It is commonly believed that the only cards left to play against Russian President Vladimir Putin are either military or tied to breaking Europe’s addiction to Russian oil and natural gas.
Such a formidable move would likely involve enacting sweeping changes to the international order that would strengthen the power of democracies while leaving Russia increasingly isolated.
Biden should be congratulated for building a united front against Russia, and he should be honored for supporting Ukraine while regenerating the alliance of democracies. But he should also be pressed to lay the groundwork for a more inclusive international order. To paraphrase NATO’ s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, that keeps the autocrats out, the democrats in, and the Russians down.
First and foremost, Biden should call on Russia to be suspended from the UN Security Council due to its threat to peace and the international order. He should argue that any states attempting to make land grabs or engage in crimes against humanity should be suspended from international organizations until they cease such activities.
Codifying this principle would weaken Russia and would no doubt constrain future American presidents should they threaten the international order. In this way, China might support the principle in the hope of using it against America, and Biden might use it to constrain a future president from the Republican Party.
Biden should also begin exploring the conditions under which populous or partial democracies might replace Russia at the table. Potential candidates might include India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, or a combination.
None of these are perfect democracies, but American support for their entry might be premised on their democratic reform and support for sanctions against Russia. It would probably be a hit with poorer and more populous countries and therefore strengthen American soft power, but it would also go a long way in building a more inclusive and therefore legitimate international order.
Of course, China is unlikely to support removing Russia for a multitude of reasons, not least their geopolitical rivalry with India. Yet, they might also prefer to work with populous non-western states. Such an arrangement would empower emerging countries whose interests are closer to those of China.
In this way, it is possible that China would see the grand bargain as having no net effect on their relative power.
Even if the resolution were to fail, attempting it would remind Putin of what he might risk in following through with his nuclear threats and other possible crimes against humanity.
Biden should also call on the UN to shift work from the more exclusive Security Council to the wider General Assembly. The Security Council has long been criticized for the disproportionate power it grants its permanent members: China, France, Russia, the U.K. and U.S.
Each one possesses a veto on major UN decisions, but the delegation of powers between the Security Council and General Assembly is ambiguous in the UN Charter.
So, American support for delegating more decisions to the General Assembly could empower it to take on more—and it would prove a popular move with most of the world. It is also a responsible move that might strengthen the institutional architecture of the international order.
Biden should further intensify pressure on authoritarian states by creating a League of Democracies, which would welcome every electoral democracy possessing a division of powers, basic liberal rights, reasonably fair courts, and a population whose adults are able to vote.
This would yield a pool of 82 candidates, using Freedom House’s measure of “fully free states.” Yet, the block might also forge association agreements with a couple of dozen “partially free states,” which tend to hold unfair elections while violating basic liberal and human rights. And it could admit several more partially free states that are rapidly democratizing.
The aim of the league would be to strengthen democratic institutions among its own members, many of which have seen recent declines. It could pay for its work by taxing members arms sales and carbon emissions.
Benefits might include increased trade and the free movement of people; bringing peace to associate states and forging climate solutions; greater democratization of associate states by providing access to preferential loans and global institutions in exchange for democratic reforms; and improved voting rights of poorer democracies at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Russia would likely seek to organize other autocracies against the bloc, but democracies are better team players than autocracies. Hence, the association could consolidate the power of democracies and empower poorer and more middle-income states, while risking little in return.
In so doing, it would consolidate a multitude of overlapping global institutions while pressuring the Security Council to do more or risk irrelevancy – and, of course, it would further isolate Russia.
If Biden wants to undermine Russia and other authoritarian states while strengthening American leverage with poorer and middle-income states, he needs to insist that Israel either provide meaningful civil and political rights to Palestinians or face the same sanctions being leveled against Russia.
Every major human rights group in the world has now declared Israel to be an apartheid state, and it is one of a tiny handful of states left in the world that is actively engaged in ethnic cleansing, as evidenced by its property seizures in East Jerusalem, and colonization, as evidenced by its hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank.
Of course, it is hard to imagine Biden taking this step, but Democrats have just watched Israel seek to undermine Barack Obama, band behind Donald Trump, and sit out the sanctions against Russia.
Should Biden find the political courage to make such a bold move, he could score a major win for democracy and human rights while making it easier for the U.S. to insist on uniform standards of human rights in the countries with which it associates.
Finally, it might make this heavily militarized rogue regime a genuine international partner as it does almost nothing for the West except cause it headaches.
States, like people, can be reformed with the right set of incentives. And as we seek to isolate Russia, we would do well to remember how the right incentives, coupled with its crushing defeat in the Second World War, helped to reform an even more brutal regime in Germany.
The point of reforming the international order would not simply be to isolate Russia, but to create the right set of incentives needed to make an endless train of states like Russia better.
Theo Horesh is author of The Fascism This Time: And the Global Future of Democracy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
