The Summit for Democracy is a diplomatic initiative of the Biden administration which seeks to bring government, civil society, and private sector leaders together from all corners of the democratic world. The overall goal of the summit – which will be held virtually on December 9th and 10th – is to renew and strengthen global democracy. More specifically, this entails three objectives: 1) defending against authoritarianism; 2) fighting corruption; and 3) promoting respect for human rights.
Though the State Department backgrounder notes that the United States will be present to “listen, learn, and engage with a diverse range of actors whose support and commitment is critical for global democratic renewal,” there are, as always, geopolitical considerations underpinning the summit, much of which stem from the Biden administration’s long-held desire to shore up solidarity within the democratic world against creeping authoritarianism. Indeed, the idea of a democracy summit was first raised by Biden on the campaign trail as a way to mend relationships with conventional US allies following the trade- and security-related upheavals of the Trump administration.
The overriding risk of the summit as-is is immediately apparent: an event meant to convey a position of strength and confidence within the democratic world would instead, through its disorganization and lack of any tangible policy outcomes, convey further dysfunction and disunity. Such a risk is undoubtedly compounded by the online format of the summit, which invites technical, participatory, and/or communicative issues during the summit proceedings.
Authoritarian states will be waiting on the sidelines to seize on any misstep. Before the summit even opens its virtual doors, Chinese officials have branded the exercise “a joke,” and have wasted no time in going after the failures of “US-style democracy” and extolling the democratic virtues of the PRC’s homegrown model.
Who’s in, who’s out?
The guest list represents another element of reputational hazard: Who gets the nod as an official “democracy”? It’s up to the Biden administration to make the final call and, unsurprisingly, the list includes democracies with various human rights transgressions issues looming over them; for example, the Philippines, India, Israel, Pakistan, Brazil, and Poland. In all, going by Freedom House’s Democracy Index, 77 of the invitees are “free” or fully democratic; 31 are “partly free” and three are “not free” (Iraq, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo).
There’s also the United States to consider. The ultimate arbiter of global democracy itself has slipped down the rankings, becoming a “flawed democracy” in 2016 according to the Economist (this year it is the 25th healthiest democracy in the world going by the same metric).
A far more divisive issue however are the countries that didn’t receive an invite to the summit. These include the expected snubs of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, along with the borderline candidates of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Sri Lanka, the latter of which scores much higher than invitee Pakistan on most institutional rankings. One surprising exclusion from a geopolitical angle is NATO ally Turkey, which continues to preside over a wide-ranging domestic crackdown on opposition media and politicians.
What will success look like?
Many pundits have pointed out that the Summit for Democracy is generally a risky proposition, and it’s not hard to see why. The pitfalls are numerous: further debasing democracy via a high-profile failure, charges of hypocrisy for the invitees, reducing the non-invitees to a one-dimensional bloc and/or fostering greater solidarity among them (see the unprecedented China-Russia editorial in the National Interest). Then what would success look like? Or to put it more bluntly: What’s the actual point of the Summit for Democracy?
Broadly, the optics of democratic solidarity are a net benefit so long as they aren’t overshadowed by some high-profile failure. So too is Taiwan’s participation in the summit, as it carves out some diplomatic space for the democratic self-governed island while other conventional routes via the UN, WHO, IOC, etc., remain blocked. It also serves to signal Washington’s ongoing commitment to Taiwan in a way that doesn’t risk immediate escalation from Beijing. But ultimately, success will be a matter of actual actionable cooperation between the attendees, which even in the best-case scenario will unfold via a process of simple knowledge-sharing; in other words, the most potentially beneficial grassroots cooperation, whether concerning disinformation, election security, gender rights, cybersecurity, etc., is unlikely to show up in any grand communique and rather will be seeded on the sidelines, bearing fruit years in the future.
Thus, the very nature of the event will make it difficult to portray as a resounding success. Here we can expect a few high-profile announcements peppered in to give the impression of forward momentum (perhaps some link-up with the Build Back Better World/EU Global Gateway), along with an attempt at institutionalizing the Summit for Democracy to transform it into a yearly rather than one-off gathering.
Courtesy: Geo-Pollical Monitor
