Many countries don’t fit comfortably into either category, democracy or autocracy. As I’ve written, some autocracies—the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Vietnam—seek cooperation with the democratic world, don’t want to upend the UN Charter, and still see the advantages of international law. Some democracies—Turkey, Israel, Hungary, India, the Philippines—have elected leaders who are more inclined to break conventions on human rights than to uphold them. Because autocratic alliances are largely transactional, they can shift and change, and often do.
