The White House held the second "Summit for Democracy" on March 29. In addition to the United States, the conference was co-hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Zambia, and South Korea. The summit raised many questions such as a country that is rife with various irregularities and corruption and extreme human rights violations holding such a meeting. Then there's the question of how democratic is this American democracy summit?

The summit is one of Biden's campaign promises ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Biden organized the first summit in 2021. 112 countries around the world and about 750 delegates were invited to attend it. This time, 120 countries were invited, including eight new ones. It is claimed that the main goal of the summit is to protect the world's democratic institutions, resist authoritarian rule, fight corruption, and uphold human rights.

When this summit was organized for the first time, questions arose. Because it was unclear what criteria were used to select the countries to participate in that conference. No rationale was found for the selection of participating countries. According to analysts, military-political relations, geopolitical calculations, and strategic support were given more importance in the invitation. In addition, most of the invited countries didn't qualify to meet the three criteria, or topics, that were the main goals of the summit. So, the summit was considered a tool for US global dominance. It is the politics of favoring countries in the name of democracy.

The US regards China as its main adversary. There is also the "old enemy", Russia. Both these countries were excluded from the invite. But Taiwan, a province of China, was invited. Ukraine was also invited. China said that "democracy" was being used as a "weapon of mass destruction" by the US. The real objective is to create a situation of "division" and "conflict" around the world.

The role of the United States in today's world is not unknown. Sometimes they overthrow the government through a civil war, sometimes through direct aggression, and sometimes through a military coup. Therefore, it sounds ridiculous when they talk about democracy and human rights. According to analysts, US leaders are using claims like democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech as weapons to protect their military, political, and economic influence and to hide their misdeeds.

The leading role of the United States bears witness to its anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian character. Especially in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, and many other countries, they have directly violated human rights. The US and its allies have not been able to ensure the security of people's normal lives, let alone human rights or democracy, in these countries. So, the question for millions of peace-loving people around the world is: how can such a country be a defender of democracy and human rights?

Many analysts agree that US democracy is deeply flawed and currently under grave threat. There were allegations of massive rigging in the last presidential election, creating public doubt and disbelief about the results. 68 percent of Trump's supporters and a large portion of the opposing Republican Party believe that Trump was the real winner and President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party came to power through rigging and fraud. That is why Republican supporters attacked the US Capitol on the day Biden was confirmed as president, an unprecedented move in the 200-year history of America.

Political analysts claim that the US is no longer a real democracy. For the past few years, there have been negative reports about the country's democracy. The London-based Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2022 was recently published. The United States is on the list of countries with flawed democracies in this index. Biden's country ranks 30th in the index's flawed democracy category, four places lower than the previous year. According to the EIU report, this is due to a decline in people's trust in political institutions, an essential component of a well-functioning democratic system. Pew, Gallup, and other polling organizations have also confirmed that people's trust in the US government has fallen to historic lows.

The author is a researcher and Strategic affairs analyst, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

If you have a specific expertise, or would like to share your thought about our stories, then send us your writings at [email protected], and [email protected].