Indeed. The myth of engagement, that dictatorships would liberalize and become more like the free world due to economic ties, has been convincingly refuted once more by Putin and Xi Jinping.
Putin took all the western money, all the photo-ops with democratic leaders, & used them to crush opposition & civil society in Russia. Then he pivoted to open aggression against the engagers, and they still won't wake up.
Engagement is appeasement & the flow of political influence is one-way. It funds domestic repression & spreads authoritarian corruption to the free world. It gives dictatorships open access to free world money, tech, financial & legal systems, and media.
Yes, it would be great if the NBA or Google or other private US & EU companies would stand up to dictatorships, but they would be going against the capitulation of their own governments & leaders putting short-term cash over free world values and stability.
Engagement gives modern dictatorships a huge advantage over their Cold War predecessors. They keep their money & families in the free world while turning their home nations into gulags. I called this "Ruling like Stalin & living like Abramovich," but "living like Trump" works.
Isolating hostile & authoritarian regimes doesn't mean never doing business, but they shouldn't have free access & benefits to spread corruption. Values must be leveraged to create incentives to liberalize, which leads to more democracies, more stability, more prosperity.
Bowing down to China while they put millions in concentration camps, building pipelines with Russia as Putin directs a campaign of murder across Europe. Here's your engagement: nytimes.com/2019/10/08/wor…
