Interview: So-called "Summit for Democracy" only creates division, expert says

Source: Xinhua| 2021-11-29 10:03:18|Editor: huaxia
Video PlayerClose

by Yang Shilong, Hu Yousong

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- The so-called "Summit for Democracy," led by the United States, will only create "a sense of division" at a time when "all countries need to get together and pull in the same direction," an expert has said here recently.

"It would be a one-off or a two-off meeting, which will create a sense of division, which will not have any greater purpose, and really won't have any momentum or legs to carry it through into the future," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told Xinhua during an interview.

The event will be "superfluous to the challenges that we face today," Gupta noted, adding that "all countries need to get together and pull in the same direction."

"Democracy is for each country to shape and work through in its own ways, systems and fashions," the expert argued.

"There is no superior party in the international system who says, okay, I will put the banner around you and say, you have become a democracy, or you are not a democracy," he said. "Whatever the value of that democracy of the beholder is, it is not for a particular group of countries to define who is or is not a democracy."

"And this just goes to the point of, in a system, in a good system that we have called the UN (United Nations) centered system, let it be the countries which sit within, say the Security Council, or even at the General Assembly, define who they are and what democratic processes look like rather than have someone arbitrarily pick and choose who is a democracy and who isn't," Gupta suggested.

It's been "an unfortunate development" that right from the end of the Cold War era, "the goal of the U.S. from that point on was never to rebuild that UN-centered system as much as to have a U.S.-led system, at times with allies or just unilaterally on its own to define what the world's preferences would be," he added. Enditem

KEY WORDS: US,Democracy Summit,INTERVIEW
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020071420000000000000011100001310339690