President Biden needs to do more than just work to put US foreign policy back to a pre-Trump status quo. It's now been shown how fragile that system was. He needs to take the lead in building a new infrastructure between the developed democracies of the world. We need that infrastructure to include an alliance and open trade system locking their security and economies together. We need to build a system that unabashedly promotes human rights internally and externally. Together is our best hope of preserving our democratic systems against authoritarianism both outside and inside our borders.
We need to rebuild this military and economic alliance into one that protects all of the developed democracies. We should build a system that benefits member nations thus encouraging others to work toward reaching developed democracy to join the benefits of Alliance.
We need to have standards both for joining and remaining in the Alliance. We need a mechanism to put member nations who start to backslide out of those standards (think Poland) on "probation" and simple remove from the Alliance those who fail at the standards. It needs to be designed so that these decisions cannot be vetoed by others in the system who are also backsliding.
We need to have clear standards for joining and encouraging others to meet those to join in the Alliance. As more authoritarian states try to spread their influence and bring others into authoritarianism, we need to build an prosperous system with guaranteed rights that can be seen by billions of people as the best alternative. We need to give hope and a path to change for those people trapped in authoritarian states. We need to aid those who wish to join in reaching that goal.
This Alliance needs to create a strong economic network that gives its members the ability to resist pressures from authoritarian states. These authoritarians will try to use economic leverage to weaken the rights based systems that they may feel are threats to their own power by simply existing. We need to build a system that allows trade between democracies to allow their economies to thrive without relying on trade with authoritarian states.
NATO is a valuable alliance for protecting the security of the north Atlantic community, but it leaves out democracies in other parts of the world. It also has no mechanism to promote non-military standards within its own membership, and its scope is limited to military security leaving economic and democratic security outside of its protections.
We should build on the foundations of what NATO has provided to gradually replace it with the new Alliance. We should include right away in this new system, if they wish to join, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea (yes, it may take some convincing to get South Korea and Japan to join under one umbrella together). I would argue that we make it clear that the democracy of the people of Taiwan is a core interest to the Alliance. Currently non-NATO developed democracies such as Ireland and Finland should be invited to join.
Some current members of NATO, if continuing on their current path, may not meet the standards of joining this new system. Turkey and Hungary certainly stand out here. We should not though be working with the goal of excluding nations. We should be building a system so valuable to join that it encourages the reforms within nations that would allow them to both join in and maintain membership in this club of democratic nations. Nations who meet the standards of democratic development now or as they reform to meet them should be welcomed with open arms.
If the US continues to abandon its leadership role and interest in human rights promotion, this should not stop the other democracies of the world from going forward with this plan. They should begin building this in the hope that one day soon the US will join in the benefits of an economic and military alliance of developed democracies.
It will take leadership to unite and preserve the democratic world. Now we just look for that leadership.
- GRRA-Kyle
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