Flawed summit may backfire, experts say

US not in best place to lead as it faces 'assault' on its political institutions

Hours after US President Joe Biden convened the Summit for Democracy on Thursday, international affairs professor Stephen Walt of Harvard Kennedy School posted his article on social media that was published on news site Foreign Policy.

"For starters, it's still not clear what the ultimate objective of the gathering is. Is it supposed to yield tangible results ... or is it going to be a talk-fest that eventually issues some pious proclamations but generates little substance?" wrote Walt in his opinion piece titled "Biden's Democracy Summit Could Backfire".

"This is an important question because the real way to sell democracy－as Biden, himself, has stated－is to show that democratic societies can outperform autocratic alternatives," he noted. "Unfortunately, the United States is not in the best position to lead this effort right now."

Walt cited the Economist Intelligence Unit 2020 democracy index, which downgraded the US to the category "flawed democracy" before former president Donald Trump was elected, saying that "nothing has happened to reverse that status".

"On the contrary: One of the US' two major political parties still refuses to accept that the 2020 presidential election was legitimate and is working overtime to erode democratic norms and rig future elections in its favor," he wrote.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday that democracy is a value shared by the whole of mankind, instead of a tool used for advancing geopolitical strategies.

He said that the US is brazenly attempting to stoke up confrontation by dividing the world into democratic groups and nondemocratic groups with American standards.

"Such act will only bring greater turmoil and catastrophe to the world and will be strongly condemned and rejected by the international community," Wang said.

Under 'major threat'

Ashley Quarcoo, a nonresident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program, also noted that the US faces a "continuing assault" on its own democratic institutions.

"The Biden administration has not been able to stem the emergence of anti-democratic forces in the US," said Quarcoo in a summit preview posted on the Carnegie website on Monday.

She noted that 19 US states have passed laws that will make it more difficult for citizens to vote, and cited the October results of the Grinnell College National Poll, which found that 52 percent of respondents believe that US democracy is under "major threat".

An earlier survey also follows a similar trend. A CNN poll, conducted from Aug 3 to Sept 7, asked 2,119 respondents how they see the state of US democracy, and 56 percent chose the option "American democracy is under attack" to best describe their view.

In a November statement, Fernand de Varennes, United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues, pointed out that ethnic minorities in the US have long been deprived of the right to vote.

"Citizens in US territories (including Guam and Puerto Rico, which I visited) cannot vote in presidential elections. American Samoans cannot vote in any event because they are not considered US citizens－even if they are American 'nationals'," he said.

De Varennes paid a visit to the US from Nov 8 to 22 to assess the human rights situation of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities in the country.

The expert also expressed his concerns at sentencing disparities and incarceration rates for minorities in the criminal justice system.

"I have been informed that minorities such as African Americans and Latinx in particular find themselves disproportionally at the receiving end of marginalization and criminalization that crushes them into a generational cycle of poverty, with a legal system that is structurally set up to advantage and forgive those who are wealthier, and penalizing those who are poorer, particularly minorities of color."

Liu Xuan and Mo Jingxi in Beijing contributed to this story.