A lesson in false equivalence

imperfection with authoritarian oppression is strategic suicide
The United States has serious domestic flaws, but its freedoms, alliances and global influence distinguish it from authoritarian states, a distinction its allies must recognize and actively invest in through engagement
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There is a Japanese proverb: Tsuki to suppon (The Moon and the Turtle)
Both are round, but one illuminates the world while the other crawls in the mud
The proverb warns against the laziness of false equivalence and of confusing superficial resemblance with substantive likeness
It is a warning that the democratic middle powers — Japan, Canada, Australia and the nations of Western Europe — urgently need to hear.The United States of America is a deeply flawed country
This is not a controversial claim; it is a historical and empirical observation
The nation was built on the original sin of slavery and its legacy of systemic racism continues to shape outcomes in housing, policing and incarceration
American capitalism, unleashed and often unregulated, has produced staggering inequality
Gun violence claims roughly 45,000 American lives annually
The fentanyl crisis has killed more Americans in five years than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined
foreign policy is littered with catastrophic misjudgments — Vietnam, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 20-year quagmire in Afghanistan and now the military campaign against Iran, which has further strained alliances and international law
Washington preaches the rules-based order while selectively exempting itself from its constraints
The hypocrisy is real and it is not trivial.No one articulated the case for American self-destruction more presciently than Wang Huning, the Chinese Communist Party's chief ideologist, who in 1991 published the book “America Against America” after a six-month tour of the United States
Wang observed a society of extraordinary material abundance hollowed out by what he called a “spiritual crisis,” arguing that America's radical individualism and internal contradictions would generate centrifugal forces that “would eventually shake the very foundation of the nation.”
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