It is not unusual for the democratic clamor to produce double standards — especially when aspirations and business clash. Examples abound. Between May and September 2022, the U.S. State Department approved arms sales worth just over U.S. $3.4 billion to the United Arab Emirates, $2.91 billion's worth to Egypt, just over $3 billion to Saudi Arabia, $450 million to Pakistan and $397 million to Kuwait. Nobody would classify these states as democracies. Yet the administration did not hesitate to use democracy as a pretext to exclude certain states from the June 2022 Summit of the Americas. In May, it made no reference to regime types when it organized a summit of 10 ASEAN member states. ASEAN includes four authoritarian governments, five problematic democracies and a Sultanate or monarchy. Washington also dispensed with grading regimes for its recent U.S.-Pacific Islands Summit.