Biden takes advantage of Putin and Xi’s absence on G20’s first day

NEW DELHI — President Joe Biden spent the first 24 hours of the India-hosted G20 doing his best to fill the power vacuum left by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s absences, wooing their friends and bidding to take their business.

The animating theme of Biden’s foreign policy is that democracies can deliver while autocracies, despite bursts of strength and activity, eventually fade away. The American leader aimed to prove his theory true in the Indian capital, with a series of appearances, meetings and initiatives aimed at cementing the United States as the world’s undeniable power.

Fresh off Air Force One on Friday night, Biden met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a one-on-one chat to draw the world’s largest democracy closer to its oldest. A joint statement released after the meeting showed a new stage in the Washington-New Delhi partnership, most notably an agreement to maintain and repair forward-deployed U.S. Navy ships in the Indo-Pacific region. India-based experts said that such a pact would’ve been unthinkable merely a decade ago, a sign of how far the relationship has come.

On Saturday, the first official day of the weekend gathering, Biden made sure his presence was felt — drawing attention to the Putin- and Xi-sized holes in the lineup of world leaders.

He took a photo with the honchos of India, Brazil and South Africa — the three democracies of the BRICS consortium that also includes Russia and China. Administration officials said the moment was designed to highlight the G20’s staying power, as all four countries are set to host the gathering in the same number of years ahead.

Jon Finer, Biden’s deputy national security adviser, hinted that the photo op was a near-explicit signal to Beijing. “Some have speculated that China's absence indicates that it is giving up on the G20, that is building an alternative world order, that it will privilege groupings like the BRICS,” but the participation of those three countries shows “they are committed to the G20’s success.”

The U.S., along with its European allies, also secured a diplomatic victory by finalizing communiqué text that features support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

The official version, a draft of which was first obtained by POLITICO, states that all countries should “refrain from action against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state.” Moscow approved the wording, which Western countries wanted to signal a condemnation of Russia’s invasion, likely because it could also apply to the Kremlin’s complaints that attacks inside Russia have escalated since Kyiv launched its counteroffensive.

The Ukraine-related section was a sticking point for negotiators here, leading to haggling as Friday turned into Saturday. There was concern that failure to reach a compromise would sink any meaningful statement on Ukraine — or possibly, though less likely, the joint message altogether. Before the draft text became public, Finer told reporters that “we’ve made a very compelling case for how we see that conflict to the other countries at the G20.”

But critics argued that Biden could have gotten more. Svitlana Romanko, founder and director of the pro-Ukraine group Razom We Stand, called it “weak” and “cowardly by not even mentioning Russia or its ongoing war crimes.”

To cap off the flurry of diplomatic activity, Biden and his colleagues announced a new economic corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe. A new railway will help link the countries and regions as new sea cables will improve connectivity and promote clean technology development, they asserted in the cavernous Bharat Mandapam convention center, with an eye toward tying all the players economically and politically.

Alongside Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, the other two regional partners are Saudi Arabia and Israel — countries the U.S. hopes will soon normalize relations with one another.

“This is a game changing regional investment," Biden said at the table aside world leaders. “We continue to make big investments in infrastructure around the world."

Analysts on the sidelines of the gathering were quick to note that this play looks like a direct counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its loose framework to tie the developing nations closer to Beijing with development projects. In New Delhi, Biden showed he wasn’t above simply making a better financial offer — in essence, buying them off.

There are still many questions for Biden to answer in India, among them how he plans to fund the investments and reforms to multilateral institutions for the initiatives. Biden is asking for money from Congress and allies to contribute to a Western-led rebuke to China’s pay-for-play scheme, but it’s unclear that he’ll get the $200 billion he needs just for World Bank and International Monetary Fund changes.

There’s how his administration plans to deal with criticism of the U.S. sidelining human rights concerns in pursuit of its geopolitical project. Ahead of the G20, for example, India forcibly bulldozed slums to make New Delhi look more economically robust than it is. Finer, asked if the president brought that up in his Friday talk with Modi, didn’t say “yes” explicitly.

“The broad category that issue falls into — democratic governance in the United States and in India — was very much on the agenda,” he said.

Biden also can’t claim that the successes on Saturday came solely because of his and his team’s acumen. China’s economy is sputtering and is locked in a territorial and economic dispute that has led Modi to look westward. Russia’s invasion has also made it a global pariah, alienating itself on the world stage. The U.S., then, is also taking advantage of a momentous opportunity to step into their void.

But if Biden aimed to leave the first of two days having made the U.S. look stronger compared to Russia and China, he seems satisfied that he accomplished that goal.

Speaking specifically of Xi, Biden said, “it would be nice to have him here, but no, the summit is going well."