Democracy in Crisis

Jeffrey Sachs By Amy Goodman (*) – Democracy Now! September 19, 2022 Jeffrey Sachs: “Dangerous” U.S. Policy & “West’s False Narrative” Stoking Tensions with Russia, China GUESTS: Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, sustainable development solutions advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres, and former adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general. We discuss Western hegemony and U.S. policy in Russia, Ukraine and China with Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose new article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.” Sachs says the bipartisan U.S. approach to foreign policy is “unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded,” and warns the U.S. is creating “a recipe for yet another war” in East Asia. Originally published at Other News on September 5, 2022 Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: Politico is reporting...

Image: Wikimedia Commons By P&I Guest Writers August 24, 2022 The G-7 countries are democratic domestically but are dictatorial globally. By contrast, the G-20 group, which has many autocratic regimes, represents a more democratic forum for governance. The G-7 is dictatorial, while the G-20 is democratic. This statement is obviously paradoxical. The G-7 countries are very proud of their liberal democratic societies. And they should be. However, while they are democratic domestically, they are dictatorial globally. By contrast, the G-20 group, which has many autocratic regimes, is more representative of the world’s population. The spiritual essence of democracy is conveyed in the phrase: a government of the people, by the people, for the people. In short, it must represent a hundred per cent of the people. The G-7 represent just 10 per cent of the world’s population. Yet, they make decisions and take actions that disrupt the lives of billions of...

Image: Wikimedia Commons By John Menadue August 23, 2022 The most likely way we could get into a war with China is if we continue to act as a proxy or deputy sheriff for the US in the region. Nancy Pelosi is doing her best to provoke China. Malcolm Fraser was right about ‘our dangerous ally’. The US is the most aggressive and violent country in the world. It is addicted to a belief in its exceptionalism, grounded in aggression and violence both at home and abroad, and finding it hard to admit mistakes. Originally published at John Menadue’s “Pearls And Irritations” on August 3, 2022 It is looking more and more like a slow motion train wreck. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war. The record is clear. Time and time again we have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the imperial wars of...

May 3, 2022 Andrew J. Bacevich I recently participated in a commemoration of Martin Luther King’s address “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence,” originally delivered on April 2, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church. King used the occasion to announce his opposition to the ongoing war in Vietnam. Although a long time coming in the eyes of some in the antiwar movement, his decision was one for which he was roundly criticized, even by supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. He was straying out of his prescribed lane, they charged, and needed to get back where he belonged. This year’s 55th anniversary event, also held in Riverside Church’s magnificent sanctuary, featured inspiring Christian music and a thoughtful discussion of King’s remarks. Most powerful of all, however, was a public reading of the address itself. “Beyond Vietnam” contains many famously moving passages. King, for example, cited “the cruel irony of watching Negro...

Ted Snider January 20, 2022 Since its assurances not to move “one inch” outside Germany, the alliance has moved 600 miles closer to Russia. Originally posted on Responsible Statecraft on December 4, 2021 It is possible to actually measure Washington’s dishonesty. How big is it? It’s about 600 miles. In 1990, according to declassified documents, Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” east of Germany. Thirty years ago, that was Russia’s red line. On December 2, that red line moved from one inch to 600 miles as Vladimir Putin said he would now seek a promise that NATO would not expand further east to Ukraine. Since these assurances, NATO has wandered its way through Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Poland. Six hundred miles of broken pledges have brought the U.S. and...

By Jan Oberg December 29, 2021 The Summit slogan by Biden was: ”Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.” The first sentence is empty of meaning. The rest is confrontational – fight, be strong; someone – guess who? – threatens our democracy. And renewal was absent. With no intellectuals or other thinkers invited, the Summit was theoretically and philosophically void. The hours I browsed didn’t reveal any new concepts or visions of democracy – but instead platitudes, tired metaphors, self-congratulatory words by governments leaders on their own achievements and how they meet ”challenges.” Plus the repeated, extremely unfair, appeal to young people to fix what the present generation has so irresponsibly destroyed. A summit could be used to sum it up: Diagnosis + Prognosis + Solutions: What must we do differently in the future? It wasn’t. We learned that democracy...

The embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America 10 December 2021 This Joint Article was published on ”The National Interest”. Qin Gang is the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. Anatoly Antonov is the Russian Ambassador to the United States. We publish it here on The Transnational because we believe it is a historic document both because of China-Russia cooperation which is increasing rapidly and because it makes the important point that the US no longer has any legitimate – or exceptionalist – right to tell others how to operate. The upcoming American-led online Summit for Democracy will stoke ideological confrontation. Faced with an array of global challenges, countries urgently need to strengthen coordination and cooperation for common progress. The United States will be hosting the online Summit for Democracy on December 9-10, 2021, empowering itself to define who is to attend the event and who is not, who is a “democratic country” and who is not eligible for such status. An evident...

The United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., U.S. /Getty By Josef Gregory Mahoney December 15, 2021 Editor’s note: Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics at East China Normal University in Shanghai. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN. There has been an active debate among American scholars and pundits for many years over whether the United States is a republic or democracy. One of the keys to this discussion is the argument advanced by some, particularly those on the right, that these two terms are somehow opposites – that one cannot be both at the same time, and that the U.S. is definitively a republic and not a democracy. Originally published at CGTN On the face of it, this assertion is ridiculous. It’s absolutely possible to be both a republic and democratic, and to whatever extent one regards the U.S. as democratic,...

Photo © Jan Oberg “Boy Looking Back” – 2018 Charles Hampden-Turner, Peter Peverelli and Fons Trompenaars November 23, 2021 This is Chapter 9 of a new book “Has China Devised a Superior Path to Wealth Creation? The Role of Secular Values” by three leading experts on China, cultural dimensions of societies and culture for business. Almost nothing does China more harm in the estimation of the world than the accusation that it is not a democracy and has no announced intention of becoming one. It is accused of totalitarianism. This is profoundly disturbing to the world for several reasons. First China has the largest population on earth at 1.4 billion and it suggests that large populations may not be able to cohere democratically. In a world population that is exploding this is bad news. India has the world’s second-largest population and democracy there shows signs of morphing into Hindu nationalism...

Handover ceremony at Camp Anthonic, from US Army to Afghan Special Forces, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 2, 2021. Tom Engelhardt October 27, 2021 They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is. In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given our history. After all, we were the ones who prepared the ground and dug the grave for the previous interment in that very cemetery. Originally published at Countercurrents That, of course, took place between 1979 and 1989 when Washington had no hesitation about using the most extreme Islamists — arming, funding, training, and advising them — to ensure that one more imperial carcass, that of the Soviet Union, would be buried...

Jan Oberg October 21, 2021 This article is based on observations sent to me by an academic friend of mine who wants to be anonymous, given the views it expresses in this situation. The reason we publish it here with a few comments and links is that it is obviously a very serious situation in and of itself but also an example of how democracy can quickly be undermined and how nonviolent demonstrations are squeezed out, framed as neo-Fascists and de-legitimated – as is the entire peace discourse in Western democracies (if we can still call them that). Please note that we update this page and, by October 23, have added a lot of videos at the end of it. And more have been added on November 15. Press Release GREEN PASS – Cunial, Barillari: Request for asylum at the Swedish Embassy (Rome), Italians are political refugees Rome, 16 October...

Bright Line Watch polling results by region. Question: “Would you support or oppose [your state] seceding from the United States to join a new union with [list of states in new union]?” This article was originally published on July 16, 2021 Andrew Tanner October 9, 2021 Since 2016, I have watched America’s slow march over a cliff with a mix of fascination and horror. But the results of recent polls by Bright Line Watch have provided the first hard and frighteningly conclusive evidence that Americans are moving fast down the road I predicted—towards a national divorce. I have unfortunately been right about almost every major development in America since Trump won the Republican Party nomination in 2016. Originally published at gen.medium.com Like many observers, I didn’t take Trump’s campaign seriously at first. His first attempt at a campaign in 2012 collapsed before the first primary. The second defied every rule I had learned...