By Gustavo A. Maranges on December 2, 2021 from Havana
graphic: Lu Rui/GT
A huge event is about to happen in Washington on December 9th and 10th. The Summit for Democracy was announced in late August, and just a few days ago, the United States President Joe Biden announced the invitees to this virtual meeting. According to the State Department, the main three topics will be: defense against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. World leaders from 110 countries are supposed to announce specific actions and commitments to internal reforms in order to enhance democratic practices within their nations.
If it is the case, Biden will have to make a lot of commitments with the international community, and it does not seem likely that he will be making any mea culpas. He will have to talk about the thousands of poor and black people, whose right to vote has been repeatedly and historically violated in the United States. He should also commit himself to transform the US police, which is responsible for the death of thousands of people and has a sinister record of repression and human rights violations. If those things ever happen, the Summit would be a success, at least for the American people.
The fact that the US government is organizing this event is ironic. A government that decades after decades has been fostering coups all over Latin America, has no moral high ground to give lectures about democracy. Ecuador (2010), Venezuela (2002 and 2017), Nicaragua (2018), Bolivia (2019), and Cuba show the kind of actions implemented by the United States to enhance democracy as they define it. Destabilization campaigns and even coups d’état are the most common techniques, whose only purpose is to bring down truly democratically elected governments.
The problem here is that the United States has a very particular concept of democracy, which only comprises those governments that strictly follow Washington’s commands and sides with the transnational right’s interests and is always looking out for the advancement of the neo liberal model of misery. Maybe this is the reason why the governments we mentioned above were not invited, except for Ecuador. Coincidence? I do not think so. Fortunately, countries like Mexico, Peru, and Argentina will attend, which gives us some hope for the truth to come out.
The real objective of the Summit is to divide the political forces around the world, creating differences among nations, like it was during the Cold War. The Roman Empires was very good at it: “divide and rule.” China and Russia were not invited to the Summit. The Ambassadors of both countries to the United States issued a joint note asking Biden to stop plotting against international stability. The State Department invited Taiwan and not the People’s Republic of China, which is a clear message to Beijing, meaning that the White House is not aiming to have a normal relationship with the Asian Giant. The same thing happened with Russia, which did not look favorably to the invitations sent to some of its neighbors, especially Ukraine.
There are many opinions about the members of the select list of invitees, but after reviewing it, we are sure that “high democracy standards” were not the criteria taken into account. Brazil, Colombia, and Chile are among the ones attending. These three countries have serious problems of corruption and Human Rights violations to the core. We only need to take a look at President Jair Bolsonaro’s most recent corruption scandal related to COIVD-19 vaccines purchased in Brazil or to go back in time until 2018, when the Carabineros (Chilean police) shot over 400 people directly to the eyes and left them blind or partially blind. Biden does not want anybody to dissent, he just wants a choir backing United States hegemonic foreign policy. What we will see publicly will just be the surface of Washington’s arm twisting and threats that will take place in the back chat rooms.
Another interesting aspect of the summit is the fight against authoritarianism. People think that this phenomenon is only related to political leaders wanting to concentrate power in their hands, but this is a much wider issue. Authoritarianism is not only about people, but the financial and economic interests, which are the real dictators in many “democratic” countries. Neoliberalism is far away from being democratic when it ignores people’s basic needs and prioritizes capital interests. Politicians, institutions, people’s votes are only a facade because everything is fixed to obey the logic and needs of capitalism. If this logic is off base how is it possible that countries with so many social problems to be solved still have presidents like Bolsonaro, Sebastian Piñera, and Ivan Duque?
Sadly, we will not hear this at the summit, because it is just a show aimed at consolidating the US influence in the international arena. However, we cannot leave behind the fact that the regional context is changing and the United States is aware of it: regime change operations against Cuba and Nicaragua failed, Venezuela’s opposition lost the November 21 elections, a leftist government won the presidential elections in Honduras, Bolsonaro is teetering in Brazil, Bolivia was able to recover from the 2019 coup d’état, Mexico and Argentina are now again supporting a different kind of integration among Latin American countries, and the Organization of American States (OAS) is falling apart. Definitely, the Summit masks a desperate intent of reorganizing the regional forces to face these challenges. Therefore, out of this conference we should expect many screws will be tightened especially on the poorest countries, and many blackmails are going to brewing in our region.
This Summit for Democracy is no less than a second Bretton Woods, where the United States is only looking for better conditions and positioning to advance its capitalist authoritarianism wherever possible. Biden is looking to show the world that his campaign phrase “diplomacy is back” is more efficient than Trump’s “America first,” but in the end, they are only two different approaches to a common objective: keep its empire status at the cost the well being of millions of people in the third world.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English