Biden’s summit ‘divides world’
PAKISTAN, the US State Department warns, has more than a dozen serious human rights problems, from “extrajudicial killings” to “forced disappearance by the government or its agents” to “political prisoners” to “severe restrictions of religious freedom” to “trafficking in persons”.
But tomorrow, Pakistan will join about 110 other countries at a two-day “Summit for Democracy” convened by President Joe Biden, with the goal of rallying the nations of the world against the forces of authoritarianism.
In creating an invitation list that seems to divide the world into good guys and bad guys, despite a strong denial by the White House of any such intent, the administration has prompted tensions and anger from various countries, while highlighting that the globe is hardly binary. Some of the invitees have undisputed democratic credentials, and some of those omitted are clearly authoritarian, but many countries fall into a murky area.
By the State Department’s own account, the governments of both Pakistan and the Philippines, another invitee, are responsible for “unlawful or arbitrary killing”. Not making the cut are Hungary, a member of the EU, and Turkey, a Nato ally, both of which have seen their democratic safeguards crumble in recent years.
The White House has been less than clear about how it made such calls for the event, which is being overseen by Shanthi Kalathil, co-ordinator for democracy and human rights at the National Security Council.
Asked about the criteria, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week: “Inclusion or an invitation is not a stamp of approval on their approach to democracy – nor is exclusion a stamp of the opposite of that, of disapproval”.
Some of the excluded countries aren’t buying that, however. Leaders of Hungary, for one, complain that they are being penalised for their closeness to former president Donald Trump.
Last week, Hungary, as the only EU member left out, tried to block EU official Ursula von der Leyen from speaking on behalf of the bloc at the summit. Von der Leyen is speaking regardless, but the EU’s formal statement at the event, which requires buy-in from all of its members, will be pared back.
The Hungarian Embassy in Washington said the Biden administration’s decision was “disrespectful”.
“Hungarian-American relations were at their peak during the Trump presidency, and it is clear from the list of the invited countries that the summit will be a domestic political event,” the embassy said. “Therefore countries that were on friendly terms with the previous administration were not invited.”
A senior Biden administration official rejected that claim. Psaki said the White House was not trying to pass judgement or proclaim superiority.
“You’re always trying to make yourself better, to lead better, to push other countries to be better, and this is an opportunity to do exactly that,” Psaki said. “I understand, of course, the interest in the invite list, but it’s not meant to be, again, a stamp of approval or disapproval – it’s just meant to have a diverse range of voices and faces and representatives at the discussion.”
But a lot of countries see Biden, like a global Santa Claus, declaring that specific countries are naughty or nice, and will be treated accordingly.
And the patterns can be hard to discern. Trump did speak flatteringly of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has emerged as something of a model for some of those in the “Make American Great Again”movement. But Trump also spoke positively about Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte, both of whom have been invited to the summit – and of Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have not.
“I don’t think of this as the administration picking winners and losers as much as the administration trying to rally like-minded partners to fight the threat of authoritarianism, and also maybe trying to rally countries that are not doing well to do better,” said Michael J Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, a non-partisan pro-democracy organisation.
It may have been difficult to exclude Pakistan, for example, while inviting its arch-adversary, India, without creating a major diplomatic rift. And the administration wants Pakistan’s co-operation in dealing with the Taliban since the US pulled out of Afghanistan.
The three overarching themes of the summit are defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. Attendees are asked to make meaningful commitments to furthering democracy in their countries, with a follow-up summit planned for next year.
This year’s summit will be held virtually because of Covid-19. The White House is also inviting activist and business groups, and officials have been engaging NGOs for six months, the senior administration official said.
While the White House is in charge of organising the summit and navigating the various diplomatic land mines, it is leaning on the State Department to incorporate the civil society leaders.
The summit has its origins in Biden’s rebuke of his predecessor during the presidential campaign. As a candidate in 2020, Biden promised, if elected, to “take immediate steps to renew US democracy and alliances, protect the United States’s economic future, and once more have America lead the world”.
Two other omissions from the summit are China and Russia. In a November op-ed in The National Interest, the ambassadors to the US from both countries excoriated the Biden administration, accusing it of a “ColdWar mentality” and warning that the summit “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines.’”
Derek Mitchell, a former US ambassador to Myanmar and the president of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, said: “It shows how important it is for countries to appropriate that term ‘democracy’ to be seen as democratic”.
The US itself is not a perfect example of a well-oiled democracy. Freedom House’s 2021 Freedom in the World report – which scores countries on a scale of 0 to 100 – gave the US a score of 83, a marked decline from its score of 94 a decade ago. The deadly January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, too, undermined US democracy in the eyes of many allies.