US President Joe Biden’s ‘democracy summit’ has been severely criticised on multiple accounts. Some saw it as a ‘talkfest’ that will not promote democracy; others questioned the democratic credentials of those invited to the summit, suggesting hypocrisy. Not surprisingly, China was less than pleased about the summit to which it was pointedly not invited.
Some of the criticisms are valid, especially about the democratic credentials of many American allies and partners who were invited to the summit. Gone are the optimistic days of the immediate post-Cold War period, when liberal democracies seemed on the march not only in Eastern Europe but also in parts of the post-colonial world. Many US allies consolidated their own democracies at this time, including countries in Asia, like Taiwan and South Korea. Two decades later, there is a sense of democratic backsliding, clearly visible even beyond the conclusions of the experts who track the subject.
But this, as well as many other criticisms, simply miss the point. For the United States of America, ‘democracy’ as an ideological value as well as the ‘democracy versus autocracy’ formulation is both hypocritical but also necessary and unavoidable in the bipolar competition with China.
Also Read: What gives Indian democracy its long life? The choices elites make
The hypocrisy of ideology
The hypocrisy part first. Ideological claims, of course, always rest on thin ice. Thus, the easiest charge one can make of any ideological claim is that of hypocrisy. An ideological commitment and loyalty require walking the straight and narrow path that usually involves some self-sacrifice. This is fine for rare individuals — such as Christians who were fed to wild animals in the Colosseum in ancient Rome for refusing to forsake their religion or their many modern equivalents.
Of course, such ideologically inspired self-sacrifice is something most individuals do not have the discipline to follow. More pertinently, such sacrifice is antithetical to the central purpose of states in the international system. States have a corporate purpose of survival and prosperity under every circumstance. States, all states, will think nothing of sacrificing ideological principles when these come into conflict with material interests. In other words, ideology is a necessarily hypocritical undertaking in international politics.
There is little doubt therefore that claims of American hypocrisy are well-founded. Washington has frequently supported various autocratic regimes including Maoist China. Of course, the revolutionary Marxist-Maoist China was itself in bed with the feudal, Islamist, military regime in Pakistan.
And the Soviet Union during the Cold War was no better, repeatedly changing its international partners while finding new and innovative, if tortured, ideological justifications for these changes. This often included supporting regimes that were not only not socialist but were actively persecuting communists at home.
Lest we think that such hypocrisy was a vice confined to the rich and powerful and the developing countries were any better, we need to look no further than Indian policy to find plenty of examples of such behaviour, from the annexation of Goa and Sikkim to the overwrought pretence about international equity behind which India hid its security-driven desire to reject the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and maintain a nuclear weapons option. Today, the post-colonial world which swears by the sanctity of territorial sovereignty has little to say about the blatant violation of that principle in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Simply put, ideological faithfulness is not just rare but is actually a mythical creature in international politics. American behaviour has been no worse, even if no better, than that of others.
But for many American analysts, the focus on democracy also brings back what they consider the excesses of American ‘liberal hegemony’ during unipolarity. They blame the pursuit of democratic expansion for the ‘liberal wars’ of this period. They blame such excesses for leading to the Iraq war, almost universally considered the apex of American strategic mistakes; a war that even many former supporters regret supporting. Forgotten is the fact that any dominant power would seek to consolidate its ideological foundations.
Also Read: Indian democracy starting to look like Orwell’s Animal Farm. Let’s not regress in history
Bipolar contests
The necessity part is based on the nature of bipolar contests. The current US-China bipolar competition is not very different from the previous US-Soviet Cold War bipolar contest. The present is no carbon copy of the past but there are some broad similarities that need to be recognised.
An important one is that bipolar competitions will be direct, intense as well as ideological. In a bipolar system, by its very nature, only the two polar powers can really affect the outcome of their competition. Bit players like a Charles de Gaulle or a Nehru may insist on claiming a role but they make very little actual difference to this outcome.
States in general prefer to justify their behaviour on the basis of some higher ideal rather than in terms of narrow self-interest. In a bipolar competition, this ideological aspect acquires a global arena because great powers are uniquely global actors. Thus, the fact that the US-China contest has an ideological basis should come as no surprise, nor the fact that the US leans on democracy for this ideological support. This is actually a weak area for China because its claims that it is a better democracy than the US is not only laughable but plays on a terrain that favours its opponent.
The ideological necessity also makes the democracy framing unavoidable because there is no other useful ideological alternative. The reality is that this is a competition to determine who has relatively greater control over the global system. Neither side can afford to concede because there are material consequences in the outcome of this fight. But neither side will openly accept that this is what their fight is about, and not which form of ‘democracy’ is better.
These ideological claims are no doubt uncomfortable for India. India has its own problems with the democracy versus autocracy formulation because its own credentials have been questioned, especially by many of India’s purported allies in the West. India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar has forcefully pushed back against such criticisms but that does not entirely remove the sting. There is little doubt that this introduces a measure of discomfort in India’s relationship with the US and the West, with both sides recognising that the positivity and good cheer in their relationship have the forced quality of them trying too hard. This will not necessarily affect the relationship between India and the West because it is based on necessity rather than affection. Necessity may have overcome the hesitations of history, but not very happily.
The author is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)