The State of Democracy in the United States: 2022

6. Americans increasingly disillusioned with American democracy

Americans' pride in their democracy has dropped sharply, from 90 percent in 2002 to 54 percent in 2022, according to a joint Washington Post-University of Maryland survey. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that Californian voters have widespread concern that American democracy is going off track, with 62 percent saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, 46 percent pessimistic about the prospect of Americans with different political views working together to resolve differences, and 52 percent dissatisfied with the current way American democracy works. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 67 percent of respondents believe that American democracy is in danger of collapse, and 48 percent think there could be another Capitol riot in the United States. According to a Pew Center poll, 65 percent of Americans believe that the American democratic system needs major reforms, while 57 percent of respondents believe the United States is no longer a model of democracy. A UCLA study shows that the US government has been losing its ability to govern and its sense of democratic responsibility in recent years, and lacks effective measures to push forward large-scale reforms or address issues such as electoral justice and media fraud.

III. The United States' imposition of "democracy" has caused chaos around the world

In spite of all the problems facing its own democracy, the United States refuses to reflect on itself, but instead continues to export American democratic values to other countries, and use the pretext of democracy to oppress other countries and serve its own agenda. What the US has done is exacerbating division in the international community and bloc-based confrontation.

1. Foreign policy held hostage by political polarization

"Politics stops at the water's edge" is a popular proverb in American political circles, which means that partisan struggle should be confined to domestic politics and that a united front should be formed when dealing with foreign affairs. However, with the intensification of political polarization, Democrats and Republicans are increasingly divided on major foreign affairs issues, and America's foreign policy has become more and more "extreme". "Politics crossing the water's edge" has become the norm. It is not only harmful to many developing countries, but also poses a threat to America's own allies.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Trump administration and some extreme politicians have concocted all kinds of lies and rumors against China on coronavirus origins-tracing. The most typical is in 2021, when the US intelligence agency issued the so-called origins-tracing report, which, in total disregard of science, fabricated the "lab leak" story and claimed that China lacked transparency and obstructed international investigations. Tracing the origins of the coronavirus is a matter of science, but the true purpose of the US' doing is to obscure the views of the public and manipulate the issue to shift the blame onto China and suppress and contain China. This fully exposes the hypocrisy of American democracy and the ill effects of political polarization.

Under the Biden administration, the US ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan with a hasty withdrawal of troops. It just walked away, after shattering a whole country and destroying the future of several generations. Although its troops have left, the US government continued to sanction Afghanistan, and illegally froze the assets of the Afghan central bank, making life even worse for the local people. A UN-backed report published in May 2022 showed that nearly 20 million people in Afghanistan were facing acute hunger. Even after the devastating earthquake in Afghanistan in June 2022, the US still refused to lift the sanctions.

Political polarization in the US is spilling over. According to a report released by the University of Ottawa, there is open support from conservative media, including Fox News, and conservative politicians in the US for the far-right extremists in Canada. It represents a greater threat to Canadian democracy than the actions of any other state, and the implications of democratic backsliding in the US for Canada must be reflected upon. Professor Gordon Laxer at the University of Alberta believes the forces moving the US toward autocracy already exist. It is ingrained among Canadians that the US is their greatest friend and will always champion democracy. That can no longer be taken for granted.

2. Inciting confrontation and conflict in the name of democracy

Democracy is a common value of humanity and must not be used as a tool to advance geopolitical agenda or counter human development and progress. However, in order to maintain its hegemony, the US has long been monopolizing the definition of "democracy", instigating division and confrontation in the name of democracy, and undermining the UN-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.

Since its outbreak in early 2022, the Ukraine crisis has hit the country's economy and the livelihood of its people hard. In October 2022, the World Bank released a report suggesting that Ukraine would need at least US$349 billion, or 1.5 times the country's total economic output for the whole year of 2021, to rebuild after the war. The US saw the Ukraine crisis as a lucrative opportunity. Instead of taking any measures conducive to ending hostilities, the US kept fueling the flames and made a huge fortune from the war business including the arms industry and the energy sector. It described its arms supply to Ukraine as a move to support "democracy versus authoritarianism". A July 2022 report by Serbia's Center for Strategic Prognosis pointed out that the US saw Russia's 1999 attack on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, as a crime, but called a similar American operation in Fallujah, an Iraqi city about the size of Grozny, liberation. America's so-called democracy has long been hijacked by interest groups and capital, and brought instability and chaos to the world.

In August 2022, then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a provocative visit to China's Taiwan region in disregard of China's firm opposition and serious representations. It was a major political provocation that upgraded official contact between the US and Taiwan, and aggravated tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Yet, Pelosi argued that the visit "honors America's unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan's vibrant democracy". The crux of Pelosi's provocative visit is not about democracy, but China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The US action was by no means defending or preserving democracy, but challenging and violating China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pelosi's fallacy was unbearable even to some US politicians. Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Greene challenged Pelosi, saying that "Americans have had enough with a woman obsessed with her own power she's held for decades while our entire country crumbles … Enough of this fake 'courage' defending democracy."

The international community is seeing the US approach more and more clearly. Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, wrote that the US, as a self-proclaimed "high priest", has wreaked havoc around the world under the disguise of "true democracy", and used money, allies and high-end weapons to crudely impose its will. An article published on Ahram Online, an Egyptian news website, argued that "liberalism" and "democracy" had been turned into a weaponized ideology that the US uses to destabilize other countries, delegitimize their governments, and intervene with forms of sociopolitical engineering that often backfires in drastic ways. None of it has to do with the liberalism, democracy and freedom the US claims to promote. Chairman of the Indonesian People's Wave Party Anis Matta pointed out that American cleverness is making other countries a battlefield. Anti-China sentiment and polarization in Indonesia are also America's work. Muslims must understand that.

3. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions

Under the pretext of human rights and democracy, the US has long been using unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction" against other countries based on its domestic laws and its own values. In the past decades, the US imposed unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Cuba, Belarus, Syria, Zimbabwe and other countries, placed maximum pressure on countries including the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, and unilaterally froze US$130 million in military aid to Egypt under the excuse of the country's lack of progress in human rights. Such actions have seriously damaged the economic development and people's livelihood in the countries concerned, and jeopardized the right to life, the right to self-determination and the right to development, constituting a continual, systematic and massive violation of human rights in other countries. In recent years, US unilateral sanctions have been increasing and its "long arm" has been extending further. In order to preserve its hegemony, the US has willfully harmed the interests of other countries, especially the legitimate and lawful interests of developing countries, in disregard of international law and the basic norms of international relations.

An article published by the Turkish Anadolu News Agency in March 2022 argued that in the name of promoting democracy, the US invaded Iraq on unsubstantiated grounds and brought immense sufferings to the local population. First, the abuse of sanctions aggravated livelihood challenges. Between 1990 and 2003, the severe economic sanctions by the US took a heavy toll on the local economy and the well-being of the Iraqi people. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the hunger rate in Iraq reached a very high level as a result of the US sanctions and embargo. Between 1990 and 1995 alone, 500,000 Iraqi children died of hunger and poor living conditions. Second, the incessant war caused enormous civilian casualties. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, about 120,000 Iraqi civilians were killed between 2003, when the US started the Iraq War, and 2011, when the US announced its withdrawal. Third, the imposed political model failed to adapt. The US forced the American-style democracy upon Iraq in disregard of the latter's national conditions, only to aggravate the political fight between different factions in the country.

The unilateral sanctions imposed by the US fully demonstrate its arrogance and indifference toward humanitarianism. On 11 February 2022, President Biden signed an executive order to split in half the US$7 billion in Afghan central bank assets frozen in the US. Half of the assets were to fund financial compensations for 9/11 victims, and the other half were transferred to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Such blatant stealing from the Afghan people has been widely condemned by the international community. SINDOnews.com, a news website of Indonesia, reported in March 2022 that people of Afghan descent rallied at the US Embassy in Jakarta to protest the US government's looting of assets from the Afghan government. The indignant protesters argued that the assets of the former Afghan government belonged to the Afghan people and should be used to aid the Afghan people who were experiencing an economic crisis.