WASHINGTON – Among President Biden’s most specific foreign policy promises was a promise to convene a global democracy summit during his first year in office. The meeting would aim to take a public stand against the authoritarian and populist tides that rose during the presidency of Donald J. Trump and, as Biden and his advisers see, threaten to flood Western political values.
In the weeks following Biden’s election, however, America’s own democracy was impressive. This month, a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the sacred peaceful transfer of power. Next week, the Senate will begin its second Trump presidential impeachment trial in a year. Republicans in Congress are about to impose a legislative stalemate, obstructing every move by Biden.
The sense of a dysfunctional, if not totally bankrupt, democratic system has foreign rivals shouting – and suggesting that the United States should not lecture other nations.
“America no longer sets the course and therefore has lost all right to define it,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, after the Capitol rebellion. “And even more so, to impose it on others.”
Americans can “be proud of their democracy and freedom,” Hua Chunying, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters recently. But after witnessing so much political chaos, she added, “deep down, they can hope to live a life like the Chinese.”
Government officials say that neither opportunistic comments from foreign rivals nor recent expressions of bona fide skepticism from foreign policy analysts at home have tempered the plan Biden promised as a candidate: calling for a “summit for democracy”, where leaders with similar ideas they could discuss ways to strengthen their own systems internally and protect them from threats such as corruption, electoral security, misinformation and the authoritarian model that has taken over China and Russia and has infiltrated nations like Turkey and Brazil.
Writing in Foreign Affairs last spring, Biden said the event was “to renew the common spirit and purpose of the nations of the free world. It will bring together the democracies of the world to strengthen our democratic institutions, to honestly confront the nations that are falling back and to forge a common agenda ”.
A person familiar with the summit’s planning, which has been going on since before the election, said that Biden was not intimidated by recent political conflicts in the United States and would likely host a meeting with other heads of state, although details such as the time and location have not been determined. Others familiar with the process said they expected an event near the end of the year. A White House official did not respond to a request for comment.
In Washington, however, a debate over the idea broke out between former US government officials and academics. It is strictly about plans for the summit, but it involves greater concerns about the country’s role as a global leader in the post-Trump era.
The immediate question is whether the political crisis is a reason to postpone the plan for the summit and to reevaluate the pressure to promote the democratic model worldwide, as some argue.
“The United States has lost credibility; there is no doubt about it, ”said James Goldgeier, professor of international relations at American University and a former adviser to the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, he argued that Biden should instead hold a summit on democracy at home – one that focuses on “injustice and inequality” in the United States, including issues such as voting rights and disinformation.
“If you have a total stalemate on Capitol Hill and you don’t have the ability to do things to improve people’s lives, you won’t be commanding much moral authority,” added Goldgeier.
“How can the United States spread democracy or set an example for others if it barely has a functioning democracy at home?” Emma Ashford, senior researcher at the Atlantic Council, wrote in Foreign Policy this month. “Washington’s foreign policy elites remain committed to preserving a three-decade-old foreign policy aimed at reshaping the world in the image of America. They are very indifferent about what this image has become in 2020 ”.
Biden government officials say this criticism creates a false choice between restoring the country’s strength at home and its position abroad.
During public statements in August, Jake Sullivan, who is now Biden’s national security adviser, spoke of “the intersection of domestic and foreign policy, not only as an abstract notion, but as the core of our grand strategy” .
“Any effective strategy for American engagement in the world must start with these deep investments in the strength of our own democracy and democratic institutions,” said Sullivan, “and ongoing on issues such as dealing with systemic racism.”
With this work in progress, supporters of a summit say it would be an important time for the world after four years in which Trump praised leaders like Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and o Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, validating his arguments that stability and firm central control are more important than civil society and popular will.
“I feel strongly that the events of the past few weeks – and years – make it necessary” to hold a summit, said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey and a former senior State Department official for human rights and democracy in the Obama administration.
He argued that the Capitol revolt and Trump’s broader effort to reverse election results demonstrated the resilience of America’s central institutions. “No one should look at these events and suggest that they undermine the strength of our example,” he said.
Mr. Malinowski and other proponents of the summit admit that it has some practical complications, especially among those who, exactly, would be invited to participate.
In his essay on Foreign Relations, Biden said his summit could follow President Barack Obama’s four nuclear security summits, in which world leaders met to share ideas and make specific promises about nuclear weapons reduction and security.
Mr. Biden added that his event will feature civil society organizations “who are at the forefront in defense of democracy” and will present “a call to action” for technology and social media companies that become vehicles of undemocratic disinformation.
However, countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary, all NATO allies, are apparently democracies, but increasingly defined by authoritarian practices. Critics ask whether they should be invited and persuaded to adopt reforms or excluded to deny them the status and stature of the democratic label.
One approach would be to create a D-10 group of democracies, a concept developed by the State Department during the administration of George W. Bush, in which the United States would be united by Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the European Union.
Whatever form it takes, supporters of this idea say it would be a distant echo of Bush’s grand “freedom agenda”, his call to transform the autocracies of the Middle East into democracies that many now see as an example of states’ arrogance. United.
“This must be done with total humility and serious honesty about our shortcomings and the fact that we are not exporting an American model,” said Thomas Carothers, senior vice president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Several supporters of the summit for democracy agree that political chaos requires a deeply humble approach.
“I don’t think what he’s talking about is preaching to the world about democracy,” said Gayle Smith, a former senior director for development and democracy at the National Security Council in the Obama administration.
“President Biden understands very well and we saw, of course, that democracy is not something you declare, ‘democracy’, and we’re done,” added Ms. Smith, who is now the president and chief executive of Uma campaign, which defends globally against poverty and disease. “It is an ongoing process.”