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Opinion | From Israel to India, America’s illiberal allies are hurting its moral standing
- Bound by a democracy vs autocracy rhetoric, Biden has embraced the leaders of Israel and India despite serious human rights concerns
- This approach has made the US liable to allegations of hypocrisy and weakened the moral authority Biden promised to strengthen
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Having spent the past several months focusing his foreign policy on Ukraine, US President Joe Biden is watching another war unfold, this time in Gaza.
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The new crisis in the Middle East is a stark reminder of the polarised world order and difficult moral choices that have defined Biden’s office. When he became president in 2021, he framed global politics as a struggle between democracies and autocracies. The key thrust of that message was to find like-minded partners – deemed “democratic” by Washington – to counter America’s major geopolitical rivals, namely China and Russia.
Biden also used this rhetoric on democratic values as a response to his predecessor, Donald Trump. As president, Trump had largely dispensed with values-based rhetoric in foreign policy, leading an era of “America first” isolationism, and praising autocratic leaders from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Biden called on the US to return to a role of moral leadership – to “prove democracy works” – and strengthen democracy at home and abroad. This, he proposed, would distinguish the US from its rivals. To that end, Biden organised two Summits for Democracy and rallied countries around democratic norms and values.
Yet, as has long been evident – most starkly in the context of the war in Gaza – Biden has struggled to walk the talk, especially against illiberal allies. Instead, his rhetoric has ended up weakening democratic movements against those regimes and encouraged illiberalism.
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Biden’s handling of the strategic US relationships with Israel and India – two important partners which have long been tending away from democratic values – is particularly instructive.
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