By Zhang Shuhua (Global Times, 31 October 2021) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently stated his support for the island of Taiwan’s “meaningful participation throughout the UN system.” Besides, his statement sensationalized Taiwan as “a democratic success story.” Some anticipate that as the global summit for democracy to be hosted by the Biden administration approaches, the US will tout the so-called values at top volume.
For the past few decades, the US-style democratic model was viewed as panacea. Nonetheless, the various chaos generated by the US-style politics in recent years makes the world see the dark side of US democracy – social divisions, democratic deficits, governance failures, political dysfunction, political confrontation and so on.
Since the end of the Cold War, the political chaos of Western-style democracy has become the origin of the world’s political disorder. The Western countries’ accelerated democratic export didn’t bring democracy to their targets. They left unrest. Even within the West, the generalization of democracy and the governance deficit has led to problems.
To promote power politics and legitimatize their overseas intervention, as early as the 1990s, some American scholars tried to launch the idea of a concert of democracies. They called for the establishment of a league of democracies while abandoning the UN.
But decades later, the US still hasn’t managed to paint the whole world with the same color. The difference is: The US that used to stay behind the curtain has come to the front stage. But it is no longer widely echoed. The US’ hostile campaign against China and Russia will eventually end as a political farce.
The ideas such as “clash of civilizations” conflated by some US think tanks in the past years were meant to cover US tricks of power politics and intervention. As the Trump administration’s bullying failed, the Biden administration now is trying to veneer itself with banners of democracy, human rights and freedom. Washington’s attempt to build values-based democratic alliance is actually ripping the world. This will not bring back glory but push the world to the brink of abyss.
More ironically, in a poll commissioned by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation among 50,000 people in 53 countries, issued in May this year, nearly half (44 percent) of respondents were concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government has been busy making political manipulations, and turning a blind eye to people’s lives and health. Washington’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has further made people see how many tragedies the US had created. They can see the turbulence made by US-style democratization in other countries, and how hypocritical US-style freedom, democracy and human rights are.
In the first half of 2021, reports from multiple European news outlets claim that Denmark’s secret services cooperated with US spying on European politicians. The case clearly shows that the US is a direct threat to European democracies.
The decline of US hegemony and the decline of the West is undoubtedly a watershed in the development of world history. At this once-in-a-century historical juncture, we have seen that a new world political landscape is about to be born.
The author is director of the Institute of Information Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. [email protected]