Joe Biden made 2022 the year of democracy vs autocracy, but the battle played out in no one’s favour

Attempts by the US to isolate rivals like China and Russia while reasserting its global leadership have led to protectionism in trade and questionable defence ties
The US should conversely be championing economic globalisation while being tougher on military partners who fail to uphold democratic values

Mohamed Zeeshan

Published: 1:00am, 7 Jan 2023

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Close to the end of 2021, US President Joe Biden hosted his flagship Summit for Democracy in an effort to re-establish the US as a leader of democracy worldwide. Through much of the year that followed, policymakers and political leaders in the West saw the world as a battleground between democracy and autocracy.

That world view was accentuated by crises both at home and abroad. Early in the year, Russia invaded Ukraine. Tensions then escalated across the Taiwan Strait. In March, an Australian journalist was detained by China on charges of spying, not long before Canberra accused Beijing of political interference. And in December, Germany uncovered a plot to overthrow its government, involving – among others – a Russian national.

In recent years, the US and its allies have employed economic sanctions and decoupling tactics extensively to coerce sundry rivals and alleged forces of illiberalism around the world. Sanctions were used twice as frequently in the 1990s and 2000s as they were during the period from 1950 to 1985. That frequency doubled again in the 2010s, according to historian Nicholas Mulder.

That is now being combined with selectivity in economic ties. In October, Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, argued that democracies should come together to “build our supply chains through each other’s economies” and reduce exposure to undemocratic states – a concept otherwise known as “friendshoring”.

Yet, far from forcing geopolitical rivals or authoritarian regimes to change course, these policies have merely reversed the gains of globalisation. From 2001 to 2008, world trade nearly tripled from around US$6 trillion to over US$16 trillion, according to data from the World Trade Organization. Then, after the global recession, trade largely remained flat. In 2019, before the pandemic began, world trade still hovered around US$19 trillion.

As a result of this stagnation, the global economic pie has not expanded fast enough for most countries. Growth prospects now stand diminished, especially in the developing world, and populism has consequently surged everywhere.

US President Joe Biden speaks during the virtual Summit for Democracy in Washington, US, on December 9, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

The West’s efforts to economically isolate China, Russia and other rivals have also not paid off fully. Instead, not entirely unlike Freeland’s proposals, those countries now increasingly trade among themselves – threatening to fragment the global economy into rival blocs.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Russia and Iran were reported to be building a grand transcontinental trade route from eastern Europe to the Indian Ocean, beyond the reach of Western powers. Since the start of the Ukraine war, in the face of Western sanctions, Russian oil has been diverted east – primarily to India and China, which have rapidly increased imports to become Moscow’s largest buyers.

Meanwhile, heightened trade protectionism in the US has curtailed Washington’s ability to play a meaningful economic role in the world, pushing countries towards Beijing. In Sri Lanka, for instance, even leaders such as former president Maithripala Sirisena – who first came to power criticising Chinese influence – had to eventually seek deals with Beijing. Fiji’s new Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka now faces the same tough calls.

Even Biden’s widely marketed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework fell noticeably short on economic integration and was largely greeted with disappointment. In stark contrast to China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and its application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US has been wary of expanding market access and trade.

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To make up for these deficiencies, America has often turned to its one unparalleled advantage: its status as the world’s most militarily advanced power.

Yet, even here, Washington’s policies have proved risky and counterproductive. Amid concerns over China’s rise and belligerence in Asia, Washington has signed military deals with a range of partners that are themselves tending towards illiberalism – from India and Vietnam, to Indonesia and the Philippines.

Washington has predicated these coalitions on a shared suspicion of China, but in the absence of common ground on norms and values, this approach is fraught with risk. America’s support may well embolden illiberal regimes in these countries, and as populism rises, so will the risk of instability and conflict.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon transits the Pacific Ocean on August 11, 2020. The US is the world’s most militarily advanced power, and it has not shied away from pushing that advantage. Photo: AFP PHOTO / US Navy

During the Cold War, America was similarly guilty of pursuing military ties with many an illiberal partner in the interest of counterbalancing the Soviet Union. Yet, in the long run, all of those ties backfired on America’s own national security interests – from the rise of Gaddafi in Libya to the advent of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Latin America, support for a host of illiberal autocrats – from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer – cost the US precious goodwill.

To be sure, few of America’s illiberal allies in Asia presently compare with the brutality of any of these regimes. Yet, illiberal trends across Asia pose a similar long-term risk to US interests, and the rising gap in values between the US and its military partners in Asia could also drive mutual mistrust and even present China with an opportunity to flip the latter against the West.

2022 will go down in history as the year of ‘de-Westernisation’

Under the circumstances, Biden should replace America’s current two-pronged strategy of economic decoupling and military balancing with a return to globalisation. Rather than employing a dubious ally-versus-rival framework, Biden should look to institute two broad principles in US policy: one, walk back the widespread imposition of sanctions and tariffs and encourage economic interdependence with all regimes; and two, hold military allies to a higher standard on liberal values and use the allure of military ties to encourage liberal democratic reforms in those countries.

So far, in the quest to counter and isolate China and Russia, Washington has been relatively generous with military ties and rather protectionist on economic ties. That logic ought to be reversed.

Mohamed Zeeshan is a foreign affairs columnist and the author of “Flying Blind: India’s Quest for Global Leadership”