Editorial of the “World”. Campaign pledges do not only engage those who receive them. Joe Biden had the uncomfortable experience with the virtual summit for democracy organized by the United States on December 9 and 10. It was announced with fanfare in a column published in the spring of 2020 by the review Foreign Affairs, which took the place of the Democratic candidate’s foreign policy statement. However, this summit turned out to be a model of a false good idea. To the point that the American administration was satisfied with the minimum service (criticism of bad governance, praise of the work of the press) on a question however crucial since everywhere or almost democracy is in retreat, attacked and weakened.
The guest list betrayed the American embarrassment. Washington’s regional interests test often prevailed over the nature of the regimes invited, at least a third of which left something to be desired, according to the ranking by Freedom House, a state-funded liberal democracy observatory in the world. by the Federal State of the United States. Thus the Democratic Republic of Congo or Brazil were among the deserving, but neither Turkey nor Tunisia.
It would be easy to ironize about this questionable selectivity and mock the agreed litany of long-distance speeches that the summit gave rise to as a preamble to a gathering of heads of state and government to be held in 2022, perhaps. -to be. Two symbols of the authoritarian temptation that works in many countries, China and Russia, which were obviously not invited, did not deprive themselves of it.
Clan curl
But it is much more cruel to see how the United States, once ambassadors of liberal democracy, is now in a bad position to lecture anyone. Four years of Donald Trump, a great admirer of strong men, have indeed accelerated a worrying decline whose end we do not see.
The confession of this decrepitude by Joe Biden himself, admitting that his country had to “Fight tirelessly to live up to its democratic ideals”, was all the more striking. Much like that of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who agreed that the United States was arguably “The best place to hide and launder fraudulently acquired earnings”, during a session devoted to the poison of corruption.
Recognition of this reality, especially on the part of a power that is often not frugal in its self-sufficiency, constitutes an essential prerequisite of which only democracies are precisely capable. But there is nothing encouraging about it.
The threats weighing on these regimes open to bad winds are to be found in the clan shrinking which feeds the rejection of standards. In contempt of the opposing powers attacked everywhere, whether it is justice or journalism. Unfortunately, these mistakes are all at work in the United States, most often at the initiative of the Grand Old Party, that founded by Abraham Lincoln and today in reverse. It largely contributes to tampering (purges of electoral lists, obstacles to the voting of minorities) and electoral slaughter, all produced on an industrial scale.
The scale of this American breakdown is hampering Joe Biden in his quest for an answer to the democratic woes experienced in his country as in many others. There is no reason to be happy about it.