US Presidential Elections: Will Joe Biden be good for India?

For 70 years, the United States, under Democratic and Republican presidents, played a leading role in writing the rules, forging the agreements, and animating the institutions that guide relations among nations and advance collective security and prosperity—until Trump.”

So wrote Joe Biden in the March/April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs. One might say that’s a very self-serving and partisan view, though fitting for someone readying to run for President. But Joe Biden understands what is at stake for America. That is good for the US, and it is good for India.

It is a no-brainer to say that under President Donald Trump, America lost its sheen. Trump’s personal behaviour with regard to his divisiveness and dog whistle politics of White supremacy, his taxes, the many videos and allegations of his attitude and behaviour towards women, the brazen nepotism in bringing his entire family into affairs of the government, and his continuing refusal to accept election results and allow a smooth transition of power have all diminished the sheen of the US presidency. They have exposed the institutions of democracy as vulnerable.

Read | Ab ki baar, Biden sarkar: What do we do?

And it is all happening at the worst possible time – when the authoritarian model of China is seen to be working better than democracies.

Joe Biden has a humungous job to do to restore America’s own democracy and confidence in it, not to speak of restoring the faith of its allies and friends around the world. And his starting point, thanks to Trump’s abdication of his role: Asking Americans to wear masks so that the pandemic does not get any worse!

America’s power comes from its nuclear weapons, its global military reach, its technology, its economy, the international economic order it has fostered with the Bretton Woods institutions and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Its leadership comes from its championing of the UN, NATO, the nuclear non-proliferation regime (even if it hurt India), its ability and willingness to form and lead military coalitions when needed, its victory in the Cold War, its willingness and ability to form coalitions to tackle problems such as climate change and diseases and economic crises (even if they are induced by its own excesses). Its influence comes from its democracy, the power of its example, and the aspirations it arouses in people across the world -- to freedom and liberty, prosperity and individual achievement. Its legitimacy comes from its democracy, its example of acting with restraint despite its power, its strategic sagacity as exemplified by the Marshall Plan. All of this is, in the ultimate analysis, self-serving. Yet, even in being so, America has looked beyond the crudely transactional, and has recognised that morals and values have a place in foreign policy. At the base of it all is a democracy that is able to self-correct.

Donald Trump understood only the sources of America’s power, he did not seem to understand or care about the sources of its leadership, influence and legitimacy. The deal-maker knew the price of American leadership, but not its value.

Biden, the Washington insider, understands leadership, influence and legitimacy. When he says that he is going to “place the United States back at the head of the table, in a position to work with its allies and partners to mobilise collective action on global threats,” it’s good for India. For sometime in the early 2000s, India, which wished for and exerted itself to bring about a ‘multipolar’ world order, came to the conclusion that India needed to rise to be a pole itself first before seeking a multipolar order, and that to achieve that goal, it needed America to stay in the region, and on its side.

None of this is to romanticise American power and legitimacy. Merely to recognise that they are necessary for India and the world at this time. Today’s is not a just order for all. If the Chinese could articulate a vision and a path to a more just order for all, we could work with them. So far, though, in the realm of ideas, aspirations and principles for the world, America remains ahead. And it will be so, until a fellow democracy like India can rise to take the mantle. China or Russia cannot lead the world. This is not the age of Kublai Khan, this is the age of democracy.

The essential partnership between India and the US has been a work in progress through successive post-Cold War American presidents. It will be so through Biden’s term, too. Indeed, Biden was a key participant in the India-US nuclear deal, and is likely to drive the two countries closer together.

Biden will be good for India if he returns America to multilateralism, to the Paris Accord and climate leadership, and re-establishes American championing of globalisation. India’s marker must be the ease with which its citizens and professionals can aspire to study and work and thrive in America. Biden will be good for Indian democracy and Indians if he were to insist on respect for human rights, the strengthening of institutions of democracy and the rule of law, and the preservation of secularism as the basis for India-US partnership.

There is an expectation that Biden will seek to reduce tensions with China, perhaps even seek a compact with it. That would depend, in large part, on what China has to offer. China has changed too much in the last decade. It’s now about to become the world’s largest economy; the Belt-and-Road Initiative and the ‘Digital Silk Road’ plan and the American response to them represent the Iron Curtain of the 21st century between the international order that America has built and the one that China seeks to build; China is marching ahead on the use of Artificial Intelligence, 5G, etc., and it has made clear its ambition to overtake the US technologically with ‘Made in China 2025’. And we haven’t even mentioned China’s growing authoritarianism and aggression over Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and with regard to Uyghurs, the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

Biden can seek to reduce tensions with China only at the cost of losing American leadership in economy, technology and strategically. Is Biden, who turns 78 on November 20 and will in all likelihood be a one-term President, with a divided country and Republicans in control of the Senate, going to plump for that? Did he become President, as Churchill would have said, to “preside over the liquidation” of American leadership?