Last week, in a front-page story headlined “Biden Takes His Battle for Democracy Case by Case,” Peter Baker of the New York Times tried to explain to his readers a troubling contradiction involved in the way that Biden “has made it his mission to wage what he momentously calls ‘the battle between democracy and autocracy.’” The question Baker sets out to answer is how this can be true when many of Biden’s most important partners in this alleged “alliance against autocracy” preside over regimes that carry out torture and murder of opponents (Saudi Arabia—which has also waged a genocidal war with U.S. weapons in Yemen—a point that goes unmentioned by Baker); brutally oppress minority nationalities and religions (India, Israel, France); or carry out widespread jailing and torture of political prisoners (Egypt—which has an estimated 65,000 political prisoners). Indeed, the list he gives stretches beyond what we just said.
Baker then meanders around for 29 paragraphs before, in typical “objective” Times style, giving the last word to a spokesperson for a ruling class “think tank,” who says that the U.S. must “stand up for [democracy] … but must balance it against other objectives.”
This prominently featured article functions to quiet the twinges of conscience of those liberals who can’t help but notice the inconsistency in this alleged war of “democracy against autocracy.” And both the complicated rendition of the ins and outs and the conclusion are meant to send a message to those readers: Go back to sleep.
In actual fact, it is not all that complicated. There is one essential criterion for the U.S. in choosing allies: will this alliance serve the extension of U.S. exploitation and domination of other countries, especially in opposition to its rivals, or not? Or, to answer the question in a single paragraph:
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
—Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:3
Bob Avakian: Free Yourself from the GTF! The Great Tautological Fallacy
For a fuller exposition on the anti-scientific roots of this “democracy vs. authoritarianism” distinction, see Bob Avakian’s recent article “Anti-Scientific ‘Anti-Authoritarianism’: Serving American Imperialism and Promoting American Chauvinism”
French President Emmanuel Macron Photo: AP
French President Emmanuel Macron slashed French pensions earlier this year and violently cracked down on massive protests against the cuts. Since then, he’s backed escalating police terror against other protests and people of color and immigrants. After police murdered Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, in June 2023 and massive protests erupted, Macron deployed 45,000 police and told them “We are with you,” after the police called protesters “savage hordes” of “pests.” Macron is a staunch supporter of the imperialist military alliance NATO and the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: AP
Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, through vigilante violence, legal attacks on his opponents, and concentrating power in his hands, has moved India toward becoming a Hindu-nationalist, fascist state. He’s fanned and presided over waves of Hindu fundamentalism and nationalist violence, including the 2002 mass murder of some 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, when he led the state of Gujarat. In 2019, he pushed through a citizenship law that further discriminated against Muslims, and revoked the right of Jammu and Kashmir, a state with a large Muslim population, to set its own laws. In 2020, he enacted laws threatening the livelihood of Indian farmers by opening them to greater exploitation by agribusiness.
Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Photo: AP
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, in 2015 with U.S. backing, launched a war of aggression against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which has led to the deaths of over 377,000 people and left more than 25 million Yemenis without adequate food. In 2018, he ordered the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and has nearly doubled the number of executions—mostly beheadings after sham trials—to an average of almost 130 per year. He's collaborated with the U.S. to militarily threaten Iran, and he’s leading an aggressive campaign to keep fossil fuels at the center of the world economy for decades to come—further threatening the future of humanity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: AP
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister for most of the last 23 years, has escalated Israel’s genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, while turning Gaza, home to 2 million Palestinians, into an open-air concentration camp subject to frequent military attacks, and further stripped Palestinians in Israel of their basic rights. All these constitute crimes against humanity. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened military attacks, even war, against Iran and pressed the U.S. to do likewise, and during his tenure Israel has carried out assassinations of Iranian officials and scientists, as well as aggression throughout the region, including in Lebanon and Syria.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Photo: AP
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is one of the world’s most savage tyrants. Elections and basic rights are a farce under el-Sisi. His regime arrests potential candidates, rounds up their supporters, declares continuous states of emergency suspending basic rights, and has as many as 65,000 political prisoners. Often no public record of their arrests is kept and they’ve been detained without trial, often indefinitely. Prisoners are systematically subjected to torture and sexual violence. A March 2020 Human Rights Watch report, “Witness: Beaten, Shocked, Tortured – Life for Boys in Egypt’s Prisons,” documents that children as young as 12 have been arrested and tortured, including “being suspended from ceilings until their shoulders dislocate, beaten repeatedly, tortured with electric shocks, and forced into stress positions.”