'Division of the World Is Inevitable'

Countries need to choose whether to align with autocrats or democracies, says a former NATO Secretary-General

- By Tom O'Connor. Photographs by Giorgio Cosulich, Getty, Beata Zawrzel, Mikhail Klimentiev, AFP, Ronaldo Schemidt

JUST OVER TWO MONTHS into Europe’s biggest war in decades, Newsweek sat down with former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss a wide range of issues, as the alliance he led during Russia’s initial incursion into Ukraine eight years ago takes unprecedented measures against Moscow following its fullscale invasion. Rasmussen believes that democracies across the globe must form a coalition of their own to beat back a growing rival bloc dominated by autocratic powers.

Prior to heading NATO from August 2009 to 2014, Rasmussen served as prime minister of his home country of Denmark. Today, he leads the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, an organization he founded in 2017 with the goal of strengthening the democratic nature of nations as well as the bonds between them.

Rasmussen feels this goal is more important than ever at a time when Russia is waging open war against a country seeking to join NATO, and as a rising China presents a new challenge to Western aspirations in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. And with tensions rising between two emerging geopolitical blocs, he also asserts that the economic ties that have long served as a motivation for world peace may soon be strained to the point of total collapse.

The former NATO chief argues that the division of the international community into a democratic camp and an autocratic camp will not only dominate the future of geopolitics for years to come, but also play a leading role in defining the world order.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.