Skip to main content
×
Blacklisted Listed News Logo
Menu - Navigation
Menu - Navigation

Cited Sources

2nd Smartest Guy in the World
2nd Amendment Shirts
10th Amendment Center
Aaron Mate
Activist Post
AIER
Aletho News
Ammo.com
AmmoLand
Alliance for Natural Health, The
Alt-Market
American Free Press
Antiwar
Armstrong Economics
Art of Liberty
AUTOMATIC EARTH, The
Ben Bartee
Benny Wills
Big League Politics
Black Vault, The
BOMBTHROWER
Brandon Turbeville
Breaking Defense
Breitbart
Brownstone Institute
Burning Platform, The
Business Insider
Business Week
Caitlin Johnstone
Campus Reform
CAPITALIST EXPLOITS
Charles Hugh Smith
Children's Health Defense
CHRISTOPHE BARRAUD
Chris Wick
CIAgate
Citizen Free Press
Citizens for Legit Gov.
CNN Money
Collective Evolution
Common Dreams
Conscious Resistance Network
Corbett Report
Counter Signal, The
Cryptogon
Cryptome
Daily Bell, The
Daily Reckoning, The
Daily Veracity
DANERIC'S ELLIOTT WAVES
Dark Journalist
David Haggith
Defense Industry Daily
Defense Link
Defense One
Dennis Broe
DOLLAR COLLAPSE
DR. HOUSING BUBBLE
Dr. Robert Malone
Drs. Wolfson
Drudge Report
Economic Collapse, The
ECONOMIC POPULIST, The
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Ellen Brown
Emerald Robinson
Expose, The
F. William Engdahl
FAIR
Farm Wars
Faux Capitalist
FINANCIAL REVOLUTIONIST
Forbes
Foreign Policy Journal
FOREXLIVE
Foundation For Economic Freedom
Free Thought Project, The
From Behind Enemy Lines
From The Trenches
FUNDIST
Future of Freedom Foundation
Futurism
GAINS PAINS & CAPITAL
GEFIRA
Geopolitical Monitor
Glenn Greenwald
Global Research
Global Security
GM RESEARCH
GOLD CORE
Grayzone, The
Great Game India
Guadalajara Geopolitics
Helen Caldicott
Homeland Sec. Newswire
Human Events
I bank Coin
IEEE
IMPLODE-EXPLODE
Information Clearing House
Information Liberation
Infowars
Insider Paper
Intel News
Intercept, The
Jane's
Jay's Analysis
Jeff Rense
John Adams
John Pilger
John W. Whitehead
Jonathan Cook
Jon Rappoport
Jordan Schachtel
Just The News
Kevin Barret
Kitco
Last American Vagabond, The
Lew Rockwell
Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
Libertarian Institute, The
Libertas Bella
LIBERTY BLITZKRIEG
LIBERTY Forcast
Liberty Unyielding
Market Oracle
Market Watch
Maryanne Demasi
Matt Taibbi
Medical Express
Media Monarchy
Mercola
Michael Snyder
Michael Tracey
Middle East Monitor
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
Military Info Tech
Mind Unleashed, The
Mint Press
MISES INSTITUTE
Mises Wire
MISH TALK
Money News
Moon of Alabama
Motherboard
My Budget 360
Naked Capitalism
Natural News
New American, The
New Eastern Outlook
News Deck
New World Next Week
Nicholas Creed
OF TWO MINDS
Off-Guardian
Oil Price
OPEN THE BOOKS
Organic Prepper, The
PANDEMIC: WAR ROOM
PETER SCHIFF
Phantom Report
Pierre Kory
Political Vigilante
Public Intelligence
Rair
Reclaim The Net
Revolver
Richard Dolan
Right Turn News
Rokfin
RTT News
Rutherford Institute
SAFEHAVEN
SAKER, The
Shadow Stats
SGT Report
Shadowproof
Slay News
Slog, The
SLOPE OF HOPE
Solari
South Front
Sovereign Man
Spacewar
spiked
SPOTGAMMA
Steve Kirsch
Steve Quayle
Strange Sounds
Strike The Root
Summit News
Survival Podcast, The
Tech Dirt
Technocracy News
Techno Fog
Terry Wahls, M.D.
TF METALS REPORT
THEMIS TRADING
Tom Renz
True Activist
unlimited hangout
UNREDACTED
Unreported Truths
Unz Review, The
VALUE WALK
Vigilant Citizen
Voltaire
Waking Times
Wall Street Journal
Wallstreet on Parade
Wayne Madsen
What Really Happened
Whitney Webb
winter oak
Wolf Street
Zero Hedge

Why Democracies in G7 & NATO Should Reject U.S. Leadership 

Published: June 15, 2021 | Print Friendly and PDF
  Gab
Share

 
Photo credit: BPM Media - Protest at G7 summit in Cornwall UK
 
The world has been treated to successive spectacles of national leaders gathering at a G7 Summit in Cornwall and a NATO Summit in Brussels.
 
The U.S. corporate media have portrayed these summits as chances for President Biden to rally the leaders of the world’s democratic nations in a coordinated response to the most serious problems facing the world, from the COVID pandemic, climate change and global inequality to ill-defined “threats to democracy” from Russia and China.
 
But there’s something seriously wrong with this picture. Democracy means “rule by the people.” While that can take different forms in different countries and cultures, there is a growing consensus in the United States that the exceptional power of wealthy Americans and corporations to influence election results and government policies has led to a de facto system of government that fails to reflect the will of the American people on many critical issues. 
 
So when President Biden meets with the leaders of democratic countries, he represents a country that is, in many ways, an undemocratic outlier rather than a leader among democratic nations. This is evident in:
 
- the “legalized bribery” of 2020’s $14.4 billion federal election, compared with recent elections in Canada and the U.K. that cost less than 1% of that, under strict rules that ensure more democratic results; 
 
- a defeated President proclaiming baseless accusations of fraud and inciting a mob to invade the U.S. Congress on January 6 2021;
 
- news media that have been commercialized, consolidated, gutted and dumbed down by their corporate owners, making Americans easy prey for misinformation by unscrupulous interest groups, and leaving the U.S. in 44th place on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index; 
 
- the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with over two million people behind bars, and systemic police violence on a scale never seen in other wealthy nations; 
 
- the injustice of extreme inequality, poverty and cradle-to-grave debt for millions in an otherwise wealthy nation; 
 
- an exceptional lack of economic and social mobility compared to other wealthy countries that is the antithesis of the mythical “American Dream”; 
 
- privatized, undemocratic and failing education and healthcare systems; 
 
- a recent history of illegal invasions, massacres of civilians, torture, drone assassinations, extraordinary renditions and indefinite detention at Guantanamo—with no accountabllity;
 
- and, last but not least, a gargantuan war machine capable of destroying the world, in the hands of this dysfunctional political system. 
 
Fortunately though, Americans are not the only ones asking what is wrong with American democracy. The Alliance of Democracies Foundation (ADF), founded by former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conducted a poll of 50,000 people in 53 countries between February and April 2021, and found that people around the world share our concerns about America’s dystopian political system and imperial outrages.
 
Probably the most startling result of the poll to Americans would be its finding that more people around the world (44%) see the United States as a threat to democracy in their countries than China (38%) or Russia (28%), which makes nonsense of U.S. efforts to justify its revived Cold War on Russia and China in the name of democracy. 
 
In a larger poll of 124,000 people that ADF conducted in 2020, countries where large majorities saw the United States as a danger to democracy included China, but also Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, France, Greece, Belgium, Sweden and Canada.
 
After tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, Biden swooped into Brussels on Air Force One for a NATO summit to advance its new “Strategic Concept,” which is nothing more than a war plan for World War III against both Russia and China. 
 
But we take solace from evidence that the people of Europe, whom the NATO war plan counts on as front-line troops and mass casualty victims, are not ready to follow President Biden to war. A January 2021 survey by the European Council on Foreign Affairs found that large majorities of Europeans want to remain neutral in any U.S. war on Russia or China. Only 22% would want their country to take the U.S. side in a war on China, and 23% in a war on Russia.
 
Few Americans realize that Biden already came close to war with Russia in March and April, when the United States and NATO supported a new Ukrainian offensive in its civil war against Russian-allied separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Russia moved tens of thousands of heavily-armed troops to its borders with Ukraine, to make it clear that it was ready to defend its Ukrainian allies and was quite capable of doing so. On April 13th, Biden blinked, turned round two U.S. destroyers that were steaming into the Black Sea and called Putin to request the summit that is now taking place.  
 
The antipathy of ordinary people everywhere toward the U.S. determination to provoke military confrontation with Russia and China begs serious questions about the complicity of their leaders in these incredibly dangerous, possibly suicidal, U.S. policies. When ordinary people all over the world can see the dangers and pitfalls of following the United States as a model and a leader, why do their neoliberal leaders keep showing up to lend credibility to the posturing of U.S. leaders at summits like the G7 and NATO?
 
Maybe it is precisely because the United States has succeeded in what the corporate ruling classes of other nations also aspire to, namely greater concentrations of wealth and power and less public interference in their “freedom” to accumulate and control them. 
 
Maybe the leaders of other wealthy countries and military powers are genuinely awed by the dystopian American Dream as the example par excellence of how to sell inequality, injustice and war to the public in the name of freedom and democracy. 
 
In that case, the fact that people in other wealthy countries are not so easily led to war or lured into political passivity and impotence would only increase the awe of their leaders for their American counterparts, who literally laugh all the way to the bank as they pay lip service to the sanctity of the American Dream and the American People.
 
Ordinary people in other countries are right to be wary of the Pied Piper of American “leadership,” but their rulers should be too. The fracturing and disintegration of American society should stand as a warning to neoliberal governments and ruling classes everywhere to be more careful what they wish for. 
 
Instead of a world in which other countries emulate or fall victim to America’s failed experiment in extreme neoliberalism, the key to a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous future for all the world’s people, including Americans, lies in working together, learning from each other and adopting policies that serve the public good and improve the lives of all, especially those most in need. There’s a name for that. It’s called democracy.
 
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran
 
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

TOP TRENDING ARTICLES


PLEASE DISABLE AD BLOCKER TO VIEW DISQUS COMMENTS

Ad Blocking software disables some of the functionality of our website, including our comments section for some browsers.


Trending Now



BlackListed News 2006-2023
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service