'Summit' seen undermining democracy

The United States' "Summit for Democracy" has nothing to do with democracy at all. It is just another way for the US to expand its hegemony. The recent democracy summit showcased the White House administration's widely criticized "democracy versus authoritarianism" geopolitical strategy to divide countries against one another.

Voices are growing within the country about how undemocratic the US actually is. "It's entirely geopolitical," political-economic analyst Lawrence Freeman said. "They have a geopolitical doctrine that the United States has to be No 1."

"It's very hypocritical to act like the US has the authority to decide this part of the world is democratic," US political activist Medea Benjamin said. "That's not the way the world should work."

Its list of co-hosts is a great example of hypocrisy. South Korea, the Netherlands, Zambia and Costa Rica are co-hosts of the event. The four countries are from four continents, and each represents the US' growing push to counter China.

By inviting the Netherlands to co-host the event, the US wants to rally the country into backing its chip competition with China. The Netherlands was not happy when the US pressured ASML to stop its shipping of high-tech chipmaking machines to China.

South Korea is also critical in the US' chip alliance against China. The country is an important pillar for US President Joe Biden to revive the US pivot to East Asia.

China has helped build roads and other vital infrastructure in Costa Rica and Zambia, but the US is keen to expand its influence over these countries.

Days before the summit, the US released a report attacking human rights conditions in countries around the world, except one — the US itself. The hypocritical report received widespread backlash.

"The report is out, nothing in it stands out. Except for the breathtaking hypocrisy of America," reported Indian news program Vantage.

In the name of promoting US-style democracy, the US has imposed unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction in Cuba, Syria and Zimbabwe. It even invaded Iraq, a country that posed no threat to the US. Over 1 million Iraqis were killed in the past two decades as a result.

"The US has taken so many illegal acts against other governments for so many years, overthrowing democratic governments, interfering in the internal affairs, imposing oppressive sanctions on countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Syria that create tremendous devastation inside those countries and lead to poverty and it's destroying people's standard of living. These are very undemocratic moves that the United States is taking," Benjamin said.

How the US sees the world today consists of grand moral declarations that divide the world into black or white, friends or foes, or their so-called democracy or authoritarianism. All this evokes the inertia of an aging empire. Today, insular elites operate by mouthing rhetoric that distracts the domestic audience from the real issues they face at home. These elites are unable and unwilling to accept that the world out there is rapidly changing.