DC Edit | Biden’s summit a ‘roll call’ for the new world order?

If last week’s two-day virtual Democracy Summit hosted by US president Joe Biden was meant to rally the world’s “democracies” against “authoritarian” China and Russia, then the jury is out about its success.

Within the US too, its President’s initiative has been up for fairly widespread criticism after the January 6 Capitol riots in a country where millions still continue to disbelieve the results of the presidential election of 2020 in which then incumbent president Donald Trump was defeated. This flows from deep political polarisation, and extreme social fissures on account of race and class divisions.
Besides, the present world is far removed from the time when eight decades ago a communist power had been heralded as a challenger to the US, the key beneficiary of the Second World War which came to be regarded as the leader of the “free world”. But that world, really speaking, was confined to Western Europe and North America. Therefore the rallying game against USSR was easier. De-colonisation was still a process.

Not so today. Much of the world today is quasi-democratic and politically authoritarian in its imprimatur even if routine, dull, predictable elections are held as a loose indictor of democracy with all indicators — such as flourishing civil society institutions and a free media and judiciary — being wholly or nearly absent.

In these times, even Freedom House, a non-profit government-funded US group which was widely regarded — some thought self-servingly — as the last word in the measurement of a democracy, has noted the slippage in America’s democratic stature by lowering it by several points on its democracy index. This is the story of the strongest democracy. India, a sort of beacon of democracy for decades despite its developing status and grave shortcomings on the social and economic side, is now only regarded as “part free” instead of earlier being “free”. This is the story of the world’s largest democracy.

In the event, it could not have been difficult for the ambassadors of China and Russia in Washington to pen a joint essay for the publication National Interest in which they roundly criticised the US leadership for trying to divide the world on ideology and for being imbued with the Cold War mentality. China, of course, also counts itself as a democracy, although of a different type. This “people’s democracy” is a one-party state and has no elections. But through centralising power it has raised millions out of poverty in a relatively short time. This is well advertised among poorer nations whose own societal structures yield authoritarian dictatorships rather than even superficial democracies more easily.

In spite of this, the State Department invitation list of some 110 democracies included countries like Pakistan, the Philippines, and Bolsanaro’s Brazil but not Hungary, authoritarian but a EU member, or Turkey, authoritarian but a Nato member. Not wishing to displease China, Pakistan declined the invitation. Even if this was anticipated, this military-mullah supremacist had to be called as inviting India but excluding Pakistan does not fit into Washington’s long-term geo-political and strategic interests. It is also noteworthy that even a country such as South Korea, a strong US ally but in China’s geographical periphery, preferred to represent itself at the summit at a low level.

India attended, naturally. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of republican kingdoms in its ancient past and drew the inference that Indians had respect for the rule of law and pluralistic ethos was “ingrained” in them. He sought to underline that India practised “inclusive” development. If there is a “for or against” roll-call, we would be on the US side rather than the Chinese, though we will strive for strategic autonomy. But can such a roll-call really be taken at the present juncture when the world is still to settle down to a new order and a new normal?