中文
By Fiona Edwards
President Joe Biden's so-called "Summit for Democracy" on December 9-10 is the latest initiative in the U.S.' new cold war agenda. Under the guise of promoting "democracy" and "human rights," the U.S. is concealing the real aims of this summit, which is to divide the world and recruit new allies to join in with the dangerous U.S. offensive against China. The U.S. has absolutely no intention of "democratizing" international relations. In fact, the exact opposite is the case – the U.S. is seeking to preserve U.S. dominance in world affairs.
The real cold war character of Biden's "Summit for Democracy" was revealed in the list of those who have been invited to take part in it and those that have been excluded.
Countries that refuse to subordinate themselves to U.S. foreign policy, including China, Russia and Cuba, have of course not been invited to Biden's summit. Indeed the entire summit has been organized in order to attack such countries, particularly China, which are pursuing their own independent path.
That this is a summit to promote a cold war agenda is most strikingly confirmed by Biden's decision to exclude China but invite Taiwan, a region of China, to the summit. This decision is both provocative and a blatant attempt to intervene in China's internal affairs, violating the U.S.' stated commitment to the one-China principle, which Biden reaffirmed in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.
The U.S. is using the summit to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries too. A clear example of this is Biden's decision to invite Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan opposition politician, to the summit, but not invite the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
The U.S. administration recognizes Guaido as Venezuela's interim president despite the fact that he has never even stood in an election to be president of Venezuela. Guaido is widely despised by the Venezuelan people for repeatedly supporting U.S. intervention into his own country, including multiple violent attempts to stage a coup d'etat to remove the democratically elected government of Venezuela led by President Nicolas Maduro.
Bolivia is another country in Latin America with a democratically elected government that has not been invited to participate in Biden's "Summit for Democracy." In October 2019, the U.S. backed a violent coup against the elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who was forced into exile. After a year of mass struggle, the coup was overturned and Luis Arce was elected as president in November 2020. The U.S. administration's hostility to Bolivia's new democratically elected government continues, which is clearly reflected in the fact that it has not been invited to join Biden's Summit.
The Biden administration's attitude towards Venezuela and Bolivia is consistent with Washington's long-term foreign policy approach to Latin America and the Caribbean, which regards the entire region as the U.S.' backyard. Countries in Latin America that pursue their own sovereign independent path, instead of following U.S. dictates, are treated with the greatest hostility by the U.S. administration and subjected to intervention.
Among the countries and regions that Biden has invited to participate in the "Summit for Democracy" are allies, including Britain, which have supported and participated in the U.S.' brutal wars of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Millions of people have been killed, injured and displaced as a result of these barbaric wars that demonstrate what the U.S.' real record on "human rights" is.
It is particularly ludicrous and hypocritical for Britain to join the U.S. summit aiming to lecture China about "human rights" and "democracy" when Britain was involved in waging two Opium Wars against China and ruled as a colonial power in Hong Kong for more than 150 years. During a century and a half of British rule in Hong Kong, there were no elections of Hong Kong's governor in any form.
The U.S.' ridiculously named "Summit for Democracy" is extremely divisive and therefore dangerous. It takes place at a time when humanity urgently needs global cooperation to tackle the multiplying threats facing the world, including a pandemic that has already killed millions of people over the past two years, an economic crisis that is plunging millions of people across the world into poverty and a climate crisis which the United Nations warns could lead to a "catastrophe" for human civilization.
The cold war agenda of the U.S., which aims to deliberately create global division and not global cooperation, runs entirely counter to the interests of humanity. In fact, U.S. aggression against China is increasing international instability and creating new threats, including the threat of a new nuclear arms race and the diabolical prospect of a devastating hot war between two nuclear-armed states. It is therefore clear that the U.S.' new cold war agenda is the real threat to human rights globally.
The author is a member of the Organizing Committee of the No Cold War campaign.
