Biden looks to bring India into a new organisation — the Democratic 10 (D-10)

Edward Luce in the FT today discusses a much-trailed Biden plan to embrace ‘global democracy’ promotion. The plan will place democracy at the center of the incoming president’s foreign policy, a break from Obama’s more realist approach to international relations and closer to the George W Bush era. Luce suggests this is partly to take on China in the realm of ideas, China’s economic success — down to a blend of state capitalism and authoritarian government — has become an alternative ideological model in a post-post-cold war world. The Biden administration wants to widen efforts to contain China beyond trade concerns to broader ideological ones. With Trump’s support for strongmen, many critics of America have argued it no longer leads the ‘free world’. Biden hopes to reset America and in the process reconstruct a values based foreign policy.

The problem, Luce argues, is that Biden administration may include India within a new club of 10 democracies. The so-called D-10, would serve US geopolitical interests but “[f]rom the start, Mr Biden would thus be accused of having double standards”. India has become an ‘illiberal democracy’, as the Modi government constructs an exclusivist brand of Hindu nationalism that “downgrades the country’s Muslim minority to second-class status”. Leaving India out of the club would…