 Welcome and good day everybody. I'm Richard Ponziu. I direct the Global Governance Justice Security Program at the Stinson Center based here in Washington DC. And I'm very pleased to welcome you to this webinar discussion on from the Summit for Democracy to a League of Democracies which is organized by our colleagues at the Coalition for a World Security Community of Democratic Nations. This World Security Community as it's commonly referred to is a global organization advocating for the creation of a community of democratic nations to promote peace and security, defend human rights and tackle other global challenges. I will soon encourage our colleague, Didier Jacobs, one of our panelists to tell you more about the organization's ideas. And you can also learn more about this coalition through www.worldsecuritycommunity.org. And I also wanted to share that this webinar is being recorded, we'll be promoting it widely after today's discussion. As we're all too aware, democracy worldwide is facing multiple challenges from social media-driven fake news and foreign interference in elections in many places to the weakening of a country's democratically elected legislature vis-a-vis ever more powerful executive branches. Indeed, ever since 9-11, some two decades ago, democracy and human rights have suffered repeated setbacks across the world, according to Freedom House and of course the work of countless scholars. At the same time, deep rifts have emerged in relation between the West and both Russia and China with echoes of the Cold War and prominent international affairs commentators opine frequently that Western democracies are declining in power and influence relative to China and other emerging countries. Meanwhile, look no further than the latest news on the Omnicron variant that we're all experiencing just the last few days. And we can see how humanity continues to face the short-term crisis of COVID-19 and of course the long-term quintessential global governance challenge of our time, climate change. Against this backdrop, several world leaders including US President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have recently voiced support for greater collaboration between the world's democracies. For some, the emphasis is on repairing and strengthening democracy internally. For others, the focus is on tightening the bonds among democracies in order to tackle global challenges such as health pandemics and climate change but also more effectively engaging powerful autocratic countries such as Russia and China. In this webinar, we will explore these and related themes in connection with President Biden's upcoming Summit for Democracy which will take place next month on the 9th and 10th of December as well as with respect to the related idea of creating a permanent forum among the world's democracies to tackle global challenges. Before we jump in, I'll briefly introduce all five of our expert panelists before we hear from them individually on this topic and then we're gonna get the ball rolling by having me pose a specific question for each panelist which will then, they'll have five minutes to respond. There's a chance for all of you in our audience to engage the panelists. We encourage and welcome you to use the Q&A function on Zoom and we're also encouraging our fellow panelists to not only respond to questions from the audience but to build on and respond to the points made by your fellow panelists. So let's turn to our very first panelist, Dr. Titziana Stella who is the executive director of the Strait Council which is dedicated to carrying forward the ideas of Clarence Strait whose best-selling book Union Now advocated a union of democracy to combat fascism all the way back in 1939, start of World War II. This book arguably marked the beginning of the Atlantic movement and Titziana is a historian of US foreign policy and intellectual thought and is herself writing a book on the history of the union of democracy idea. So Titziana, let me begin with a question to you without going through of course the full history of uniting democracies unfortunately we wouldn't have time but could you tell us a bit about the few lessons that are really key insights that point to the need for far stronger bonds between democracies for tackling global challenges today? Yes, thank you Richard for the introduction and thanks to the organizers. It is a very exciting time to be here to discuss all these proposals on how to unite the democracies and how to use this union as a strategy to maximize the impact of democracy in the world. This was, I'm gonna present here in the limited time that I have some ideas and frameworks that I think can be useful than further the discussion. This idea emerged more than 100 years ago and precisely for the same purpose that we're discussing today how to maximize the impact and the chances of democracies in the world how to strengthen democracy both internally and internationally. It was presented ahead of World War I when it was hoped that it could actually be used to avoid the war and then became a major idea and in fact the main alternative scenario for post-war order and World Organization both in World War I and in World War II. In 1917 and in 1941, this was the prevalent option the idea that had the most support among the public intellectuals also part of the administration. And so it has a rich tradition and a rich logic behind it. It was part incorporated later in the Euro-Atlantic structures of integration and the budget partially and it is part of the DNA of the ideas that we are discussing today and the frameworks that we are trying to renew and upgrade. The basic idea since the very beginning was that democracies did have preponderance of power but their power was not organized and that they were the main cause of global instability. So one of the concepts was democracies should unite they should organize their power they should organize this power permanently but that was only part of the concept that was promoted throughout this period in the different variants by different thinkers and public intellectuals. The other element of the proposal was that democracy should not be limited just to a criteria for membership but also to become the method of the union and the finality of the union the finality for which this power was organized. And this was not just an ethical preference a moral preference but it was very much based also on consideration of real politic. The idea was that democracy cannot thrive in an environment of international anarchy together with deep interdependence and escalating violent capabilities that an environment that would be favorable to democracy would be instead one that would replace balance of power and power politics with internal sharing of power and external preponderance of power. And to create these conditions it was important that the union it became like a formal model at a certain point to maximize the impact of democracy in the world. And in this formal model the ideal scenario would be that this union will be small enough so they could have deep integration and therefore be able to actually bring in new members at the faster pace which was important in the race against external chaos. It also had to be continuously have a situation of preponderance of power so that the logic behind that it was that by doing that it would possibly be it was potentially possible to tilt permanently the world to work the democracy. And if you could kindly take no more than just another minute or so too. Yes, I guess I guess I want to probably the other thing that I really want to stress is that this idea became very crucial in the interwar where we had the league actually in existence as a world organization and the incapability of the league to prevent the global security and economic crisis. At the same time, we have the crisis of democracy. And so the two prizes are interdependent that there is a backsliding of democracy in the strong democracy at the same time there is the generation of the newer democracies into a liberal regimes. And so this was seen actually crucial to overcome the dynamics that were created by that scenario. And I think that's all that I can say in the time that I have at this point, yeah. Thank you. I would be glad to go back into more details later. Absolutely, now introducing the rich tradition of the idea and of course we'll be making linkages throughout today's discussion with next week's or next month's summit for democracy. Professor John Eikenberry is the Alberg G. Milberg Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Many of you in this forum will be familiar with his prolific career as a scholar defending the idea of liberal internationalism. 15 years ago, he co-authored a report of the bipartisan Princeton project on national security entitled forging a world of liberty under law in which he advocated for a concert of democracies. So we're hearing many terms today, Union of Democracies, League of Democracies and now concert of democracies. In his most recent book, A World Safe for Democracy, he notes that international liberalism is threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist populist movements. So John, building on Tiziana's leadoff remarks, what do you think is the right level of ambition for collaboration among democracies? What should it be actually and why? And on this topic, what role of any could President Biden's summit for democracy play? Thank you, Richard. It's great to be on this distinguished panel and it's great to have followed Tiziana because in some ways, my contribution is to offer kind of historical and theoretical arguments about the world of democracies and the project of cooperation. And indeed, we're here today, gathered together because for the last 200 years, liberal democracies have been searching for a way to build a world that makes them safe. From the very beginning, from the age of democratic revolutions, liberal democracies have had an internationalist aspect to their project, to creating what I would call a kind of environment or an ecosystem to protect them, to facilitate cooperation, to realize the gains that come from trade and openness, but also to protect from the world out there that is full of tyranny, brutality and tolerance. So there is, as Tiziana said, a kind of deep, deep impulse within liberal democracy to create an environment or a geopolitical space for contending with the problems of modernity. And I think we're at that moment today where we're doing that again. And I guess what I would say more specifically to your question that I would come down in favor of a kind of decentralized system, not so much a single unified union or federation, but to work to build across the global space, lots of different coalitions and platforms for liberal democracies to operate. I'm not a tactician and I'm not here to argue for one particular vision. I would prefer to make the case for intensified cooperation among democracies in an era where arising China is in some sense sharpening the stakes that are involved in liberal democracies getting their act together, finding a basis for common cause. But I would say a couple of things. I think that the Biden administration gets it. I think they understand what the environment, what the kind of world historical moment is. Think about Biden in his UN speech. He mentioned partnerships 16 times and alliances eight times in his short speech. He was making the case that the United States and indeed by implication, all the other democracies are in it together that there is no way that one state, even the most powerful state in the world, the United States can single-handedly protect and defend liberal democracy in a hostile world that it has to be increasingly going forward a group project creating a kind of critical mass in this world. I've already used a couple of terms that I would emphasize. One is ecosystem that we should think about liberal democracies trying to build an ecosystem that will allow them to balance their various interests and principles and norms and work together to aggregate power and wealth. And I use the term critical mass, that is to say in a world where alternatives to liberal democracy are creating their own internationalism. Think of China, think of the authoritarian internationalism that is afoot today, that it pays for the liberal democracies to create a kind of critical mass to drive reform agendas on international rules and institutions that increasingly in the 21st century, the competition with China and other countries is over platforms, protocols, regulations and regimes for the management of problems and not least emerging 21st century technologies. So finding a critical mass so that the countries that form the liberal democratic world have a kind of scale advantage that will allow other countries to in some sense be forced to come to them rather than the other way around when China starts setting the norms and regime principles of the international system. We know that we are lost. So I would just end by saying, I would say there would need to be a kind of double double agenda. One is to build these platforms often in very different spaces because they are different issue areas, artificial intelligence, cyber, trade. There's no one single coalition of democracies that can work in all of these different areas. So, and indeed it's better in some sense not to raise the stakes so that it is a single kind of mannequins and us versus them world but to build platforms that create attractive attractions for other states to join. So those kind of platforms. Then secondly, a kind of D10 and Ash might speak to this but I think that there's a kind of role for a group of senior states that might have as their writ the kind of surveillance of the world democratic situation looking for gaps, looking for opportunities for countries to work together to strengthen rules and norms in particular areas. So I think both the global agenda of finding areas for cooperation. And then secondly, I would put some money on this D10 concept of steering or of leadership. Just in by saying, I've written the book on a world safer democracy and one of the most striking things that I've found and looking back over 250 years of liberal democracies grappling with how to organize international order is that they have always felt with good reason that they are safer in a world where liberal democracies hold sway. And we live today in a world where China contests that world and therein lies the geopolitical and grand strategic rub. And so with lots of different ideas at our command I would say we need to work across these different levels to find a way for the liberal democracies to continue to hold sway. I'll stop there. Thank you, John, as just shared a model of decentralized cooperation among democracies today. This could be seen as an alternative or a compliment to the ideas shared by Tiziana as more of a union or a federation of democracies which I'm sure will come further into our discussion today especially when we hear from Didier in a few moments as well as Mariam. And also keep in mind the words that John referred to from President Biden's speech in September partnership and alliances, we're surely gonna see that quite frequently throughout next week's summit discussions. It's a virtual summit as people know. So now we're gonna hear from Ash Jane who is Director of the Democratic Order Program with the Scowcross Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. There he oversees the Democratic Order Initiative and as John Eikenberry just referred to the D10 strategy for him. He's a leaning proponent of the idea of a D10 and enlarged version of the G7 to also include democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. In practice, we've seen just in this past year UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson attempting to take forward the D10 concept inviting Australia, South Korea and India as well as South Africa. So I guess D11 to the G7 earlier this year. So Ash, could you tell us what is the current state of play of your D10 initiative as well as its potential of any to next month's summit for democracy? And I also understand you're working on an alliance of democracies concept. Please share a little bit on that as well. Well, thank you, Richard. It's great to be here with you to discuss these questions. Let me answer your question first by talking a little bit about why there is such a need for a closer cooperation among democracies today. This is a topic that is at the heart of the initiative that I'm leading at the Atlantic Council, the Democratic Order Initiative and we've been looking into these questions very closely. So as John mentioned, the world is entering an era of a strategic competition for the first time in more than three decades, the US and its allies are facing a systemic challenge from autocratic rivals. And as President Biden has noted on many occasions, the world is at an inflection point between democracy and autocracy. This includes China, which is growing more powerful and Russia as an autocratic power that is more assertive as they engage in coercive tactics to expand their influence around the world. At the same time, democracy is on the defensive, dealing with internal challenges and trying to counter with disinformation, cyber attacks, election meddling, and you name it. So to position themselves to succeed in this new era, the United States and its democratic allies do need to strengthen cooperation. They need new institutions, both formal and informal, and in order to confront today's challenges. One option is, as you mentioned, Richard, we have looked at is the idea of forging a D10, a democracies 10 that would bring together leading democracies, including the United States and Canada and its allies in Europe, as well as the Asia Pacific. The D10 would particularly reflect the increasing importance of Indo-Pacific powers by ensuring that Australia and South Korea and perhaps India are brought to the table, which currently focuses on the G7. So we described this in an Atlantic Council report that we released over the summer that lays a framework for creating a D10 to work out a common strategic agenda on shared challenges, including those posed by China and Russia. That initiative got a jumpstart when Boris Johnson tried to convene a D10 and formalize it in some way as an expanded G7, but it did run into some pushback from some of the other members of the G7. And so at the moment, the initiative still is out there as a potential framework for cooperation in the future. The G7 remains as the platform, the current platform for engaging democratic partners on at least a subset of global challenges. So in addition to the D10, we have also proposed to create a new alliance of democracies, which could provide another key platform to engage a broader group of democratic allies and partners around the world. Such an alliance would be political, not military. It would be aimed at forging common threat assessments and coordinating strategies among democracies to position the free world for success in this growing strategic competition. What would such an alliance do? We would contend that it should focus on three defining challenges facing the free world. The first is systemic competition with autocratic powers, as I've mentioned earlier, that the alliance can foster more coordination to deal with the assertive actions by China and Russia to undermine democracy. For example, coordinated sanctions with larger numbers of allies and partners against autocratic regimes. You could also help foster efforts to make democracies less vulnerable to economic coercion. For example, facilitating supply chains away from autocratic states when it comes to sensitive technologies and critical energy supplies. The second area it could focus on is democratic backsliding. The alliance can help hold states accountable for their own democratic practices at home and facilitate best practices among democracies to deal with challenges that all of our democracies are contending with. And finally, the alliance could serve as a platform to address disruptive technologies. As John mentioned earlier, this is a key issue and we need a framework where allies can come together and forge common standards to address advanced technologies that are consistent with liberal norms and values. It also could ensure that democracies prevail over China and others in the race to develop advanced technologies. So President Biden's Summit for Democracy offers a window of opportunity to bring such an alliance to life. Both the D-10 and an alliance of democracies could be mutually reinforcing platforms to advance democratic cooperation. And I look forward to talking more about practical ways that these kinds of initiatives could be brought to fruition. Thank you so much Ash, especially keeping the time and really glad you brought up the Alliance for Democracy, something our colleague, Mariam, is gonna speak about now, but just to highlight the three key points you emphasized, it would deal with systemic competition with autocratic countries, democratic backsliding and disruptive technology. So over to Mariam, she, I better try to print out your last name, Chick Lezade in the country of Georgia, please correct me when you introduce yourself, Mariam, who is a researcher and election integrity fellow at the Alliance of Democracies Foundation. This foundation was established in 2017 by Anders Vogue Rasmussen, a well-known former Prime Minister of Denmark and former Secretary General of NATO. So Mariam, then building directly on Ash's overview, could you tell us more about your foundation and its work to advance the idea of an alliance of democracies? And I'd love for you to also share your hopes for next week's Summit for Democracies in connection with your Alliance initiative. Thank you very much, Richard. Greetings from Tbilisi, Georgia. I'm deeply honored to be the part of this distinguished panel with the world's foremost minds who think about and write a lot about global affairs and the future of democracy. Being part of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, where we also research and discuss the future of democratic coalition, I might have something to add to this discussion. And mostly I will expand and build on Ash's points about the challenges we face and how the Alliance of Democracies Foundation has figured out some of the specific suggestions to address those challenges. Let me articulate the problems and the way we see it now first. Obviously, the number one is multiple times mentioned, raising authoritarianism and China and Russia specifically. They're increasingly aggressive efforts to challenge the democratic and the liberal world order and rules-based order, I would say. Both of them use multiple techniques and economic coercive tools, including them, but not only economic. And here comes the technology, which we also have mentioned previously. This technology, which is super rapidly developing, real and has the potential to significantly define the geopolitics currently. And these technologies in the hands of autocracies and authoritarian regimes becomes disruptive technologies and they actually give them the upper hand. The third, I would say, is also something freedom house has been warning us for the couple of years that a democracy in all parts of the world is declining. And the trust towards democratic norms, processes, such as elections, mainly, and institutions are declining, unfortunately. And the playground is gradually in more countries, not only in premature democracies, but also in established ones are taken by populist, illiberal leaders. That's also something at AOD we are disturbed with. So what are the, what we should do to overcome this challenge and to tackle those? Is there a single power which one would single-handedly do this? And obviously, unfortunately or fortunately, there is not. And here comes the need for unity and coordinated pushback against autocracies. And also there is, at AOD, we also think that there is a need for a platform where a member, a democracy after being coerced could turn to and urge for concerted response in case of a coercion or in case of a significant violation of a rule-based order. So to contribute to that forward-looking agenda and discussion, Alliance of Democracies Foundation launched the Charter of Democracies, Charter of Copenhagen Charter for the Alliance of Democracies. That's the full name, which has three major pillars addressing these three major challenges that I have laid out. The specific suggestion here is, for example, Economic Article Five, inspired by NATO Article Five. And this is an attempt to foster effort to make democracies coordinate economically more cooperate with each other so that they could counterbalance the cooperation which happens and the economical ties and coercion which happens on the side of autocracies. And also not to leave countries vulnerable against coercion perpetrators. Such measures would be democratic economic preference zones or alternative roads, circumventing autocratic powers and others. I guess the idea is that if Taiwan gets pressured by China or Georgia, by Russia, they are not left alone and vulnerable. And there is a support system there. The second, I think I would define this as the second component of the Charter, some more to the same way. There is a need of the tech democracies to come together and address the technology and the disruptive technology issue so that they create some future of internet and future of technology forum to address this lack of cooperation in this realm. And the third and probably the last point at this point is to create the support system also for democracies and especially frontline democracies. And we know they are in any parts of the world, I would name Ukraine, I would name Belarus, Myanmar and other countries. So to stand up for them and to stand up for those who fight for democracy in the streets and not only in the streets, that's crucial. So that, for example, as the Alliance of, this is one of the biggest initiatives of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which tries to curb the influence of and to the root of election interference. This is transatlantic commission on election integrity. But that's not the election interference and disinformation, which primarily makes frontline democracies vulnerable is not the only tool in the hands of autocracies. And they definitely use other technological tools to suppress and disrupt frontline democracies. So that's also one of the aspects I would approach this idea to. Yeah, very last ideas to just to sum up all those. I think that probably all those I have mentioned open more questions rather than answers them, but it's supposed to be complicated. It's a global affair. So I think what we should agree on is that when there is a big problem, the only way out would be to create the solution bigger than that problem. So I think there is a momentum for that. Thank you so much, Maryam. Greatly appreciated. And building on Ashes points about the Alliance for Democracies, because I see a lot of similarities with how Professor Eikenberry introduced the idea of a decentralized system of collaboration, used the word platform support system. And this is in some ways juxtaposed again, the stronger deeper collaboration inherent in a union or in the title of today's event, The League. And we're about to hear from Diddy and Jacobs on a coalition among democracies in a world security community. This coalition is, as you know, the main sponsor of today's event. And Diddy is the vice president of the coalition, which is a global organization advocating for the creation of a community of democratic nations to promote peace and security, defend human rights, and tackle other global challenges. I see many questions in the Q&A box after Diddy were gonna be taking those questions. We welcome a few more. But first for Diddy to tell us a little bit more about the coalition, what it stands for, and maybe the genesis for today's program and your own thoughts on today's themes. Thank you. Yes, thanks Richard for this introduction and greetings to all listeners. So our group, The Coalition for a World Security community was created in 2018 through the new shape prize of the Global Challenges Foundation. And the question that we tackled at that time was what global governance innovation is needed to reduce the risk of catastrophic war? And our response was a world security community of democratic nations. So of course we have the United Nations, which has both the duty and the right to protect all its members from aggression and all UN members are supposed to lend military forces to enforce UN decisions. However, as we know, the United Nations is very indecisive and in practice, every country is left to fend for themselves to protect their security. We believe that a more realistic approach, I mean, obviously we'd like the United Nations to shape up and that's the plan A, but the plan B, a more realistic approach is for the rich democracies to incrementally expand their umbrella of security to other countries. Unlike most countries in the world, the rich democracies are protected with each other. They are hanging together through NATO and bilateral treaties. They are very powerful and hence they feel fairly safe. So while we cannot just wish away the distrust that exists within the United Nations Security Council, we could, the rich democracies could at least extend their very safe security umbrella to other democracies that presumably they trust more. So that's the basic idea of our group. We could start with, as I said, there is NATO, there is all the bilateral treaties that the US has with Asian countries. Secretary Blinken himself noted that it's kind of strange that the United States has these European allies, the Asian allies, but the two are not working together which is a missed opportunity. Let's have a multilateral defense treaty putting all these allies together. And then let's open that treaty to other countries that we trust democracies, whether from Latin America or other countries. And to make sure that this trust remains, I think it's important to have a clear and somewhat stringent membership criteria to ensure that all countries abide by international law and respect human rights and democracy. And that will follow the European Union model that has been very successful at the encouraging democratization in Europe as the prospect of joining the European Union was a powerful incentive for countries like Spain, Greece to democratize. So at the same time, we do not want this world security community to undermine the United Nations. We believe that it should be really focused on defense, protecting its own members and intervene outside of its borders only with the approval of the UN Security Council which does mean continuing working with China and Russia on other conflicts as difficult as that may be. And that does mean that there's going to be ongoing instability in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, this world security community would be an island of stability and security in this turbulent world. And hopefully it would incrementally grow over time with more and more countries becoming democratic. And at the same time, it would not be threatening to countries outside. So that's in the nutshell, our response to the global challenges foundation to reduce the risk of catastrophic wars, rich democracies first, should stop starting wars. And second, they should extend their security umbrella to countries that they do trust and that's to other democracies. Now, just a few more words about the coming summit. Obviously our starting point has been security and security is the heart of international affairs. Heart power is the heart of international affairs. That's very important. But obviously a community of democracies could be helpful in many other areas like those of the summit, protecting human rights, fighting corruption and confronting authoritarianism. For this summit, we hope that first, it will not be a one-off or a two-off. I guess the plan is to have countries make some commitment this year and then meet again next year to check progress on these commitments. But obviously fighting corruptions and all these issues will not be resolved in a year. So we hope the summit will be permanent. And then it can start to be the next phase of what Professor Aikenberg called this ecology of institutions. And we very much hope that beyond unilateral commitment, it will develop some norms, some range of issues like election integrity and that it will foster and rely on other, including existing organizations like NATO and the OECD that are already intergovernmental organizations of democracies that should themselves expand their membership to other democracies. And so if we have this annual summit of leaders, then technical work done by NATO and the OECD and then expansion of these countries, we start to have this kind of ecology that Professor Aikenberg was talking about. And obviously, I'll just finish by referring to something that Tiziana said at the beginning, that the idea of an alliance or a committee of democracy is not so much, it's both to promote democracy internally but also the method of the committee itself should be democratic and that is something we also strongly believe in. We don't think that a large committee with many countries would function without democratic accountability and decision-making systems. And so that is something that should be developed over time as well. So that is the overview of what we stand for and look forward to the discussion. Thank you so much, Didier. And thank you once again for taking initiative with your colleagues in organizing today's very rich discussion. We have a whole bunch of questions to address over these next 15, 20 minutes or so maybe we could run a few minutes. And let's jump in and I'm gonna pose a question or two in some cases to each of our five panelists, kindly take no more than two or so minutes in responding if you can and feel free to build off of each other's points. Professor Aikenberg, the first question is addressed to the academic community and your thoughts on prioritizing education for democracy and launching a global initiative to support citizens making democracy work better. What can academics do to help citizens function better in democratic societies? But I also want you to pick up on the second question about the whole issue of backsliding, something important I think to the Alliance for Democracies concept and a country like Bangladesh which is in need of restoring democracy and human rights as proposed by Mr. Mohamed Hock one of our questioners. Next we'll hear from Titiana on the question from Chris Hammer. Let me read that after we hear Professor Aikenberg's response. But you'll see in the Q&A function to the other panelists questions addressed to each of you that I'll be posing. Professor Aikenberg. Well, I'm always a little nervous when we are asking universities to do things that are specifically directed at world politics. I think what universities can do is educate people and to reaffirm our commitment to enlightenment principles of reason, discussion of knowledge of respect for science. Universities have a huge role to play educating the next generation, illuminating the problems that the world faces. And I think in various ways incubating conversations that spill out of universities into the larger global civil society. A lot of what we're talking about today is about global civil society, finding networks and points of light and points of strength for groups and civil societies working with governments to strengthen democratic institutions in countries like Bangladesh where all the help is needed. And I think this kind of long-term effort at working the problem at all these different levels. Alliances of democracy, yes. Government, intergovernmental cooperation like the G7, the D10, yes. And then these larger diffuse institutions that support voter rights and election, fair elections. So I think my idea of an ecology, of an ecosystem where a lot of different kinds of people doing lots of different things creating an overall environment is where I would emphasize the importance of what we're doing today. Thank you, John. Tiziana from our colleague Chris Hemmer also from this coalition organizing today's program. I believe you are presently advocating a full-scale federation of democracies. Can you tell us a bit more about that? And what do you think, and do you think we can get there in one leap? A big bang approach or would have to be proceeding in various stages? Oh, you're on mute. Okay. Now, obviously I'm not proposing right now of federations of democracies and obviously I'm not proposing that we can get there in one leap. I just think that this as a model, as a former model and the dynamics that it shows is very important to keep it in mind as we envision ways to improve the impact of democracy in the world. So the idea that could be the final stage, of course, but it's just by looking at what the dynamic of federation can do in the relations among democracies inside and also outside and how that can help guide a little bit the discussion of where we're going, like as a target. So in terms of what policies we are choosing and what strategies we're using. Yeah, that's my answer. Thank you. And turning to Miriam. Sorry, one more thing. Please. I do agree with professor. I can vary that. Of course, there should be different platform. It can be decentralized. There can be functional areas where there's overlapping and there is also concentric circles. The outer level can be the level of the UN where the universality is a true certainty, but it doesn't necessarily be so. All the other levels, there are other ways to reach universality to democracy. And so the two things can actually work together. Great. Now I think we're starting to see a convergence, a building block approach with the Alliance for Democracies in mind, which is what I want to turn to with Miriam. We're going to come to the D10 questions for Ash in a minute, but Miriam, the question from John Davenport, and there's another related question I'll mention. I'm all dealing with China. He writes, we should be willing to consider different kinds of alliances or coalitions each with different nations as members. Maybe this will seem less threatening to countries like China, although the fear is that they're going to construe the formation of this alliance as a beginning of a new Cold War. And a related question by one of our colleagues was the critical problem at the moment is China's threat of military aggression against Taiwan? Could an alliance of democracies raise an effective stop sign against any such aggression? Thank you. Well, first of all, about China and partnership of democracies to deter it. Well, I wanted to stress on the point that that comes down to the question of membership pretty frequently. And that's one of the prevalent questions asked and discussed in this topic. So like if you exclude, do you exclude China or in Russia or other autocracies or do you exclude them both? It has the pros and cons. If you exclude them, of course you risk further antagonizing China. And it's quite logical to think forward about this, but should it deter us to unite? I think not because the biggest problem-solving potential lies in democracies who will be the game and the unity of democracies because together it's a group exercise, I would say, because single-handedly, as we have already many times stressed on, it is not as easy to counter. So together it's more plausible. And also about the second question, I would add that the second part of the question, I'm not touching Taiwan yet, also I think that economic cooperation and creating preferable economic frameworks to trade, lowering trade barriers, lowering tariffs between each other will make other countries also willing to join this alliance. So that's one of the ways also to counterbalance those who are rushing forward with coercive methods. And I think that's one of the ways to deter also the military expansion or aggression of an autocratic regime over the vulnerable country under the question like in the namely Taiwan. So many multiple tools of deterrence should be united to achieve this situation when you don't let this China and Russia undermine the liberal world order. Of course, one topic unity will not be able to do that. There is multiple approaches needed to be found. Great, I welcome using the famous two-finger sign if any of our panelists wish to jump in, build upon or respond to a comment made by one of your fellow panelists. Turning to Ash, there are three D10 related questions. Let me go through them all very quickly and they're all interconnected. The concern about a deep 10 is that it will include unstable and fragile democracies and countries that are increasingly autocratic such as India at the top of the table, according to one question post. Should one of the first tasks of those advocating for a leak or D10 be to promote action to a backsliding rather than creating a club based on economic power. And then the two other questions are very short ones. I'd like to hear more on Ash's take about which nations in the G7 objected to the D10 and why? And finally, why should democracies of the global south wish to join a group dominated by rich countries like those being proposed in the D10 or D11? Ash? Yeah, good questions. Let me take them on here. First with regard to the question posed about who's objecting to the D10 and why this is from John Davenport. Good to hear from him. So the concerns about expanding the G7 to a D10 basically stem around kind of two major concerns. One is would it detract from the effectiveness that the G7 currently poses because it is relatively like-minded. It consists of like-minded powers who at least share a history of cooperation and a kind of sense of maintaining cooperation on certain issues. If you start to expand that group, do you bring in others who might be less like-minded when it comes to say dealing with questions and challenges posed by Russia and China? Is South Korea going to change that dynamic? Would India in the picture change the way the G7 tackles questions about Russia? There are legitimate questions that have been raised about the impact of broadening the group. And then relatedly, there are others who are concerned about the optics of a D10 that expands to Asia-Pacific powers and then starts to look like it's an alliance against China more than just a construct that brings together democracies. This relates to another question about polarization and would groups like this, would polarize the international community? So that is another question that others in the G7 have raised. And I think because of those issues unresolved, the D10 concept sort of remains open. In terms of addressing those questions, I think they apply both to the D10 as well as the Alliance of Democracies concept. Would it polarize the international system? The reality is that the international system is already becoming polarized on its own. It's now more of a question of how do we, the democracies react to that polarization? China and Russia are taking actions that are undermining democratic norms and coercing using coercion against democratic partners. Does the rest of the international community to do the democracies, let this happen and try to deal with it individually, country by country or do we somehow coalesce? To come up with a common approach to dealing with these challenges. And that's what the D10 and an Alliance of Democracies wouldn't be about. It's not about trying to create a confrontation with these powers or to undermine cooperation in other venues. The UN will remain a place to go for dealing with issues like nuclear proliferation and climate change and other global challenges, pandemics where there has to be cooperation with a lot of countries, including China and Russia. So it doesn't replace that system. It layers that system with others where we can go when we can't get cooperation through that venue. And then finally, with regard to just very quickly on the question of why would countries like India and the Global South wanna be part of the D10 or part of an Alliance of Democracies? I think the answer is pretty clear. They share many of these countries that are democracies. They share the same concerns. This gives them a platform for influence to shape decisions and policies. And it allows for, again, this kind of cohesive approach to dealing with challenges rather than going after them country by country. There's more to say on these topics, but I know we're out of time, so I'll stop there. Thank you, Ashton. I wish to give the final word to Didier. But to build upon what I see as a central theme in today's discussion, maybe why he chose this outstanding group of panelists that Didier, the D10 idea, could you see that idea that Titsiana made earlier of a group of concentric circles, the Alliance for Democracies being even larger force than the D10? And then on the way to your vision for a security community of democracies. Now, I got two other related questions. Just feel free to choose one or two of these questions to respond to in wrapping up today's discussion. But one of them by a colleague is that is a security community of democracies could be only the first step in a longer-term process, building on these concentric circles, perhaps. Could you say a few words about where this process might lead in the future? And then finally, a wonderful question by John Vlasto, who's the chair of the executive team for the World Federalist Movement, which has been around as people know since World War II. Is there a risk that any organization of democracies will generate a non-democratic opposition? And so hinder global cooperation on urgent challenges such as the climate crisis. So, Didier, get the prerogative. Choose which of any of these you may wish to respond to. Yes, on the last one, I agree with what Ash has said and that there is unfortunately already a competition and we need to organize it. On the question of the larger vision, and first of all, I completely subscribe to this idea of an ecology. We are talking about one particular organization which is a defense alliance, but it can be one element of other element in an ecosystem of organizations that allow democracies to collaborate. All of them, though, do face one challenge and that's where the long-term vision, if we can finish with that. And that is global democracy. We are talking about protecting democracy at the national level a lot, but I think that we should recognize that all these global challenges like the pandemic climate change are really challenges that affect everybody. They are global organizations that do public policy around them. And from a perspective of fairness, I think it is important to say that these decisions, the global decisions that affect everybody should be made democratically as well. So that means having a community of democracies itself being democratic. And India has almost twice as many people as the European Union and the United States combined. Why shouldn't we have twice as many votes as them? And I know this is very revolutionary in a sense, but it's also a very common sense. I believe we cannot be pro-democracy and at the same time oppose this idea of global democracy. Now, this is a huge challenge, sharing power. And I believe that's the challenge of the 21st century and to the earlier question about what would incentivize countries like India or South Africa to join such an organization. Again, I agree with Ash that there are some self-interest that will lead them there anyway, but they will want to have a real voice and a voice commensurate with the weight in the world. And so rich countries will have to learn to share power democratically with the poor nations. I'll leave it with that big thought. Thank you, No. Powerful words to conclude on. Thank you so much, Didier. Thanks to all of our panelists, Tiziana, John, Ash, Merriam and Didier for your thoughtful contributions to today's discussion. Like to thank our organizers, members of the Coalition for World Security Community, especially Didier and his colleague, Chris Hammer, for organizing today's program. And finally, a special thanks to all of you for joining and contributing your thoughts both in the chat function and excellent questions post. Sorry, I know we didn't get to get to all of them, but it shows what a rich and robust discussion this is. We do want to conclude by wishing of course, season's greetings this time of year. I hope that everybody will follow the big summit for democracy next week and look forward to staying in touch on these critical issues. Thank you once again. Bye-bye. Thank you.