The countries in the West love to throw around terms and decry states they describe as “authoritarian dictatorships” while lauding their own “democratic institutions,” yet a brief look at history and current events shows that it is the West that is undemocratic. Under the guise of “promoting democracy,” the West, especially Imperialist America, has consistently interfered in other countries’ domestic affairs, especially those of socialist countries.
Imperialist America and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Frédéric Charpier’s 2008 book La CIA en France : 60 ans d’ingérence dans les affaires françaises revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) relies on disbursement from three agencies—the US State Department, USAI, and USAID—and serves American diplomatic and military policies.
Masquerading as a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), the NED has interfered in other countries’ domestic affairs, thereby limiting their right to self-determination and self-governance. This interference includes, but is certainly not limited to:
support for the “Euromaidan” (or simply “Maidan”) colour revolution in Ukraine during 2013-14, during which pro-Russia Ukrainians were burned alive;
support for so-called “Taiwan independence” and “Tibet independence” separatists;
pushes for Western-style liberal “democracy” in the DPRK and Hong Kong SAR, China; and
interference in elections in Serbia, the Philippines, Iran, and Nigeria, among many others.
Under the guise of democracy, freedom, and human rights, the United States has used NED for infiltration, interference and subversion against other countries. This has grossly violated other countries’ sovereignty, security and development interests, blatantly breached international law and basic norms of international relations, and severely jeopardized world peace and stability. Such unpopular and despicable acts are firmly opposed by the international community.
“We do not want a ‘democracy’ that kills”: Burkina Faso’s Traoré
This is without mentioning America’s more widely known history of unjust war, which includes many attempted and successful regime changes in so-called “undemocratic” countries. They have the nerve to call other societies anti-democratic while themselves creating barriers to true political power and placing institutions and corporations before the people they supposedly represent.
In an analysis of Burkinabè Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s interview on April 2nd, in which he asserted that Burkina Faso does not want “a ‘democracy’ that kills,” news outlet People Dispatch correctly suggests:
[This can] be interpreted [as] condemning a geopolitical process whereby “democracy” becomes a justification for regime change, foreign domination, and violent restructuring. These narratives have been used recently in both Venezuela and Iran, where actions against leaders are framed as justified interventions.
Despite this well-documented history and modern policy, many Americans, including the liberals/Democrats, refuse to see Trump as a symptom of a larger disease: Imperialist America itself, along with capitalism and Western democracy—because it forces them to confront the fact that the West’s so-called “democracy” is not as perfect as they claim.
Claims of “foreign interference” allow Americans to avoid facing their own bloody history
Instead, they point their own bloodstained fingers at other nations, such as Russia and China, blaming supposed “foreign interference” and “attempts at sabotage.” We see this today with the claim that Trump is “a Russian asset” and “Putin’s dog.”
Even those Americans who solely blame “Israel” and/or Netanyahu are misled. The so-called “State of Israel” is simply another Imperialist America: a settler-colony that is built upon forced displacement and dispossession of Palestine, genocide, ethnic and racial discrimination, and the legally enshrined privilege of certain groups over others.
Under the Trump administration, Americans have expressed fear over their country “descending into fascism,” a statement clearly ignorant of the nation’s history. Imperialist America is itself one of the most anti-democratic regimes in history, but this checkered record is ignored.
Despite the nation being built upon colonization and slavery, the myth of Imperialist America being a “beacon of democracy” has flourished since the 1830s.
This myth was built upon the silence and absence of Afrikan-American history: slavery, colonization and colonial violence, Jim Crow and apartheid laws, civil rights, etc.
As a country built on exclusion, even the modern expansion of the circle of inclusion leaves out other groups.
The irony cannot be lost: a nation that boasts its “freedom” and voices concerns for “human rights violations” in other countries is itself guilty of the crime of slavery.
Is this what a civil and civilized society looks like? Of course we want no part in this Western “democracy.” This hypocritical, violent, and exclusionary system is not a model to emulate.
A forceful critique of Western democratic self-description, particularly the gap between stated ideals and foreign policy practice. The focus on institutions like the NED raises important questions about how “democracy promotion” functions in practice.
However, this argument tends to compress very different geopolitical cases into a single framework, which weakens its analytical precision and risks overstating causal uniformity. Apart from this, brilliant piece.