The US’ upcoming “Summit for Democracy” serves to ideologize the New Cold War in an attempt to rally America’s allies while at the same time ominously indicating which states could potentially be targeted by it through Hybrid War means in the coming future. Russia and China predictably condemned this planned gathering and have rightly pointed out the hypocritical optics behind it, especially since the US cannot by any means be regarded as the paragon of “democracy” that it portrays itself as considering its undemocratic practices at home and abroad. Nevertheless, this event will still represent a grand strategic milestone in the New Cold War and is thus worthy of further analysis.

The author predicted in late 2020 in an exclusive analysis for Pakistan’s prestigious Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) that “An ‘Alliance Of Democracies’ Might Be America’s Next Grand Strategic Move”. It was explained that this would build upon former US President Trump’s goal of aligning his country’s diverse alliances across Eurasia in order to maximize the pressure that it plans to put on Russia, China, and Iran. All indications thus far suggest that this analysis was extremely prescient in hindsight. The upcoming summit will add an ideological dimension to the New Cold War that’s intended to disguise its broader economic and strategic motivations.

To elaborate on that insight, the US began to unilaterally and very aggressively attempt to change the so-called “rules of the game” connected to the UN’s genuine “rules-based order” around 2014 after calculating that the failure to do so could lead to it gradually losing its global influence due to Russia’s and China’s simultaneous rise across Eurasia. The immediate result was American-backed Hybrid War provocations against Russia in Ukraine (EuroMaidan) and China in the South China Sea. Trump’s entrance to the political scene resulted in him tremendously escalating tensions with China through the trade and tech wars that he initiated in an attempt to deal a powerful blow to its structural stability.

Not only did this fail, but so too did his attempt to broker a rapprochement with Russia, which was opposed by the anti-Russian faction of his permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) that he inherited from former US President Obama. His only real success was in revolutionizing his country’s “deep state” dynamics so that the anti-Chinese one became predominant as evidenced by his successor’s continuation of his related policies in spite of being from a rival party. The anti-Russian faction is still influential, but it’s no longer calling the shots like before. This is also proven by last summer’s Biden-Putin Summit and subsequent progress improving on their ties.

The “Summit for Democracy” is more about putting pressure on China than on Russia or Iran. The US is actually trying to reach a series of pragmatic mutual compromises with those latter two intended to free up America’s military and other resources in their regions so that they can be redirected towards more aggressively “containing” China in the “Indo-Pacific”. No such efforts are presently underway with respect to significantly improving relations with China. Last month’s virtual Biden-Xi Summit was merely aimed at regulating their growing military tensions so that they don’t uncontrollably spiral into a hot war that neither side wants. Their global rivalry, however, remains as acute as ever and is intensifying.

There’s a tactical-strategic dimension to the US’ desire to make its conception of “democracy” the focal point around which it envisions leading its growing global alliance against China. The author explained in early 2018 that “Military Intelligence Has Weaponized Democracy Worldwide”, which refers to efforts by those “deep state” factions to manipulate internal political processes for the purpose of influencing the targeted state’s own “deep state” dynamics. In practice, this means that countries with systems more closely aligned with the West’s concept of “electoral democracy” are easier for the US to meddle in whenever it feels the need to pressure them for practicing too independent of a foreign policy.

It’s not a coincidence that many of China’s partners across the world aren’t regarded as practicing a Western version of “democracy”. Those countries’ policies tend to be more farsighted than “democracies’” ones due to the disproportionate influence that patriotic elements of their “deep states” (usually concentrated in the military and/or intelligence wings) tend to exert over policy formulation. The “tradeoff” in terms of the informal “social contract” that they usually agreed to with their people is that they’ll deliver tangible improvements to their living standards in exchange for the right to keep foreign and other policies outside the unpredictable realm of largely demagogic electoral politics.

By explicitly making the West’s conception of “democracy” the ideological fault line in the New Cold War, the US distracts from the economic and strategic motivations behind its global rivalry with China (and to a lesser extent, its regional ones with Russia and/or Iran in the event that they don’t agree to its hoped-for series of pragmatic mutual compromises like was earlier explained). Additionally, it can keep this sensitive domestic political issue on everyone’s minds and thus precondition people to expect Hybrid War (specifically, Color Revolution) pressure against those states that refuse to bend to its demand to disengage from their mutually beneficial cooperation with China.

The punitive measures that could follow would be spun to the world by the US-influenced Mainstream Media as “freedom-loving people peacefully protesting for democracy against their Chinese-backed dictatorship” even if they’re carrying out riots and other acts of urban terrorism aimed at accomplishing their externally backed regime change campaign. It’s this grand strategic significance which makes the upcoming “Summit for Democracy” and the predicted alliance (whether formally proclaimed or informally assembled) that’ll follow milestones in the New Cold War. This is an unprecedented escalation of tensions that mustn’t be dismissed due to the hypocritical basis upon which it’s happening.