Everything wrong with Biden's democracy summit: Financial Times

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Financial Times
29 Mar 2023 23:47
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according to FT, The first and most obvious of all reasons is the embarrassing guestlist of speakers that are invited to speak at the virtual summit.

President Joe Biden speaks during a Summit for Democracy virtual plenary in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Wednesday, March 29, 2023, in Washington (AP)

On Wednesday, the Financial Times published an op-ed written by Edward Luce, listing some of the many reasons why US President Joe Biden's summit was manifestly 'awkward'.

According to the report, the first and most obvious of all reasons is the guestlist of speakers that are invited to speak at the virtual summit.

Among the guest speakers included India's Modi who has recently jailed opposition leader Rahul Gandhi under fabricated allegations and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has triggered nationwide unrest within the settler population over his judicial overhaul.

Not to mention the US' horrifying record in the MENA region. Needless to say, it has successfully conducted a grand project of destroying the entire Arab civilization under the banner of freedom and liberal democracy.

Even Syria, as it remains the last-standing secular republic in the region, is enduring the plight of ongoing US occupation in its northern territories.

The report states, citing V-Dem, a Swedish-based research institute, that almost three-quarters of the world's population is now living in autocracies to less than five years ago.

Although the institute describes this shift as a "democratic recession," a simple glance at the US military past is enough of an explanation to account for such a 'regression'.

The report further hypothesizes that if Russia was a liberal democracy, the conflict in Ukraine would have never happened, noting that spreading democracy is in the US national interest. But that is very far from true.

One may recall the innumerable coups orchestrated by the CIA, including the dismemberment of Congo's Patrice Lumumba, the orchestrated murder of Chile's democratically elected Salvador Allende, as well as Indonesia's Sukarno.

The report argues that the only unqualified success in US democracy promotion was the Marshall Plan for postwar Europe. This is true since both share a history of colonizing and exploiting the Global South under the banner of modernization.

We should instead seek to hear what the Global South thinks of democracy, the report asks. Judging by their UN voting record, it is clear to see that very few care about the conflict in Ukraine.

This is not only exemplified by the Global South's resistance to western sanctions against Russia but there have been numerous cases where countries chose to fully align with Russia, going as far as kicking out western entities in their territories, including in Mali and Burkina Faso who have both got rid of French troops.

Russia has had a positive impact on Africa. This was not only made through the exportation of grains and fertilizers to deprived countries but also with military assistance to combat terrorist forces that have been plaguing the region for decades.

As summed up in the report, "when the west can be bothered to listen, the global south’s consistent refrain is for more dollars to help their shift to clean energy, better infrastructure, and modern healthcare. Which of the two great powers, China or the US, helps the most and is likeliest to shape their political future and foreign policy alignment. One of the by-products of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it has brought this pressing question to the fore."

The US has been in a race to catch up with China's growing net of relations across the global south, which it has termed a threat to US national security and interests.

People may have let go of the right to vote in exchange for the bag of wheat in recent years. However, that does not necessarily mean that democracy is far from reach in countries of the Global South. What is certain, however, is that a shift towards a multipolar world is currently taking place, and in this process, states are beginning to forge more reliance upon their own resources and workforce.