Toward a Community of Democracies: Cold War Visions for Democratic Unity

Abstract

On December 5–8, 1988, two former U.S. presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, presided over a gathering of sixty-eight participants from forty-four democracies at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Arranged by a private organization called the Committee for a Community of Democracies (CCD), this All-Democracies Conference was made possible through financial support from the U.S. government and private foundations and backed by a strong endorsement from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The culmination of years of work by the CCD, the conference’s stated purpose was to “consider the establishment of institutions to strengthen solidarity and cooperation among democratic governments.”1 As Ford observed in his opening remarks, never before had citizens of so many democratic nations assembled to promote democracy. Thirty-three years later, on December 9, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden, convened another gathering of democracies at his Summit for Democracy. Several factors set this event apart from the All-Democracies Conference. Most notably, it was arranged by the U.S. government rather than a private organization, was considerably larger with over 275 participants from more than 100 countries, and it was conducted virtually due to the covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, the late Cold War context of the All-Democracies Conference had been replaced by an era of emerging great power rivalry between the United States and China. Yet, the purpose of the Summit for Democracy echoed that of its unacknowledged predecessor. In a press briefing announcing the summit on March 24, 2021, Biden declared, “I am going to invite an alliance of democracies to come here to discuss the future.”2 The official summit website proclaimed that it aimed to “set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action.”3