Two years ago, America’s democratic system of government faced an unprecedented test when supporters of President Donald Trump sought to reverse his election defeat — some through illegal schemes, others through a violent attack on the US Capitol. Since that historic low point, American democracy began to function better, and its prospects began to improve. The 2022 elections were conducted successfully and extreme pro-choice deniers lost in key swing states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol has authoritatively documented the riots that attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and former US President Donald J. Trump’s role in fueling them In Brazil and France, candidates with questionable commitments to democracy were defeated in presidential elections, and peaceful elections were held in Colombia.
Meanwhile, the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes are struggling. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s disastrously conceived and executed war in Ukraine shattered the myth of a resurrected Moscow. China’s bid to become the world’s largest economy and most influential power has collapsed on the shoals of President Xi Jinping’s catastrophic mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s real estate bubble, 20 percent youth unemployment rate, politically motivated crackdown on the private sector and ballooning local government debt have further undermined Xi’s domestic appeal.
That said, although Beijing and Moscow are weakened, they still pose a serious threat to democracy. The more desperate their domestic problems become, the more they will need to discredit alternative systems of government and discredit their democratic opponents. That is why Beijing and Moscow are waging a global disinformation war that both exploits and increases the fragility of American democracy. Within China and Russia, this disinformation war aims to suppress demands for democratic reforms by discrediting Western-style democracy. Globally, it aims to install and support friendly governments, counter a growing sense that engagement with Beijing and Moscow has adverse consequences for local citizens, and ultimately create a new, fragmented international order that privileges “national sovereignty” over human rights.
Beijing and Moscow are helped in this task by the weakness of Western democracies. Trump continues to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and he could soon face criminal charges. The next two years on Capitol Hill could well be dominated by gridlock, purely partisan probes and missives, and cynical new efforts to undermine, rather than restore, faith in the American electoral process. Social media remains a cesspool of misinformation and conspiracy theory, and corporate efforts to moderate content have been inadequate. The assault on the truth is set to get exponentially worse with the rapid advance of generative AI software, capable of producing profound fakes in which public figures will be seen saying and doing things they never said or did. All this is a gift to the world’s two disinformation superpowers, China and Russia. The more credible the content, the more convincing the propaganda.
Democratic erosion in the United States is helping Beijing and Moscow discredit the idea of democracy. If American democracy is to serve, once again, as an example capable of inspiring others, it must be strengthened at home. Only then can Washington win the battle for global soft power.
SMEARING DEMOCRACY
“There are certain rules of any dictatorship,” once observed the exiled Russian dissident Garry Kasparov, now president of the Human Rights Foundation. Among the most important is “never spare money on police or propaganda.” This rule serves as a star for Chinese and Russian leaders. Beijing is a pioneer in all kinds of digital surveillance, and Moscow has stepped up its crackdown to contain opposition to the war in Ukraine. To see also : US Support for ECOWAS Sanctions Against Guinea – United States Department of State. But all dictatorships require at least some popular support or consent. When citizens evaluate the performance of their government, they compare it with that of other countries. That is why Beijing and Moscow devote about a fifth of domestic propaganda to foreign governments. They dismiss Western-style democracy as corrupt, unaccountable and unworthy of sacrifice and claim that “real” democracy exists at home.
This is the first reason why democratic erosion in the United States advances the interests of Beijing and Moscow: it provides content for their domestic propaganda. At home, Putin’s narrative of international politics has three broad themes: democratic decay in the West, the failures of Western foreign policy, and the decline of the liberal international order. In 2016 and 2017, Trump appeared in 80 percent of all international coverage in Russia. State media reveled in their predictions that the 2016 election would be rigged, reported on the polarization of the American electorate and suggested that the aftermath could turn violent. After Trump’s 2016 election victory, it speculated that “the forces behind Hillary Clinton” could change the outcome. American elections, in this telling, are plagued by fraud and can easily be compromised.
European integration is also a target for Putin’s domestic propaganda, which it derides as an elite-led project. The European Union, Russians are told, is forcing a “neoliberal ideology” on ordinary Europeans, which is incompatible with the “traditional values” of “European civilization”. This elite supports America, not the European people. The desire to please Washington led to the migrant crisis of 2015 and numerous terrorist attacks. In Moscow’s telling, Washington’s rule also produced the sanctions against Russia that undermined the European economy. The heroes in this depiction of the struggle for Europe’s soul are its far-right, Eurosceptic parties, who “challenge the dictatorship of liberal democracy” and save their “Brussels countrymen.” The European Union is a “house of cards” that will soon fall apart.
The Chinese Communist Party takes a different approach. Although it routinely tells the Chinese people that democracy already exists in China, it refrains from discussing international electoral politics in detail, so as not to remind citizens of their inability to vote. Instead, it focuses on Washington’s corruption and inability to govern. “Electoral democracy in the United States,” the People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the CCP), observed in 2017, is a “money-burning contest between candidates, each of whom serves the financial elite.” Because Democrats and Republicans rely on the same financial backers, “campaign platforms are increasingly similar.” Without real political differences, “more time is spent on personal attacks than policy debates,” and “public opinion has little effect on government policy.” Meanwhile Rome is burning. America’s gun violence epidemic accounted for five percent of the People’s Daily’s international coverage between 2016 and 2017. After the spread of COVID-19, the paper told readers that “the epidemic has spiraled out of control and become a human tragedy because of the US government. reckless response.” On race, the warnings of the People Daily are almost existential: “Racial discrimination is tearing America apart.”
The CCP’s propaganda apparatus also emphasizes the flaws of other democracies. Although it rarely covers the politics of Taiwan, because doing so might suggest that democracy could work on the mainland, it often states that “South Korea’s domestic politics are a mess.” In 2016 and 2017, it focused heavily on the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye for corruption. But, as in Moscow, the CCP’s main narrative focus is the failures of American democracy.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
Beijing and Moscow craft propaganda stories not only for their own citizens but also for a global audience. As of 2015, Beijing has allocated more than $10 billion annually to its global propaganda operations. To see also : Happy 246-year-old United States of America. In 2011, the Russian government spent at least $380 million on Russia Today (RT). Beijing and Moscow invest heavily in propaganda for foreign audiences because they need friendly governments abroad if they are to uphold their political positions at home, and ultimately to reshape the post-Cold War international order. This is why the disinformation war has gone global: to make the world safe for autocracy.
This desire supports Russian and Chinese global propaganda. In response to years of sanctions and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, Moscow is committed to electing Western politicians whose dedication to democracy is shallow and who will agree with Russia. Moscow also wants to secure natural resources, especially Africa’s gold mines, which have been used to insulate Putin’s government from sanctions in anticipation of the war in Ukraine. China has similar goals. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative is driven as much by the CCP’s domestic imperatives as by Xi’s geopolitical ambitions. It aims to stimulate foreign demand for domestic industry and provide an outlet for foreign exchange reserves. Beijing and Moscow both want to fragment the Internet into national spheres of information that are easier to shape and censor and eradicate international standards of human rights and the rule of law. Their common goal is to create a new international order that will advance their domestic interests and global ambitions behind false claims of “national sovereignty”.
In Africa, views of China have become less favorable as engagement with China has deepened. Moscow’s record in Africa is even worse. Russian agents have helped prop up repressive governments, helped suppress popular protests and committed atrocities, including a massacre that killed up to 380 people over a four-day period in Mali in March 2022. Such real attacks on national sovereignty are rarely reported in these. low-income countries where Chinese and Russian propaganda push misinformation about Western transgressions. This perverse imbalance urgently needs correction.
In Western democracies, the Putin government has supported politicians including Trump in the United States, the nativist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in France, and the xenophobic former deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini in Italy. Putin also threw his support behind Brexit in the UK and the right-wing Alternative for Germany party. These individuals and political movements are skeptical of the post-Cold War international order and are unenthusiastic about promoting democracy abroad—and, in some cases, about democracy at home. Moscow has been even more brazen in its support for partner governments in the “global South”, producing action films, erecting billboards, providing campaign finance and running the same social media campaigns.
Beijing’s global media footprint is larger than Moscow’s. In addition to its social media, Beijing operates English-language radio stations, prints a variety of propaganda newspapers, provides free content to local newspapers, and has even bought major media platforms outright. Beijing’s propaganda promotes the “China Dream,” and states that the CCP’s most egregious human rights violations—such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and the ongoing genocide against ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang—are fictitious allegations spread by Western governments. to undermine China.
It is easy to dismiss the global disinformation war. “If Russia Today is Moscow’s propaganda arm,” The Washington Post claimed in 2017, “it’s not very good at its job.” But the evidence suggests otherwise. In the United States, exposure to RT leads Americans to support withdrawal from a position of global leadership. In Brazil, India, and South Africa, CCP propaganda has been shown to decrease support for democracy. In 19 countries across six continents, CCP messaging was shown to triple the number of people who viewed the “China model” as superior to American-style liberal democracy.
THE HEALTH OF DEMOCRATIC NATIONS
The health of American democracy is both a domestic and national security concern. China and Russia—the main authoritarian adversaries of the United States—have used (and exacerbated) America’s democratic divisions and labors to gain an advantage in the competition for global leadership. See the article : Inside the United States of gerontocracy, where old leaders rule and young Americans wait. To regain the advantage, the United States must both repair its own democracy and reinvigorate its voice for democracy in the global arena. Democracy must go on the offensive.
This will require a large investment in US soft power. Since 1980, US government spending on public diplomacy peaked at $2.5 billion in 1994 (adjusted for inflation), and nearly reached that level in 2010 and 2011. But since then, as the challenges have multiplied, US efforts have stagnated, with total spending reaches only $2.23 billion in 2020.
Washington must rejoin the battle for global soft power, in a way that reflects American values. It must convey the truth, and in ways that engage and persuade global audiences. The goal must be not only to counter disinformation persuasively with the truth but to promote democratic values, ideas and movements. Countering disinformation and reporting the truth that autocracies suppress requires multiple credible sources of information. In addition, they must be independent; while the US government may provide material support, these outlets must operate free of editorial control. That way, they will be seen as independent because they are.
One possibility would be to transform the Voice of America into something more closely resembling the British Broadcasting Corporation. It should have a mission to model the values of the American democratic experiment by providing fully independent reporting on countries around the world, including the United States. But winning the information war requires more than truth, independence and professionalism in reporting. It also requires a pluralistic and decentralized network of quality media. Local journalists in autocracies are uniquely well-positioned to document and disseminate evidence of corruption, human rights abuses and glaring policy mistakes. The United States and its democratic allies must elevate and empower beleaguered local media outlets, which struggle to report the news and convey critical commentary in the absence of media freedom. This will require billions of dollars in funding for public interest media around the world (including media working in exile), much of which should be channeled through the non-governmental International Fund for Public Interest Media. The fund is an apolitical consortium of international foundations that can finance local independent media while ensuring their autonomy.
Along with its Democratic partners, Washington should also seek new ways — technologically and geopolitically — to help closed societies transcend Internet censorship and social media surveillance. When citizens in autocracies gain access to independent and truthful information and communicate more securely with each other, the regimes they live under will be on a more shaky footing. Freedom of information also requires committed and coordinated diplomacy among democracies to ensure that autocracies do not hijack global standards and protocols for the Internet. Social media companies must also do more to counter malicious manipulation of their platforms by foreign governments, at least identifying and labeling sources whenever possible, and removing the most obviously false and dangerous content. Both the United States and other democracies should strengthen those efforts through stronger regulation of social media. The first step should be to ban TikTok from US devices.
The United States also needs to revitalize its democracy, and there are some promising signs that the country has entered an era of democratic reform. Many states have modernized their voting procedures and made it easier to register and vote. Some have eliminated partisan gerrymandering of electoral districts and taken steps to make campaign finance more transparent. Momentum is gathering behind electoral reforms, particularly proxy voting, or RCV. Under this system, voters rank their preferred candidates and then, if no candidate receives a majority, lower-ranked candidates are eliminated and a more broadly acceptable winner is chosen through a series of instant runoffs. RCV rewards moderation and enables independent and third-party candidates to receive a serious hearing. After increasing use at the municipal level, it was adopted by voters in Maine in 2016 and 2018, in Alaska in 2020, and in Nevada in November 2022 (although the latter is a constitutional amendment that must be approved by the voters a second time). Support for RCV is also growing in Oregon and in Minnesota, which may soon become the first in the nation to adopt it by a vote of the state legislature.
But American democracy is not safe. Legislation aimed at reducing the influence of money, strengthening and expanding voting rights, ending gerrymandering, ensuring ethical standards for elected officials and strengthening the security of elections failed in the last Congress and has little prospect of passage in the next. Worse, many states have moved to restrict access to the ballot and to make it harder for minorities to vote. Most alarmingly, some Republican-controlled state legislatures, led by North Carolina, seek to establish a theory of “independent state legislatures” that would enable these bodies to draw districts and even rig election rules for partisan advantage, without oversight by the courts. , governors, or redistricting commissions. The United States cannot challenge autocracies globally if its politics degenerate into a collection of one-party states domestically. Successfully fighting autocratic disinformation will depend on success at home, and on the renewal of American democracy.
Will the US have a lost decade?
The US economy is extremely unlikely to have a “lost decade”. There are several very important differences between conditions and policies in Japan in the 1990s and the United States today and in the following years. The bubble in US house prices was smaller than Japan’s.
Will we have a lost decade for stocks? Investors eye ‘lost decade.” After four decades of incredible performance, the stock market could be at the start of a lost decade. Yes, the S&P 500 fell 2.5% on Friday, and is down 23% in 2022.
Will there be a market crash in 2022?
There is no way to know if the stock market will crash in 2022. While there are absolutely concerning indicators, there are also signs of strength in the underlying economy. Smart investors should continue to invest for the long term and stick to their overall financial plan.
How long is a lost decade?
The question that matters most to investors today is whether we are headed for another “lost decade” of investing, and how should we prepare for the times ahead? A lost decade refers to a long period of more than ten years where the stock market produces flat to negative returns.
What is the lost decade in America?
The term “Lost Decade for Stocks” refers to the ten-year period from 12/31/1999 to 12/31/2009, when the S&P 500® generated an annual return of -0.9% during the period. This was only the second time the market actually had a negative total return over a decade.
What are the 4 types of democracy?
Different types of democracies
- Direct democracy.
- Representative democracy.
- Constitutional democracy.
- Monitoring democracy.
What are the 4 elements of democracy? He describes democracy as a system of government with four key elements: i) A system to choose and replace the government through free and fair elections; ii) Active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; iii) Protection of the human rights of all citizens; and iv) rule of law in …
What is democracy and its types?
Democracy (From the ancient Greek: î´Î·Î¼Î¿ÎºÏαÏία, romanized: dÄmokratía, dÄmos ‘people’ and kratos ‘rule’) is a form of government in which the people have the authority to consider and decide legislation (” direct democracy”), or elect governing officials to do so (“representative democracy”).
How many types of democratic are there?
These different opinions germinated three popular models of democracy: participatory, pluralistic and elite.
Who runs democracy for America?
| founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| a chair | Charles R. Chamberlain |
| CEO | Yvette Simpson |
| Key people | Howard Dean, Jim Dean |
| website | democracyforamerica.com |
What power do citizens have in a democracy? By voting, citizens participate in the democratic process. Citizens vote for leaders to represent them and their ideas, and the leaders support the interests of the citizens. There are two special rights only for US citizens: to vote in federal elections and to run for federal office.
What is democracy in simple words?
The word democracy comes from the Greek words “demos”, meaning people, and “kratos” meaning power; so democracy can be considered as “power to power”: a way of ruling that depends on the will of the people.
How does democracy work in America?
The United States is a representative democracy. This means that our government is elected by citizens. Here, citizens vote for their government officials. These officials represent the ideas and concerns of the citizens in government.
What are the arguments against democracy explain?
The argument against democracy is that a change in leaders creates instability. There is no room for morality because democracy is about political competition and power games. Consulting with many people delays the process and leads to corruption because it is based on electoral competition.
What are the arguments for democracy explain Class 9? The five arguments in favor of democracy are democratic government is a better form of government because it is more responsible. It raises the standard of decision making. It improves the dignity of citizens. Democracy is superior to other types of government because it allows us to make corrections.
What are the arguments for democracy explain?
(i) A democratic form of government is responsible. (ii) It improves the quality of decision making. (iii) It provides a method for dealing with differences and conflicts. (iv) It improves the dignity of a citizen.
