With everything that happened last week, from the indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump to Finland’s NATO accession, one could easily have missed what is nevertheless an ostensibly central pillar of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy: the second Summit for Democracy. From the issuing of written commitments to the signing of a joint Summit for Democracy Declaration, this year’s virtual meeting and its 2021 precursor were aimed at encouraging the 100-plus nations in attendance to cooperate in the face of “sustained and alarming challenges to democracy and universal human rights.”
The summit fits with the narrative used by Biden and his administration to portray a global battle pitting “autocracies versus democracies.” As Biden remarked in his first State of the Union address, in this battle, “democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.” But even if that is the case, it will not be thanks to this and future iterations of his Summit for Democracy, which, according to critics, risks becoming an “inconsequential talk shop or an unwelcome showcase.” Indeed, I would argue it has already crossed that line.
First, is the summit really about democracies? At the first edition in 2021, several countries with dubious democratic credentials were in attendance, including the Democratic Republic of Congo—its name notwithstanding—and Serbia. While it seems the Biden administration preferred a “big tent” approach to the gathering, that also created an “awkward guest” dynamic, raising reasonable questions about the purpose and utility of the summit. Perhaps that is why it was held virtually, as making the event in-person might have led some countries’ leaders to skip it, out of a sense that the gathering held minimal utility and could prove awkward in its optics.
The 2023 edition featured a similar conundrum, as some key attendees, from Israel to India, are presently in democratic crises fueled by their own leaders. Other cases seemed more open and shut. For instance, after years of democratic backsliding, Hungary was not invited, just as it was excluded from the first summit in 2021. But was this lack of invitation actually because of the country’s deteriorating democracy under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, or due to Orban’s closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? After all, Poland, which has engaged in similar democratic backsliding as Hungary but is a staunch supporter of Ukraine, was invited to both summits.
Second and related, the summit is not really about who attended, but who did not: Russia and China. It’s apparent that a key purpose of the meeting is to create a countercoalition against those two U.S. rivals. Consider how the event draws on the “League of Democracies” idea initially put forward in 2019 by current Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then recast as an “alliance of democracies” by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020. In both instances, the call was made in the context of Washington’s need for like-minded countries to band together to counter China.
Biden’s Summit for Democracy is not really about who attended, but who did not: Russia and China.
But even accepting this argument, does the summit actually enable the U.S. to make gains on that front? The core competition unfolding in the world right now is not between democracy and autocracy. It is about appealing to the rest of the world largely through economic exchange. A 2019 Pew survey found that many respondents across the Global South were less concerned about the health of democracy than they were with the outcomes of democracy. It’s notable that a 2021 Pew survey of individuals living in industrialized democracies revealed a similar view.
Globally speaking, people are less concerned about a normative or ideological adherence to democracy and more concerned about what democracy, or any governance system, is doing to improve their daily lives. Indeed, focusing on democracies could be self-defeating, since, as the Council of Foreign Relations’ former president, Richard Haass, tweeted, the United States needs “non-democracies to help us in the world, from sanctioning Russia to slowing climate change.”
To that end, the Biden administration would be well-served by setting aside the virtual summits and instead putting physical pen to paper. Specifically, if the goal is to counter China, then Biden could focus on bringing the U.S. into newly forming trade blocs that exclude China—starting with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now dubbed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump abandoned in 2017—rather than holding meetings focused on discussions of democratic ideals. The Biden administration has now had over two years to rejoin the pact, but has failed to do so.
Third, if the summit is truly about assisting democracies, is this really the way to do it? Whether democracy around the world is retreating is itself a contentious issue, one that can boil down to seemingly arcane academic issues of measurement and quantification. To be clear, there are real risks to a number of individual democracies around the world, and certain forms of international cooperation can help fledgling democracies. But those are successful when they are targeted to the specific needs of individual countries or a regional grouping of countries. In those cases, the states and organizations that provide any assistance are regionally focused and have vested interests in ensuring stable democracies in their neighborhood. Large gatherings of countries with diffuse interests are much less effective in this regard.
Unfortunately, when it comes to promoting regionally specific democratic assistance, the Biden administration appears to be falling flat as well. This is perhaps not the case in Europe, where Biden has made clear that defending democracy in that region and globally is a core motive of his administration’s support for Ukraine. But that only underscores the weakness of his efforts in the United States’ own backyard, where in Central America, U.S. partners like El Salvador and Guatemala are rolling back civil rights and democratic checks and balances. Yet, last summer’s Summit of the Americas was a failure, with several key Latin American countries, most notably Mexico, “snubbing” the invitation over Biden’s refusal to include the authoritarian leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Rather than wasting time and effort on another wide-ranging global summit, the administration should target its efforts to meaningful engagement on defending and consolidating democracy with its own neighbors.
There are now plans for a third Summit for Democracy, this time to be hosted by South Korea. No date has been set. But no date should be set. Given the challenges facing the world today, the countries seeking to solve those challenges, whether democracies or non-democracies, would be better served by devoting their time and attention to something other than attending another virtual talk-shop.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.