What's the bigger debate? Are we heading for a world that is split between countries with authoritarian governments that exercise absolute control over technology, expression and data, and on the other hand open societies that adopt different standards?
New Delhi: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited to the hyped Summit for Democracy convened by US President Joe Biden.
The significance of the Summit could not be missed as while the good old Cold War appears to have disappeared, the fact of the matter is that it was replaced by a "free world" of the new era, which has to face fascism and authoritarianism. China and Russia-in that order of importance, are today bolstering a new idea. This could be called the 'contrasting authoritarian ideology'.
Thus, the challenge before Biden and other global players, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would be to fight a new power structure and the rising non-democratic force(s).
Welcome to the new era of 'us' and 'they' global divides.
Before we delve into these divides, it would be prudent to appreciate the penetrating mind of an expert who says – "Carving up the world into "us" and "them" could complicate efforts to solve other existential problems facing both the free and unfree: climate change, pandemics and mass migration."
Farah Stockman, an American author has made these observations. Now take a look at the divides – as per Biden's list. Pakistan was invited – who stayed away, but Bangladesh was out. Similarly, Turkey was discarded, but Iraq in. The Philippines made it. There have already been reactions, but some of the reactions suggest Biden has taken initial leads.
China has sounded 'defensive', and in fact, in an Op-ed article, China's envoy to the US, Qin Gang, said – Beijing has a "whole-process socialist democracy". Well, Chinese citizens can join the CCP. For his part, Russia's ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, wrote in The National Interest. "It (the policies in his country) reflects the people's will, suits the country's realities, and enjoys strong support from the people."
Moscow and Beijing also insist that the United States has "no right" to sit in judgment over which nations are democracies and which nations are not. Importantly, neither of them can discard 'democracy' per se,
Here comes the relevance of what the Prime Minister (Modi) has said at the Summit. "Democracy has delivered, and will continue to deliver", Modi noted. This was a crucial statement.
Biden's Team Democracy has been democratically challenged in recent years. Besides the Chinese or the Russians' respective power-politics structures of governance and political management, neither Biden nor any of his team man (other global players) could deny that all democratic countries have certain limitations and 'inherent contradictions'.
The US itself saw Americans angry about the results of the 2020 election – that saw the ouster of Donald Trump – storming their own Capitol. Poland has reportedly gone against the judiciary, and the Philippines has targeted journalists. There is no perfect elephant in the room.
Yet the problem does not end with these. Like all 'good children', it is the Team Democracy who has something to lose about. Russia, China and Turkey do not have any major stake.
This throws up another question – how open societies will have to defend themselves in the future war against existential technological threats.
"As countries like China and Russia invest heavily in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and exercise intensive state control over data, the United States and its allies need a game plan. What rules should be adopted to govern the use of artificial intelligence," says Farah Stockman.
In the next course of the debate, it can be underlined that even the so-called announcement of a 'diplomatic boycott' of the Winter Olympics in China has not bothered Beijing. Therefore, Beijing is already planning to dismiss the diplomatic boycotts as inconsequential.
This is an era of 'Machoism'. And so here, Democracy could be failing because diplomatic boycott means that officials from the protesting countries would not be sending officials. There would not be any bar on participants sweating it out in the Olympics so far.
There will be too little to lose for China if the Olympics are held on time and the participants come and compete. It may be argued that the Sports and mega sporting extravaganzas like Olympics or the World Cup Cricket or Soccer tourneys are strong antidotes TO politics.
