Why Whataboutism Works | Foreign Affairs

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On March 25, 2024, the U.S. embassy in Budapest took aim at Hungary. In a video posted to Facebook, embassy officials decried the country’s government for continuing to purchase Russian oil and gas when most of Europe was weaning itself off Moscow. “The Hungarian government has chosen to augment its reliance on Russian energy . . . at any expense,” the video declared. “Only the Hungarian political leadership has decided to keep the country dependent on Russian energy.”

A little more than a month later, Hungary fired back. It did so not by addressing the substance of Washington’s complaint, or by arguing that there was nothing wrong with buying gas from Russia. Instead, it criticized the United States. “Who was the number one supplier of uranium [to] the United States last year?” Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister Péter Szijjártó indignantly asked. “Russia.” Americans had spent “more than $1 billion” on Russian uranium in 2023, he continued. And yet “they are putting pressure on us not to buy fuel from there.”

Szijjártó is hardly the only foreign official to counter U.S. criticisms by engaging in “whataboutism”—the tactic of deflecting criticism of one’s own bad behavior by pointing to another actor’s bad behavior. When U.S. officials accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of meddling in the 2016 American elections, Putin noted that the United States has a long record of electoral interference abroad. After Washington blasted Turkey for its crackdown on the media, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan released a report detailing violations of press freedom in the United States, including the arrests of journalists during the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests.

At first glance, it may seem as if whataboutism is a weak way to respond to critiques. After all, it has long been considered a logical fallacy: two wrongs do not make a right. And the U.S. government has hardly been chastened. American officials routinely, continuously, and openly condemn foreign governments, friends and foes alike.

But in first-of-its-kind research, we have found strong evidence that whataboutism is, in fact, highly effective, both domestically and in the international arena. When the United States criticizes a country and that country issues a whataboutist retort, U.S. public support for penalizing it declines. Allied populations become less supportive of joining American-led condemnations or sanctions. These findings were true whether whataboutism was deployed by U.S. adversaries or allies. The tactic, in other words, is a valuable tool for any states looking to challenge American policies and negate Washington’s narratives.

Yet although whataboutism works, it is not all-powerful. Our research found that whataboutism was highly successful when foreign governments pointed to more recent U.S. actions which mimicked their own—in other words, when Washington was being hypocritical. But it was less effective when foreign governments were citing an abuse that happened long ago, and it was almost entirely ineffective when they cited an unrelated bad act. American policymakers, therefore, can successfully rebuke others so long as their criticisms cannot easily be flipped back.

In some instances, however, U.S. officials should accept that silence can be golden. Often, it may be better to simply allow another country’s actions to speak for themselves. And going forward, American leaders should try to keep Washington’s own domestic and international record as clean as possible. At the end of the day, doing so is the only sure way to avoid whataboutism.

CALL-OUT CULTURE Since the nineteenth century, states have responded to external admonishments by pointing the finger back at the accuser. After the British government denounced Russia’s state-sponsored pogroms against Jews in 1881–82, for example, a Russian newspaper closely affiliated with the tsarist regime upbraided London for its own crimes against humanity: “The concern of England, which has beggared the population of India and Egypt, which has poisoned the people of China with opium, which destroyed, like indigenous insects, the natives of Australia . . . the concern of a people who do such things is certainly astonishing.”

In the twentieth century, whataboutism became even more common. During World War I, the Allied powers accused Germany of engaging in war crimes; in response, the German government had 93 prominent German academics write an open letter condemning the allies for using expanding bullets and for killing civilian women and children. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union frequently deployed whataboutism in its struggle against Washington, regardless of the specific U.S. charge. Moscow harangued the United States, in particular, for its mistreatment of Black people. To this day, the phrase “and you lynch Black people” is commonly used in Russia and many eastern European countries to denote the use of whataboutism.

Today, whataboutism is an even more powerful tool of public diplomacy, thanks to the amplification allowed by the Internet. It is used by countries to condemn their adversaries, such as when Russia rebukes the United States for its human rights failings. It is used between states with mixed relationships. It is even used by states to denounce their allies. In May 2023, for instance, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin criticized Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, for being “incapable of solving the migration problems on which she was elected.” In response, Italian officials and media highlighted France’s failure to send more than a handful of police officers to help frontline states stop the influx.

Whataboutism by U.S. adversaries is just as effective as whataboutist retorts by close allies. Governments have long been concerned about whataboutist criticisms. In 1985, for example, the Reagan administration organized and funded a special conference in Washington, D.C., dedicated to refuting comparisons of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But analysts had yet to systematically study whether whataboutism works as a tool of international statecraft. To fill that gap, we conducted two surveys with more than 2,500 respondents a piece, both of which drew from representative samples of the American public. In each, we gave respondents hypothetical examples of the United States criticizing other countries for electoral interventions and the mistreatment of refugees. We asked to what extent they approved of Washington’s statements, and whether they supported imposing sanctions. We randomly divided respondents into two groups. Some randomly selected respondents received these questions without first posing a whataboutist retort. Other participants answered them again after reading hypothetical whataboutist replies from outside states.

Our finding was clear: whataboutism is highly effective in undercutting U.S. public support for foreign policy initiatives. It significantly reduced support for criticizing foreign countries. Before hearing a whataboutist critique, for example, 56 percent of respondents approved of Washington’s criticism of the foreign country’s actions. But after hearing it, approval fell to 38 percent. Whataboutism also drove down support for imposing sanctions. Before hearing a whataboutist retort, 59 percent of respondents supported sanctions in response to the foreign country’s actions. After, support fell to 49 percent. And whataboutism led Americans to treat the decisions Washington condemned as more morally acceptable. The percentage of respondents viewing that state’s actions as equally justifiable to the United States’ choices rose from 32 percent to 41 percent.

In subsequent research (with the political scientist Atsushi Tago), we tested whether whataboutism had the same effect on countries allied with the United States. To do so, we recruited a representative sample of residents in the United Kingdom and Japan and asked them to answer a similar survey. Once again, we found that whataboutism worked. After hearing whataboutist retorts aimed at the United States, British and Japanese respondents became significantly less likely to support joining in Washington’s critiques. Before hearing a whataboutist critique, for example, 59 percent of British respondents and 46 percent of Japanese respondents approved of joining U.S. criticisms. After hearing it, support fell to 37 percent and 29 percent, respectively. Respondents were also less supportive of their government joining any U.S. sanctions: support fell from 58 percent to 41 percent in the United Kingdom and from 34 percent to 27 percent in Japan. Finally, whataboutism increased respondents’ tendency to see the United States and the whataboutist actor as morally equivalent. The percent of British respondents viewing the actions as equally justifiable rose from 30 percent to 42 percent. Among Japanese respondents, it went from 27 percent to 34 percent.

Interestingly, the identity of the whataboutist actor did not matter to the American, British, or Japanese publics. Whataboutism by U.S. adversaries, such as Russia, proved just as effective as whataboutist retorts by close allies. Likewise, the U.S. government could not counter whataboutism by arguing that its misdeed had supposedly benevolent intentions, such as promoting democracy. As a result, American efforts to fight back against whataboutism, like at the 1985 conference, have probably failed. So has apologizing for past misdeeds. (According to our research, U.S. government apologies, at best, very modestly counteract whataboutism’s negative effects.) There is simply no rhetorical strategy that can eliminate the technique’s power.

GLASS HOUSES For Washington, these findings are, at a minimum, very inconvenient. U.S. officials see criticizing unfriendly foreign governments as a highly appealing, relatively low-cost way to damage such actors’ international standing and to appease various domestic constituencies. As a result, they liberally engage in public condemnations. But when foreign powers can easily deflect these critiques by referencing some U.S. action, such declarations are unlikely to land. In fact, they may ultimately do more harm than good; whataboutist reactions, after all, draw attention away from other governments’ actions and toward Washington’s own bad behavior.

Yet the effectiveness of whataboutism can vary. According to our research, it is heavily dependent on the nature and timing of the American act in question. Whataboutism that referred to recent, similar U.S. deeds had strong effects. But U.S. deeds of much older provenance—such as from the interwar period or the early Cold War era—had less influence. And whataboutism that referred to American acts that were not substantively related to the initial charge had very weak effects, and sometimes none at all. This was the case even when foreign powers raised very infamous and recent U.S. misdeeds, such as the torture of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere.

U.S. policymakers, therefore, should rethink their approach to whataboutist accusations. Rather than shooting from the hip, they must first carefully check their country’s own record and calibrate their messages to avoid accusations of hypocrisy. To do so, U.S. government departments could direct staffers to carefully work with colleagues that have institutional memory and relevant expertise before issuing statements. Officials could also request whataboutism impact assessments before making major speeches or unveiling new initiatives, just as they conduct economic and humanitarian ones.

To see why American policymakers should adopt such measures, consider the speech that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, delivered in March 2022 excoriating Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. During her remarks, Thomas-Greenfield rebuked Moscow for using cluster munitions. But this was a serious rhetorical mistake: the United States, like Russia, never signed the international convention banning these weapons, and according to a 2017 Defense Department memorandum, U.S. war plans still allow for their use under certain conditions. As a result, Washington had to issue a statement walking back the cluster-munitions criticism. It did so swiftly enough to avoid a Russian response.

U.S. officials must calibrate their messages to avoid accusations of hypocrisy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is broad enough and bad enough that it is possible for the United States to denounce it in ways that do not invite whataboutist charges. In some cases, however, it may not be possible for Washington to issue non-hypocritical reprimands. In these instances, it may be best for U.S. officials to say nothing at all. Doing so may prove difficult for American actors accustomed to speaking freely. But they should remember that, by staying silent, they avoid pronouncements that can potentially harm their wider foreign policy agendas.

Finally, going forward, the United States should try to avoid policy choices that do not align with stated American values and principles. Washington, for example, should work to avoid mistreating detainees. It should reject economic sanctions that cause significant and gratuitous harm to civilians. And in most cases, it should not launch invasions or otherwise try to topple foreign governments without UN Security Council approval.

Avoiding such decisions is far easier said than done. The United States cannot simply shake off deeply entrenched injustices. Reasonable people can disagree about whether certain decisions are morally acceptable. And breaking normative rules can help Washington achieve goals that might otherwise prove elusive, which makes doing so attractive to officials. But the shortsighted use of U.S. power can backfire for years. The CIA, for example, aided coups in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 that swiftly eliminated perceived communist threats and secured Western interests in these countries. The 2003 invasion of Iraq quickly deposed an autocrat who hated the United States. But each of these actions severely violated the bedrock international norm of state sovereignty, and they have become potent examples of Washington’s double standards. To this day, these cases are trotted out by foreign powers when the United States decides to inveigh against them.

Foreign governments can and do utilize the United States’ record against Washington. Their critiques erode domestic and international support for U.S. actions. Consequently, the United States would be wise to avoid making unethical decisions in pursuit of narrow, short-term objectives. Doing so is the only way to spare future U.S. officials from having many uncomfortable meetings with the ghosts of America’s past.

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