From American-funded drag shows in Ecuador, LGBT and Black Lives Matters flags flown at U.S. consulates and embassies, to the State Department’s recent request for $76 million to advance its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives abroad, the Biden administration has been clear: It wants to impose the Left’s "woke" agenda on world politics.

That’s unfortunate, if not misguided. Domestic social policy has no place in a country’s foreign policy any more than its foreign policy belongs in its domestic social affairs. What’s more, the administration’s approach is hampering diplomacy overseas and eroding U.S. national security. It has also created an opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to portray itself more wittingly as a moral global actor and expand its influence on the world stage.

The administration’s efforts are couched in the language of democracy and human rights. “A continuation of our national journey toward justice, opportunity, and equality,” reads the White House’s National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality. “LGBTQ rights are human rights … a core part of our foreign policy,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a March White House briefing. A whiff of perverse Wilsonianism colors the endeavor, compounded by the administration’s erroneous belief in the righteousness of its ways.

Yet President Joe Biden and his team ought to revisit their priors. If America is to counter China in the Indo-Pacific and hamstring its stated objective of a new world order , it will need to cultivate stronger diplomatic relations with countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin American — regions where Beijing has concentrated the better part of its anti-Western efforts.

There, most countries have little interest in American prodding on issues such as being transgender, late-term abortion, or other "woke" proclivities. Cut from a more conservative, oftentimes religious, cloth, most countries in these regions shun such an expanded version of “democracy” and American attempts at its dissemination.

In Ghana, for example, where more than 70% of the population identifies as Christian and where Hinduism is on the rise, Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent remarks on LGBT rights were met with resistance by the country’s leadership. “What is democracy? That somebody else would have to dictate to me as to what is good and what is bad?” Ghanian Parliament Speaker Alban Bagbin said . Still, Ghana’s government revised its proposed anti-LGBT legislation, lest it tease the prospect of U.S. sanctions .

If America hopes to compete with China in Africa, there are strategic yet imperfectly traditionalist societies in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Angola, Sudan, and Ethiopia that it cannot afford to alienate. And if it hopes for a Southeast Asia strategy, ties with countries such as the Philippines, Cambodia, and Indonesia are essential. Last year, the Biden administration was forced to cancel a trip to Indonesia by its special envoy for LGBT rights after protestations from the country’s Islamic leaders. Indonesia is the United States’s largest defense partner in terms of annual military exercises, and a key ally in global counterterrorism operations.

The risk of alienating America’s allies is compounded by the very real danger that they might gravitate toward its adversaries. Waiting in the wings, no doubt, is China, which aspires to assume the moral and political center of an ostensible new world order. At home, morality campaigns have become a central feature of Xi Jinping’s administration. Chinese citizens are called upon to be honest, polite, “ civilized ,” and to “defend China’s honor” while abroad. Chinese art must “be about human decency” and university education geared toward “ virtue .”

That these campaigns ultimately intend to strengthen the CCP’s grip on all aspects of Chinese society is of secondary concern. For Beijing’s would-be allies, they give the impression of a China that is capable and upstanding. One for which duty, honor, and country are paramount — at minimum one in which transgender activists do not cavort, topless , on government property and where the flag still garners respect.

This propagandized image has allowed Beijing to more aggressively and successfully push its authoritarian system onto the world stage. CCP initiatives such as the Community of Common Destiny and the Global Civilization Initiative bind acceding nations to the party’s view of history and its intentions for a new order rooted in CCP norms. With this, too, comes the buildup of new global economic and security structures designed to supplant their U.S.-led Western counterparts.

Earlier this month, Honduras became the latest country to join the Global Civilization Initiative. Emphasized in the U.S. State Department’s Honduras strategy is the need to “integrate diversity, equity, inclusion principles across all facets” of its mission. The U.S. Agency for International Development has led efforts to sensitize Honduran youth to LGBT rights. While diplomatic ties are, no doubt, not made or broken over such issues, their promotion in a predominantly Christian country likely does not help.

The fact is that many countries share America’s concerns about Chinese expansionism. The U.S.-led global system that Beijing now wants to usurp has brought prosperity and security to many. So it is not the time for America to isolate allies in the name of "wokeism." Nor should the U.S. prioritize vacuous grandstanding on social policy or a new cultural imperialism. The Left’s woke agenda should not be a core part of U.S. foreign policy — not now, not ever. Our enemies are watching.

Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu, Ph.D. (@awgadzala) is the founder of Magpie Advisory, a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a contributing editor with the New York Sun.