The recently concluded “Democracy Summit” hosted, virtually, by the State Department in Washington DC had an agenda that was beautifully expressed in these words: “ ... bring together leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector to set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.”
In those words, one finds the desire of the new American president to make a break from the overtly transactional foreign policy of his predecessor and, instead, move back to the traditional moral support for democratic governance and pluralism around the globe.
The invitee list of 110 countries was a good mix of established democracies like the UK, France, Germany, Canada and emerging ones like Kenya, Argentina, Mongolia, and Pakistan. There was some consensus, as such consensuses go when everyone is at an uplifting conference and heaping accolades on each other, to push for sanctions against officials whose corruption and human rights violations threaten the establishment or sustenance of democracy.
Such lofty goals are easier put in communiques than carried out. The US should know it better than almost anyone. Even as he spoke to the summit, President Biden’s administration’s continued engagement with notorious human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and China continues unabated.
As the American delegation was asking the rest of its democratic partners to closely coordinate a future sanctions regime, one had to wonder why the appropriate tools already at the disposal of the United States -- the Global Magnitsky Act and the Anti-Kleptocracy Act come to mind immediately -- have been used so sparingly against well-known abusers of human rights around the world.
Some of the blame for the rather sparse use of existing democracy-supporting legislation on American statute books is a function of the political structure in the United States federal government itself: many such laws pretty much give a carte blanche to the sitting President and his/her administration in terms of when and whether to use them.
Given the rather authoritarian-friendly predilections of the previous American administration, one shouldn’t be too surprised that such use in the Trump era had been as much political, if at all, than principled.
In taking law-based actions, albeit on a very small scale, against specific government entities and officials in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Sudan, the Biden administration has made an attempt to distinguish itself from its predecessor in terms of support for democracy and human rights abroad.
Yet, notorious advocates and initiators of human rights violations continue to be mostly ignored across the globe: the Pakistani government that arrogates to itself the right to decide who is or is not a true Muslim; the provincial governments in India who oversee attacks on religious minorities at an unprecedented scale, dictatorships in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan where dictators rule by virtue of apparent divine anointment.
The demands of realpolitik are sobering and it is unfair to expect an American president to make global human rights the primary focus of his foreign policy. This is especially so considering that his party’s tenuous hold on federal power is challenged by emboldened Republicans whose party, ironically considering the Cold War, has lately become quite enamoured with not just Russia but the authoritarianism intrinsic in Russian political culture going back several hundred years.
No wonder that in the last couple of virtual summits with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, President Biden seemed to have made little headway in impressing upon Moscow the importance of keeping its hands off Ukraine.
Summits and communiques are good signaling devices, but signals hardly matter to tyrants who are too far gone in hubris to be embarrassed. Between doing mere uplifting statements and pin-prick sanctions on the one hand and all-out confrontation on the other, the US, and her democratic fellow travelers in Ottawa, London, and Berlin, have other alternatives to take meaningful actions on behalf of human rights abroad.
Understandably, high voltage actions create major side-effects in terms of carrying out day to day activities of routine international relations. Restrictive measures aimed at individuals when sharpened with a sufficient punch can avoid the full-fledged side reactions while sending a message that telegrams a seriousness beyond gimmickry.
Among these could be bars on entry for individuals in sensitive positions in security, judicial, and election management services along with their immediate family members; freezing of personal and business assets; withdrawal of US government sponsored professional development opportunities for regime-aligned professionals in the private or quasi-private sectors.
While rarely acknowledged out of pride, the fact remains that, for many of the countries where governments routinely disparage human and democratic rights, the desire to visit America, be educated in American institutions, or even live in the US eventually remains in very high demand among the regime-affiliated elites.
Pressuring those elites to alter their ways and respect their own ordinary citizens gives an opportunity to the Biden administration to move beyond summits into substance when it comes to support for democracy.
Esam Sohail is a college administrator and writes from the US. He can be reached at sigalph235@hotmail.com