Joe Biden, the Ultimate American Snake-Oil Salesman

The second Summit for Democracy kicks off in Washington, DC today, with President Joe Biden gathering representatives from around 120 countries vision of in hopes of breathing life into his vision “restoring” American leadership on the world stage after four years of Donald Trump

According to the US State Department, Biden’s American vision seeks to “prove democracy still works and can improve people’s lives in tangible ways,” adding that “democracies have to come together—to rejuvenate and improve our open, rights-respecting societies from within; to stand together in defending against threats from autocracies; and to show we can address the most pressing crises of our time.”

It is notable that two NATO allies—Turkey and Hungary—are absent from the list of invited nations.

The Summit for Democracy is, in fact, anything but. Genuine democracy is a by product of the domestic political realities of a sovereign state, where its constituent population builds institutions and values derived from their own collective experiences.

The American vision of “democracy” being promulgated by the Biden administration, however, ignores this reality. What the Biden administration is seeking to do is to further the span of control of what it calls the “rules based international order”, an unwritten “standard” imposed by the United States in the aftermath of the Second World War which, at one time, was seen as the necessary mechanism for which to oversee global post-conflict reconstruction efforts, but which eventually was used a the means for sustaining American economic, political, and military hegemony over the world.

Like any “system”, the rules based international order requires an antagonist from which it can generate the fear necessary to compel people and nations to rally to its cause. In the aftermath of the Second World War, this antagonist was the forces of international communism embodied in the form of the Soviet Union and Communist China. When the Cold War ended, rather than adapt the rules based international order to meet the needs of the newly-emerging multi-polar world, the US opted instead to use the cause of “democracy” as a means of imposing its will not only on its former ideological opponents, but also to compel conformity among those nations of the world who had espoused non-aligned points of view.

The American definition of “democracy” had more to do with imposed subservience, and less with genuine empowerment of sovereign goals and aspirations.

In the decades that have passed since the end of the Cold War, however, the reality of imposed “American” democracy has been exposed as a false promise, buried in the ashes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and, most recently, Ukraine. The inconsistencies of a US foreign policy built on the premise of “human rights” which are selectively embraced depending on the needs of American national security, combined with the glaring inadequacies of the American democratic model as practiced at home, have removed the rose-colored lens behind which America had shielded its vision of “democracy” from the rest of the world, leaving the moribund reality of the American enterprise laid bare for all to see.

Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” is little more than a modern-day manifestation of the American snake-oil salesman of old, a seedy profiteer trying to exploit an unsuspecting public by selling it quack remedies. In this case, however, it isn’t just the cure that is fake, but also the underlying ailment for which the cure is offered. To make the cure-all of the American democratic model more palatable, the Biden administration has had to resurrect the demons of old—Russia and China—portraying them as the forces of “autocracy” (i.e., the new communism) for which the only cure is American-directed “democracy”—the ultimate snake oil.

One of the problems facing Joe Biden and the coterie of erstwhile “democracy” proponents with which he has populated his foreign and national security team is that not only does the United States not have a cure (“democracy”) for a non-existent disease (“autocracy”), but Biden, by overplaying his hand through publicity stunts such as the “Summit for Democracy” has inadvertently opened up American-style democracy for diagnosis by the other nations of the world who, while finding no cure, have actually classified the American snake-oil as a disease, the cure for which is the very force the US is seeking to isolate and weaken through its actions—Russian and Chinese “autocracy.”

While the Biden administration can bully, cajole, intimidate, and bribe nations to attend his Summit for Democracy road show, at the end of the day nations vote with their feet, and it is to institutions like the Shanghai Security Organization (SCO) and BRICS that the global collective is gravitating to in increasing numbers, rejecting the failed policies and false promises of the core institutions that comprise the so-called rules based international order that serves as the key ingredient of the snake-oil cure being offered by Joe Biden.

Increasingly the IMF and World Bank are being viewed by the developing world as the extensions of the foreign and national security arms of the US, the EU, NATO, and the G7—the so-called “collective West” that have so openly aligned themselves against both Russia and China. By joining the SCO and BRICS, many nations have made it clear they want no further part with a “rules based international order” which can, on a whim, violate or make moot the very rules it advocates for by illegally seizing foreign assets, sanctioning nations in violation of international law, and controlling through economic manipulation.

One only need look to the example of Saudi Arabia, a long-time stalwart American ally, which has openly divorced itself from the rules-based international order it had served for many decades, aligning instead with Russia and China. More and more nations are positioning themselves to follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, opting to become part of a global multi-polarity which is successfully challenging the antiquated and decrepit system built around the flawed premise of American singularity.

Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy is simply the modern version of the scam perpetrated by the ultimate personification of the American snake-oil salesman, Clark Stanley, who plied his trade at the turn of the 19th century.

Like Stanley’s customers of old, who had been misled into buying a cure that contained none of the ingredients he claimed it did, and as such cured nothing, the world is seeing through the overhyped claims regarding the benefits of American “democracy”, exposing it as little more than false promises and outright lies which, if embraced, leads to only suffering, death, and destruction. The real threat to the world, it seems, isn’t the forces of “autocracy” for which American “democracy” is intended as a cure, but America itself, especially in the form of politicians such as Joe Biden who seek to continue the scam for as long as possible, regardless of the consequences for both the salesman and the customer.