Biden botches summit execution
President Joe Biden is on the right path regarding the rivalry between democratic capitalism and authoritarianism being the orienting focus for international affairs and American diplomacy. And his Summit for Democracy had the right sentiment behind it.
However, Biden is botching the execution on the insight.
In 1996, political scientist Samuel Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations. In it, he posited that the central story in international relations would be conflicts and competition between different civilizations — characterized by ethnicity, religion and geography — in a multipolar world.
In 2006, foreign policy writer Robert Kagan published The Return of History. In it, he posited that the central story in international relations would be conflicts and competition between democracies and authoritarian regimes.
No theoretical paradigm will account for all the order and disorder in international relations. However, after the 9/11 terrorist attack, Huntington’s paradigm seemed to predict much of the future. Two decades later, Kagan’s paradigm seems to better describe the state of the world and the challenges of the immediate and intermediate future.
The autocrats of the world view the values of democratic capitalism — democratic governance, rule of law, protection of fundamental liberties, market economies — as a threat to their legitimacy and hold on power. Led by China and Russia, they seek to prevent these values from becoming an international norm.
Right now, democratic capitalism is losing to authoritarianism across the globe. Biden is right to regard this as the chief challenge for American foreign policy. And to see the first step as fostering a sense of common interest and common purpose among the world’s democracies.
However, an American convened Summit for Democracy wasn’t the best way to begin. This smacks of the United States still trying to tell other countries what to do.
The United States is no longer a large enough presence in the world — militarily, diplomatically or economically — to assert such global leadership unilaterally. Whether the United States wants to recognize it or not, the world is now multipolar. And much of the world, including among the democracies, now question the competence and reliability of American leadership.
The sponsorship of the fostering of a sense of common interest and purpose among the world’s democracies needed to be broader, to include the highly successful European and Indo-Pacific democracies. For the United States to be a convenor, not the convenor.
And then Biden used his international audience to score domestic political points.
Biden’s opening speech to the summit described what he believes to be his domestic accomplishments as triumphs for democracy. Specifically cited were his COVID relief bill, the recently enacted infrastructure bill and his pending social welfare expansion bill.
The opponents of these measures in Congress aren’t being anti-democratic. They reached a different conclusion about their soundness as policy. Their passage isn’t a triumph of democracy. Their defeat wouldn’t be a step toward authoritarianism.
These domestic measures had no place in a speech seeking to rally international democracies to a common purpose. And their inclusion was a serious and significant tactical misstep.
Biden’s first task is to rally his own country around viewing the rivalry with authoritarianism as the orienting focus for American diplomacy. To gain traction and be sustainable, this has to be a bipartisan endeavor. To put it mildly, implying to an international audience that opposition to Biden’s domestic policies is anti-democratic isn’t the way to accomplish that.
Similarly, Biden used both his opening and closing speeches to the summit to make a pitch for a couple of bills he supports increasing federal standards for elections. Again, this was wholly inapposite. Opposing increased federal standards for elections isn’t per se antidemocratic. There are principled reasons, rooted in democratic governance, for believing, as did the founders, that election rules should be set by the states.
Creating a sense of common interest and purpose among the world’s democracies requires deft leadership, both internationally and domestically. Biden has the right insight. There’s considerable reason to doubt that he has the chops.