russia—contributing to its waning popularity abroad. It will have to change course. Instead of plowing ahead with an ideological battle, U.S. policymakers should revisit the Cold War to learn how to win friends and maintain alliances.
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was born intolerant. Decades of factional struggles among leftists and revolutionaries led the Bolsheviks to take a hard line on ideology from the moment they seized power in Moscow. Vladimir Lenin, the party’s leader, believed that those who differed from him were inherently counterrevolutionary, and he banned factionalism within the party in 1921. Subsequent Soviet leaders expanded on Lenin’s approach, purging party members for real or suspected ideological deviations. They placed great value on obedience and loyalty, and they saw diversity of thought as a liability rather than an asset.
Such thinking extended internationally. Moscow enforced ideological conformity through its organizations, including the Comintern—the official organization of international communism. The Soviet Union occupied the countries it liberated from Nazi Germany in the 1940s and then made them adopt nearly identical political structures and centrally planned economies. It did not need to do so: by defeating Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union gained immense prestige in the eyes of many Europeans, and they were willing to accept an enduring role for Moscow on the continent. Communist parties across Europe exploded in membership and were poised to gain power without Soviet interference. But the Soviet system was simply too intolerant of disagreements to leave their loyalties to chance.
Strategically, this was a ruinous error. Instead of leading what could have been an organic alliance, Moscow found itself running a costly empire in which it preserved the rule of Soviet client regimes by repeatedly intervening militarily and giving up economic concessions, including by providing energy at below-market prices. More important, Moscow’s demand for strict ideological adherence among its allies caused the defection of its most critical partner, the People’s Republic of China. Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his comrades refused to accept that the Soviet Union was the leader of the international communist movement or the arbiter of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. In response, the Soviets encouraged other communist countries to isolate China. The alienation of China ultimately fractured the entire international communist movement.
Soviet leaders placed great value on obedience and loyalty.
Moscow’s ideological rigidity also prevented it from successfully supporting communism within its adversaries’ borders. By the end of World War II, the Communist Party of the United States was enjoying its highest ever level of membership. But support for the party quickly disintegrated—even before the persecutions of McCarthyism—in part because it followed Soviet dictates to try to gain control of trade unions and other leftist groups. Such an approach alienated many potential allies. By the beginning of 1956, some American communists openly blamed the poor state of their party on Moscow’s ideological inflexibility—and their own leaders’ slavish obedience to Soviet officials.
After Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died, Moscow had a chance to set a new course. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, gave a speech denouncing his predecessor and exposing the crimes and mismanagement under his leadership. In doing so, Khrushchev undermined Soviet credibility, but he also opened the door for reformists around the world. When some American communist leaders tried to reform the party with majority support, however, the Soviets coordinated a campaign of international communist leaders to bolster the hard-line Stalinist holdouts and crush the reformers.
The result was the party’s effective destruction. Of the 20,000 Communist Party members in the United States in early 1956, only about 15 percent remained two years later. When student protests rocked the country in the following decade, the party was too weak to play a role. American student protesters held up portraits of China’s Chairman Mao, the communist revolutionary Che Guevara, and Vietnam’s President Ho Chi Minh. But they ignored Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin.
DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, DIFFERENT STANDARDS
Unlike the Soviet bloc, the Western alliance was not built around dogmatic ideological commitments. Instead, it was based on stopping a common totalitarian enemy. Rather than excluding states for the ideals they lacked, this diverse set of allies united under those they shared. These elements of commonality were often framed in ideological terms—liberty, democracy, free markets—but it was not necessary to subscribe to all of them to join. The United States did meddle in the domestic politics of some of its European partners. For example, the CIA helped defeat communists in the Italian elections of 1948 by funding centrist parties and warning Italians about the dangers of communism in radio broadcasts. But for the most part, Washington did not block socialist parties from assuming or wielding power in the West. In France and Italy, the communist parties remained powerful, legal organizations that dominated trade unions, controlled roughly a quarter of the vote, and would play a role in governance in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Third World, however, was a different story. For much of the Cold War, American politicians believed that the conflict would ultimately be decided in developing countries, and they maneuvered aggressively to constrain or depose communists, real and imagined, across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Washington, for example, sponsored coups in Central America. It funneled arms to an anticommunist Indonesian dictator. It went to war in Vietnam. At times, even a hint of nonalignment or a flirtation with socialism could inspire Washington to be hostile. The United States, for example, organized a coup against nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 out of fear that he was too reliant on communist support. And as the Cold War went on, the United States started adding ever more conditions to its friendships. A focus on human rights led the Carter administration to abandon the shah of Iran, the most reliable U.S. ally in the Middle East.
The United States won the Cold War, of course—a result that might seem to vindicate this intolerance. But its success came despite its rigidity, not because of it. Washington’s behavior made it deeply unpopular in the Third World, costing it many potential friends. The Soviets, meanwhile, were successful at courting some Third World countries because there, unlike in the First and Second Worlds, Moscow tolerated some differences. It came to appreciate the merits of ideological compromise in the postcolonial world, where security concerns seemed less important and the path to scientific socialism—defined by the Soviets as a centrally planned economy built around collectivized agriculture and state-led industrialization—was longer in countries with little industry and few proletarians. The Kremlin collaborated with ideologically heterodox leaders such as Indira Gandhi in India, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. Although the Soviet Union never abandoned its belief that all countries should eventually adopt the Soviet brand of communism, it was willing to countenance new approaches to socialism in places far from home. When it came to finding anti-American allies in the Third World, the Soviet Union embraced the notion that the enemy of its enemy was its friend. It’s just that these partners could not help it prevail.
SWITCHEROO
Unfortunately, the United States has either missed or forgotten the lessons of the past. Instead, it has assumed that its Cold War victory proved its ideological supremacy, and it has thus become hostile toward any other governing approach. This intolerance has been further fueled by its hegemony. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States felt safer and therefore became even pickier with its allies. It no longer needed support from bloody anticommunist dictatorships, so it began to jettison them. Neoconservatism started to guide U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. lawmakers increasingly tried to win support from voters by critiquing the human rights abuses of allies, such as Turkey. Washington’s inflexibility remains most prevalent in developing countries. But now, unlike during the mid-twentieth century, these states are central to great-power competition. (The United States’ contest with China is more global than the Cold War, which was centered in Europe.)
The United States’ agenda has also expanded and, at the same time, become more parochial. Where once the United States stressed democracy and free enterprise, it often now promotes religious freedom, LGBTQ rights, and its own brand of feminism. Even longtime U.S. allies have begun to chafe against the export of American values. In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron called “certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States” an existential threat to France, referring to progressive ideas on topics such as race and privilege. Other governments have reacted with even more hostility. The United States, for example, threatened to cut aid to Ghana in February if it did not roll back anti-gay legislation, leading some Ghanaians to call for their government to build stronger economic ties with China.
The United States won the Cold War despite its rigidity.
Russia and, increasingly, China have taken advantage of this frustration. Moscow and Beijing present themselves as defenders of traditional values—a startling transformation for countries that had until recently been identified with official state atheism and, in the case of China, a one-child limit. Russian President Vladimir Putin has in particular sought to portray himself on the world stage as a leader opposed to Western “wokeness.” He supports anti-gay laws, mocks inclusive language, and said in 2021 that teaching children about gender fluidity verges on a “crime against humanity.”
China, meanwhile, has been investing in programs to spread its message abroad. It has rapidly expanded the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The department was originally created to liaise between the CCP and other communist parties, but its writ expanded in the 1990s to include relations with all sorts of political organizations. By 2001, it maintained relations with 418 parties in 147 countries, receiving or sending some 300 delegations a year. Its activity has exploded under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In 2017, the department organized the first “World Political Parties Dialogue” in Beijing, a conference promoting connections between the CCP and other parties around the world. It has since held two more such dialogues, one in 2021 and another in 2023.
But in these meetings, China never demands that its partners adopt its system. Instead, it is trying to sell the notion that it represents pluralism and tolerance as opposed to the hegemony and ideological coercion of the United States. Essentially, China is seeking to make flexibility its brand. In a March 2024 article, Liu Jianchao, the head of the International Liaison Department, championed “the diversity of civilizations” and condemned countries for “imposing their own values and models on others.” Xi had formally enshrined that idea in March 2023 with China’s “Global Civilization Initiative,” a campaign aimed at making China the world’s defender of cultural, political, and ideological diversity.
OPEN THE HISTORY BOOK
It is time for American leaders to remember how important ideological flexibility was to the Cold War. Washington must again learn to tolerate flawed leaders and systems different from its own. That does not mean the United States should support the sort of bloody dictatorships that it did during the twentieth century. But it does mean Washington should strengthen ties with flawed democracies, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey. Such ideological openness can help the United States avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Washington can also be more flexible by no longer framing its competition with China and Russia as a contest between democracy and autocracy. Doing so is unhelpful for building the kind of global coalition that it will take to prevail against both states. Washington should then stop holding summits for democracy. In addition to signaling that U.S. officials do not respect autocratic partners, these meetings require Washington to try to parse which countries count as democracies, leading to charges of hypocrisy. The ultimate result is to drive away nondemocratic allies, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam.
China seeks to make flexibility its brand.
Ideological rigidity has also been an obstacle to the conclusion of free-trade agreements, which are key to cementing U.S. relationships in the Indo-Pacific. The Trans-Pacific Partnership failed in part because the United States gave too much weight to fighting climate change and encouraging the growth of independent labor unions in Vietnam. Talks regarding the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity have made little progress because the United States has pushed participants to be sustainable and inclusive without even offering expanded market access in return. The United States will have to make or join a free-trade agreement in the Indo-Pacific if it wants to build up its regional presence, and that means it must be less picky about what values it pushes.
The Biden administration has, of course, maintained productive relations with flawed democracies and outright autocracies, including Saudi Arabia. But its rhetoric and behavior mean that many foreign leaders are worried about the reliability of U.S. support over the long run. They fear that American voters will pressure their lawmakers to punish foreign powers that violate human rights, and they are therefore skeptical about partnering with Washington. The United States must reassure these leaders that it will not turn its back on them over domestic incidents. It must show that its commitment is steadfast.
To some American officials, making such pledges will be deeply discomforting—and understandably so. Many of Washington’s partners engage in deeply repressive and upsetting behavior. But to prevent China and Russia from upending the world order, the West will have to build a broad coalition of partners based not on democracy but on respect for international borders and law. Otherwise, it risks shrinking the pool of potential allies and pushing countries into the arms of its competitors.
