Biden's phony, ornamental, democracy summit
Nations make pacts with the devil to advance their immediate interests
President Joe Biden today is co-hosting a second Summit for Democracy with Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, and the Republic of Zambia. The Summit assumes the preposterous: that leaders of democracy have been secretly hiding elixirs that will improve democratic governance for the opportunity to share them on a world stage like a peacock strutting with its polychromatic feathers. We live in the digital age. There is no shortage of electronic avenues for instant transmission or discussion of new ideas.
The ornamental nature of the Summit for Democracy devoid of ideas is corroborated by the virtual absence of any mainstream media coverage. How can news stories be written about bromides or platitudes like the sun will rise in the east and set in the west tomorrow?
The fundamental postulate of the Summit for Democracy is wrong, i.e., that democratic countries are allies and opponents of non-democratic countries. Nothing is more common than democratic countries making pacts with the devil to advance their own, perceived national interests.
The United States allied with despotic France during the Revolutionary War against Great Britain, then the most democratic nation on the planet. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain showcased a conflict between the two most democratic nations in the world. Among other things, during the war the United States appealed for help from Czarist Russia.
The United States fought on the side of Russia, notwithstanding its nauseating pogroms, during World War I.
The United States allied with Joe Stalin’s murderous Soviet Union during World War II to defeat Nazi German, notwithstanding Stalin’s earlier invasions of Finland, Poland, and Romania in cahoots with Adolf Hitler. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill followed suit, declaring: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons."
President Franklin Roosevelt captured the cynicism of international relations in explaining his friendly relations with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia: “He [Somoza] may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.”
The United States approved Portugal, then governed by dictator Antonio Salazar, as a charter member of NATO to obtain access to the Azores Islands. We engaged in the overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in favor of the corrupt, megalomaniacal Shah of Iran to help the British continue access to discounted Anglo-Iranian Oil Company oil. Ditto in Guatemala in overthrowing democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in favor of genocidal, military reptiles.
In 1956, the United States betrayed Hungary’s democrats by idling while the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Revolution that we fomented.
The United States cozied up to Communist China with Chairman Mao Zedung at the helm under President Richard Nixon to oppose the Soviet Union despite Mao’s criminal culpability in as many as 100 million deaths.
We toppled democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende to embrace military dictator Augusto Pinochet guided by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s cynicism, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to irresponsibility of its own people.”
Today, the United States maintains warm relations with a motor case of nations notorious for human rights atrocities: Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Nigeria’s Muhammed Buhari, UAE’s Mohammad bin Zayed, Egypt’s Abdel El-Sisi, and Bahrain’s Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to participate in the Summit for Democracy as he is taking a wrecking ball to an independent judiciary in his own country.
All nations at all times act out of perceived self-interest to aggrandize power. They are not charitable or philanthropic or philosophical organizations. One sentence captures all of international relations from the beginning of time as expressed by Thucydides, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
President Biden, Get real!
The US should have affirmed the rules-based-order by attacking pipelines in all the participating foreign states.... just to show what friendship is.