Joe Biden sends a clear message to convicted at his two-day virtual summit in December Taiwan, that Beijing considers as one of his provinces called to return to his giron.
Le Monde with AFP
Yes to Taiwan, not China, Russia and Turkey. Joe Biden invited some 110 countries and territories to his virtual summit for democracy in December, and the choice of absentees is as speaking as much as the present.
Among the guests, the list of which has been published Tuesday, November 23 on the website of the US State Department, President Biden invited Taiwan, that the United States does not recognize as an independent country but readily eigen the democratic model Faced with China, which considers it, the island as one of its provinces called to return to its lap. His presence at the virtual summit should therefore maintain the tensions that have become inflamed in recent weeks around the fate of Taipei.
The American president has not hid it since his arrival at the White House in January: the fight between the democracies and the “autocracies”, embodied in his eyes by China and Russia, is at the heart of his policy Foreign.
A campaign promise
Not surprisingly, the main rivals of Washington, Beijing and Moscow in the lead, so do not appear in the list of guests of this “summit for democracy”, a campaign promise whose first version will take place online the 9 and December 10, before a meeting in person a year later.
Turkey, Washington Allied within NATO but whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been described as “autocrat” by Joe Biden, is also not among the participating countries.
India, often qualified as “the greater democracy of the world”, will, however, be present despite the frequent criticism of human rights defenders at the location of its Nationalist Hindu First Minister Narendra Modi. Like Pakistan, despite sawtooth relationships with Washington.
In the Middle East, only Israel and Iraq have been invited to this meeting. The traditional Arab allies of the Americans are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates are absent. Joe Biden also invited Brazil, yet led by the very controversial Far Right Speaker Jair Bolsonaro.
Many lapels against democracy
In Europe, Poland is represented, despite recurring tensions with Brussels with respect to respect for the rule of law, but the Hungary of Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not. African side, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Niger are part of the guests.
This summit is organized while democracy has cashed many reverses in recent months in countries where the United States had placed significant hopes: Sudan and Burma, theaters of military states, the Ethiopia, in the grip of a conflict that may do so “implode” according to American diplomacy, or Afghanistan, where the Taliban resumed power in favor of American withdrawal after twenty years of efforts of democratization.
The United States themselves joined for the first time the list of “decreasing democracies” because of a degradation under the Trump era, according to a reference report published by the International Intergovernmental Organization IDEA .