This is a speck of misapprehension that slipped in to your otherwise great writeup. Governments don't naturally conflict because they have different forms and they don't make automatic friends when they are similar. The US is presently allied with many autocracies. Middle-aged Europe was uniformly feudal, and constantly at war. Pre-WWII America was strictly isolationist and despite being a democracy had a fairly sized pro-Hitler element. Governments conflict when they have something to conflict over.
US leadership fundamentally doesn't care about human rights abuses in China more than Chinese leadership cares about abuses against black people in the US. They don't care about bringing democracy in a country when their next move is to make sure "the right" leader is appointed. They don't care about freedom of speech when they can block it as needed under any pretense. And they don't care about any of the principles they advocate if those principles get in their way, they will all happily ally with someone embodying the exact thing they're fighting against if it server their interest of maintaining or growing their power.
And getting to the point addressed above, they care about the image of the company they forced to introduce backdoors only as far as they can be punished by the bigger power, or if they can't sell it as fighting the terrorists (or scare word of the day). Case in point, Sweden and Ericsson wouldn't get away with it because their sphere of influence is a stone's throw away and the US would crucify them. China and Russia can mostly get away with it because their influence extends far enough that they have enough of a "friendly audience" for which they can sell a story. The US can get away with it everywhere else because even if Cisco is backdoored through and through, the US is the dominant superpower and is able to pressure allies to "see things" their way, and they can also sell everything as "the fight against ...".
Superpowers see advancing their interests by any means as a matter of survival and this takes precedence over anything else. They'll do what needs to be done and deal with the fallout after. And if you live long enough to move through these different regimes you start seeing the pattern immediately, only thing that changes is the "feel good" story the people are served with.
Most democracies are in general against war for practical reasons, wars are a drain away from stuff at home that's important for them as people. US citizens may be "less likely" to want that but only because recent history has saturated them with the justification that the war is against regimes with "different values". It's an easy sell for people who are never to keen on going beyond that. So it would mostly be a matter of repackaging the justification. Some democracies can afford both the wars and the "moral repackaging" for their citizens.
But people also misunderstand democracy and what it means. The fact that the interests of the majority are respected might also mean that the minority is suffering a great deal. How well are black people's interests represented in the US?
One the other hand in democracy you are allowed to give a tiny endorsement to a person or party for a leadership position in the hope that they will represent your interest while others are buying "priority" over you for this representation with far more than a vote. You're not seeing this as less of a democracy so people are not judging political systems based on their actual implementation but rather by picking and choosing on particular values.
Russia is ostensibly a democracy, albeit one where the leadership is somewhat predetermined a very small minority. USA is a democracy albeit one where the leadership is somewhat representing the interests of a very small minority. I'm sure a war between these two is not seen as such a remote possibility in terms of people's preference.
Reasonably well it would seem from the outside. 11% of congress is "black", which is roughly in line with population and there seem to be hundreds of laws and programs aimed at helping them. And there's also lots of media attention to their problems and struggles.
That picture turns to the opposite when looking at statistics of jail and prison inmates representation, or when looking at how the wealth in the country is racially divided and whole neighborhoods still racially and economically segregated.
In that context BLM is not really a new thing, it's just the most modern manifestation of a rather old and still very on-going issue [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_riots#United_St...
A group can have plenty of political representation and institutional and legal support and still struggle for other reasons (e.g. historic oppression or cultural problems depending on whether you lean left or right).
Though on second thought there still are a few laws with racist intent on the books aren't there? Though they're being undone at a decent clip.
People treated well don't need lots of media attention to remind those treating them well that black lives matter, in 2021. I'd say that for a democracy that's a pretty bad track record that isn't improving fast enough. Democratic majority decisions sometimes leave the minority far behind.
The US electoral system may have it’s flaws, but to compare it to Russia is absurd.
How many opposition leaders has the US government tried to murder recently?
The statement was clearly about the relationship each country has with democracy, comparing not to each other but to what democracy should be. There's value in evaluating things against what they should be, not against an arbitrarily worse thing. It's the only way to see the flaws and look to improve.
It's difficult to disentangle that from the unpopularity of war. Since democratic regimes are harder to get to do things, because you have to convince more than one person, the null hypothesis would be that autocratic regimes have a higher propensity for belligerence, especially in societies predating the invention of propaganda.
But in a totalitarian regime, consent of the governed did not matter much. Expressions of pacifism would land you in a concentration camp really quick.
Democracies care a little more about what the average Joe thinks, even though they are far from perfect in this regard and consent can be sorta-kinda manufactured.
The reality is that countries you call "democracies" are allies of the United States, while countries you call "dictatorships" are enemies. If a democracy is to be an enemy, the first course of action is to first make it stop being a democracy. Then if it goes your way there's nothing to be worried about, and if the chaos installs someone you don't like then you're not fighting a democracy.
The Chinese government has popular support. So were many others the US invaded or overthrew - some were even democracies. It doesn't matter, as we saw with the Iraq war any inconvenient facts will not make it into the narratives and any lies will be disseminated as needed.
Because if you criticise the Chinese government you disappear for a few months at best. If you’re unlucky you’re never seen again.
> countries you call "democracies" are allies of the United States, while countries you call "dictatorships"
That’s an extraordinarily bold claim and I think you should have to back it up with some evidence. Which of the countries that are called dictatorships do you think are unjustly labeled as such?
Wasn't too long ago that being considered too far on the left in the US was a professional and social death sentence.
Was neither too long ago that anybody who opposed illegal wars of aggression, torture, and state-sponsored assassinations, was deemed a "treacherous terrorist supporter" who might as well have flown the planes into the towers themselves, the earlier versions of that involved sending armed soldiers to violently break up peaceful student protesters ala Kent State.
Heck, "race riots" are a regular thing in the US to this day, yet somehow not considered political, nor the countless black activists that were jailed, left to live in exile, or straight up assassinated in the US [0], somehow none of that is considered "political" [1].
Add in the reality how the US has not just the biggest prison population, but also the highest incarceration rate on the planet, and it comes across as a bit tone-deaf to constantly evoke how in the "evil not US countries" people are allegedly getting vanished in droves, but never ever in the US [2].
[0] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/11/rakem-balogun-...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/more-than-80-percent-of-the-...
Laughable considering cordial relationship between US and Vietnam. The latter political system is basically a clone of China.
The main difference is that US law is exported to the rest of the world's population and Chinese law is not.
If Julian Assange leaked Chinese intelligence/war-crime-evidence he would be at home raising his kids right now.
Isn’t it common knowledge that the US and China is spying on everyone? The main difference is that China is not a military ally, and its government spying, which is unfettered, supports its private enterprise that is government financed and owned. US govt spying is unfettered. US corporate spying far more restricted because US businesses are bound by Federal and State laws, and it’s not centrally coordinated, instead US businesses are autonomous entities. And though US corporate spying on customers is rampant, it is also transparently written into usage contracts. US corporate spying is obviously for profit, and since the US and Europe are strategically tied through NATO, it’s not on the same threat level. China and its axis ally Russia, clearly bump up against the West because our political systems are fundamentally opposite, democratic vs autocratic.
What this translates to is Chinese investors are agressively running around buying into key strategic businesses, advised by data gathering in coordination with its government, with a view to maintaining control, which reflects how the country is managed itself.
American investors are running around buying/competing against business in coordination with data rich parent company entities, with a view to making money. But because it’s a democratic country where laws preserve autonomy even against the government, it’s a free for all and anyone can play, even Chinese owned American companies. Which is a reflection of how the US is managed itself.
This is also how Europe is managed, so I do believe Chinese control of telcos is a bigger threat to Europe’s way of life.