Joe Biden is contemplating holding a ‘summit for democracy’ in the first 100 days of his Presidency as a counterweight to the growing influence of China.
A report in the Financial Times said the American President-elect would also be looking to use the summit to reassert the role of the United States as a global democratic leader after four years of President Donald Trump in which the superpower increasingly withdrew from the global stage. (Notably, under Trump the US did not enter into any new wars, either.)
The report said Biden would likely invite the G7 countries (the US, the UK, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, and Japan), as well as India, Australia, and South Korea, to a ‘D-10’ summit.
However, it noted that India had increasingly becoming an ‘illiberal democracy’ under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and that to keep India on side, Joe Biden would have to refrain from remarking on India’s treatment of its large Muslim minority.
Biden and the US would have to offer some real benefits – such as preferential trade and market access – in order to make the proposed democracies club more than simply a talk shop.