Great perspective. Here's my quibble. America did export democracy after WW2 to Germany and Japan, but it stopped doing so soon after. What it exported to Russia after Yeltsin was oligarchy. Before that, it toppled democratically elected governments all over Latin America, Middle East, and Africa, and installed dictatorships. We need to understand that America is now a predatory capitalist state pretending to be a democracy, one election away from full blown fascism. The failure of the utterly cynical American foreign policy in Ukraine that sowed the seed for this war is not a failure of democracy but one of predatory capitalism.

Democracy is still worth preserving because it is the only thing we have now to counter the various forms of authoritarianism: dictatorship, oligarchy, fascism, etc. We did a terrible job of protecting it from being high jacked by predatory capitalism. We should learn from Iceland, Norway, etc., how to govern under a democracy that truly represents the people not corporate profits.

China is essentially a fascist state now while Russia is essentially a dictatorship with flavors of oligarchy. If they manage to dominate the world stage, we will be jumping from the predatory capitalist pot into the iron fist fire.

Liberal democracy is the marriage between democracy and capitalism. It sucks. Communism was the marriage between authoritarianism and socialism. That sucked too. Social democracy is the marriage between democracy and socialism. Third time lucky, I hope!