Thread: Stepping aside from the ad hominem attacks & defences of the author of this piece, the core question is: Are liberal democratic great powers less likely to partner with a liberal democratic rising power that seems to be losing its liberal character? 1/13 https://twitter.com/DrIanHall/status/1309324475733663745

2/ It almost doesn't matter what the reality of India's institutional strength is right now, i.e. whether institutions can in fact survive the centralization of executive power. The perception of India's illiberal slide in foreign capitals is sufficient to warrant a discussion.

3/ How might a state's regime identity matter when it comes to strategic partnership (not war or crises)? When increased domestic illiberalism spills over into foreign policy, e.g. China under Xi, the answer is clear: other powerful states will rally against you.

4/ India is not in this category. Its declining liberalism is contained domestically. For this to affect partnerships, the West's concern for liberalism in others' domestic politics should be sufficiently high to alter the material calculation of whether to partner w/India.

5/ Historically, the concern for liberalism in the domestic makeup of other countries has rarely precluded partnerships and alliances among the great powers, e.g. Franco-Russian alliance & Triple Entente; Anglo-Japanese Alliance; US-Korea alliance for most of Cold War, etc.

6/ Alliances broke down when illiberal countries started expanding their external spheres of interest & asserting claims impacting the spheres of their great-power partners. E.g. the US pushed Britain to end the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as a way of containing Japanese expansion.

7/ Ergo, two claims/hypotheses:
1. If a common threat is strong enough, states of very different regime types will come together to counter it.
2. Even at moderate threat levels, an illiberal state can find liberal partners if it does not have expansive foreign policy goals.

8/ So far, India has indicated its support for the liberal international order, particularly when applied to the Indo-Pacific region. The US-India partnership has grown significantly even since 2014, when the US lifted its visa ban on Narendra Modi.

9/ India may not be essential to a broader effort by the US & its allies to contain China, but that effort would be significantly harder without India's endorsement & participation. At this point, so long as India's illiberalism does not manifest externally, little will change.

10/ Ashley Tellis is right that the West will be a "less eager" partner for an illiberal India, but the West will still be a partner, so long as China is seen a threat. In the absence of such threat, even a liberal India would probably not see much cooperation from the West.

11/ Finally, those familiar w/Gerrit Gong's "standard of civilization" argument will recognize Tellis' claim. Prevailing great powers get to decide the standard by which countries are admitted into the their club. The US itself had to meet this standard in the 19th c.

12/ That standard may change, arguably already is. As the global balance of power shifts, liberalism may well erode as the bar for great-power club membership. A deeply cynical India could simply wait, or contribute to the changing standard by de-emphasizing liberalism globally.

13/ There is a separate question of the importance of liberal democracy for India, on its own terms. No doubt the core principles of lib dem protect all Indians & should be preserved. But the carrot of Western cooperation is not the reason why one should think so. /END