Democracies of the World, Unite?
An old idea gets new life
One of the Biden administration’s early international initiatives may be a world gathering to celebrate, promote, and defend democracy. In a Foreign Affairs essay published earlier this year, Biden promised that he would convene a Summit of Democracies in his first year of office. It appears that the incoming administration remains interested in the idea. Nahal Toosi reported this week in Politico that the president-elect’s advisers still view that pledge as relevant guidance.
It’s not hard to see the attraction. A U.S.-led global democracy summit would allow the Biden administration to simultaneously celebrate the end of the Trump administration and demonstrate a return to multilateralism and the rebirth of a “values-based foreign policy.” And given its anti-authoritarian valence, any such gathering would appeal to a range of foreign policy constituencies, from human rights activists to China hawks.
A summit could therefore serve as an effective arrival party for the Biden administration on the global stage. But Biden’s essay and the writings of influential progressive think tanks suggest that a summit might be just the first step toward something more enduring. Veteran academic and diplomat Michael McFaul makes this point:
That’s where matters become more complicated. What would the “deliverable” be? As McFaul suggests, a new addition to the world’s multilateral architecture would be one obvious goal. And the idea of institutionalizing a democratic club is hardly new. Versions of the project have been circulating for years in academic and policy circles. Leading academics Anne-Marie Slaughter and John Ikenberry endorsed one variation as a means of revitalizing formal international institutions. In 2007, the late senator John McCain called for a “League of Democracies.” Two years ago, Kelly Magsamen and others at the Center for American Progress published a report citing this earlier work and advocating more institutionalized cooperation between democracies.
There are some early indications that the idea has appeal beyond the United States. The Financial Times reported this week on a draft paper circulating within the European Union. “The document backs president-elect Joe Biden’s idea for a summit of democracies, and says that the new transatlantic agenda should be ‘the linchpin of a new global alliance of like-minded partners.’”
But what exactly would a new democracy-focused multilateral instrument aim to achieve? A helpful step in assessing the initiative’s potential value is distinguishing between several distinct (although potentially overlapping) functions:
A mechanism to promote democracy: This might be the least controversial (and least ambitious) version of the idea. There already exists a Community of Democracies (born in 2000, during the Clinton administration) to promote democratic values around the world. Other multilateral organizations operate in this space as well, including the United Nations’ Election Assistance Division and the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institution and Human Rights. A new strategy paper produced for NATO members suggests that the alliance might get into the game as well. Its authors propose a “Centre of Excellence for Democratic Resilience” that would help democracies “resist interference from hostile external actors in the functioning of their democratic institutions and processes.” Given all this activity, it is not obvious what a new democratic grouping would accomplish that existing organizations and institutions do not.
A “concert” of democratic countries: More ambitious would be a bid to create a mechanism for deeper cooperation on multiple issues between the world’s democratic countries (or some subset of them). Michael Fuchs of the Center for American Progress appears to view the project at least partially in this light:
[T]he United States should convene a group comprised of the G-7 countries plus Australia and South Korea—the latter two countries being natural partners since they are U.S. treaty allies aligned with the United States and G-7 countries on many central issues, and their large economies make them important regional and global players. Meanwhile, representatives from institutions such as the European Union and NATO should participate as observers. This expanded G-7 model would augment the robust coordination of the world’s most prosperous democracies.
This notion bears some similarity to the “D-10” that British prime minister Boris Johnson proposed earlier this year. Johnson touted the grouping primarily as a means of helping democratic states secure independence from Chinese technology, but there’s no reason that it couldn’t also address a range of other international issues, from climate change to humanitarian intervention.
One immediate challenge for this “concert” vision would be policing the size of the club. The larger the grouping the less likely it will serve as a focal point for substantive engagement. Freedom House categorizes more than 80 countries as “free.” Would all these democracies get an invite? Or would membership be limited to just the most powerful democracies?
A means to circumvent blocked international institutions: The enduring appeal of a new democratic club owes a lot to the perceived difficulty of achieving international policy goals when key interlocutors do not share basic values. The more fractious reality on the UN Security Council, in particular, has reactivated concerns about whether that body is fit for the purpose. This worry is as old as the United Nations itself, but attention to the problem has increased as animosity between the Western powers and China and Russia has intensified and as those countries have deployed the veto with more regularity. A democratic club could, in theory, provide an alternative means for coordination and source of legitimacy for international security initiatives that founder at the UN.
There is ample precedent for regional organizations serving this alternative legitimation function. The Organization of American States offered key multilateral support to the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, and NATO’s imprimatur helped bolster the case for Western intervention in Kosovo (1999) and Libya (2011). There is less precedent for using global bodies to circumvent a blocked Security Council. (The most notable was the “Uniting for Peace” initiative designed during the Korean War, which elevated the UN General Assembly as a means of skirting the Soviet veto).
Toward a new military alliance: An even more ambitious version of formalized democratic cooperation would be as a vehicle for military cooperation between leading democratic countries. The recent activity by “Quad” countries—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—suggests that there is potentially fertile ground for increased military cooperation between major democracies in Asia at least. But why not be even more ambitious? In 2006, Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier argued for turning NATO into a global alliance:
Other democratic countries share NATO’s values and many common interests-including Australia, Brazil, Japan, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and South Korea-and all of them can greatly contribute to NATO’s efforts by providing additional military forces or logistical support to respond to global threats and needs.
The widely shared perception of China as a global threat may give that idea new appeal, and the new NATO report emphasizes the importance of the alliance forging partnerships outside of Europe. The alliance’s secretary general echoed that call:
The frothy post-Trump environment may propel the idea of democratic multilateralism for a few months, but a range of practical and political objections will undoubtedly appear. In 2008, during the last wave of enthusiasm for democratic multilateralism, the scholar Charles Kupchan concluded that any new league or concert of democracies would be more trouble than it was worth. The world has changed significantly in the dozen years since Kupchan wrote, but his analysis remains a useful guide to key objections. Some of his most salient criticisms included the following:
The world’s leading democracies already work closely on multiple fronts and don’t require a new structure to do so.
Leading democracies have plenty of differences and will not be able to cooperate effectively on many issues.
If it is effective, a democratic club might cut off channels of communication with authoritarian states and could thereby encourage those countries to band together even more closely.
Countries outside the democratic club will not view its decisions as legitimate, and so the idea of using the club to circumvent blockages in existing institutions is doomed to fail.
If the Biden administration does run with the notion of institutionalizing cooperation among democratic countries, these arguments will get a fresh and more urgent airing.