Biden looks to bring India into a new organisation — the Democratic 10 (D-10)

Edward Luce in the FT today discusses a much-trailed Biden plan to embrace ‘global democracy’ promotion. The plan will place democracy at the center of the incoming president’s foreign policy, a break from Obama’s more realist approach to international relations and closer to the George W Bush era. Luce suggests this is partly to take on China in the realm of ideas, China’s economic success — down to a blend of state capitalism and authoritarian government — has become an alternative ideological model in a post-post-cold war world. The Biden administration wants to widen efforts to contain China beyond trade concerns to broader ideological ones. With Trump’s support for strongmen, many critics of America have argued it no longer leads the ‘free world’. Biden hopes to reset America and in the process reconstruct a values based foreign policy.

The problem, Luce argues, is that Biden administration may include India within a new club of 10 democracies. The so-called D-10, would serve US geopolitical interests but “[f]rom the start, Mr Biden would thus be accused of having double standards”. India has become an ‘illiberal democracy’, as the Modi government constructs an exclusivist brand of Hindu nationalism that “downgrades the country’s Muslim minority to second-class status”. Leaving India out of the club would weaken US efforts to create a counterbalance to China. Biden cannot afford to criticise Modi’s lurch to chauvinism at a time where it is being developed as a counterweight to its more powerful neighbour.

Luce rightly argues a bigger problem for the President-elect beyond concerns about hypocrisy. American democracy remains shaken by the recent elections and the past four years. Biden is better off resolving the many democratic challenges closer to home; the farce of the electoral college, legislative gridlock, the rise of populism and a media willing to spread false or partial news.

Democracy promotion failed George W Bush, the Muslim World is still recovering from the last time an administration sought to spread Kantian virtues. It is likely Biden’s efforts will also fail as it finds itself tripping over the many contradictions that is US foreign policy. The post Coronavirus world may well see a period of deglobalisation and democratic decline.