The Imperialism of Democracy and Human Rights vs the Democracy and Human Rights of Imperialism

ABSTRACT

Western discourse towards China had been hardening since it became clear to US leaders that their assumption that increasing trade and engagement with China would lead it to become a pale imitation of Western neoliberal financialised capitalisms was coming unravelled and China continued to adhere to its socialist commitments. In waging the US’s New Cold War on China with equal if not greater vigour than Trump, Biden merely replaced Trump’s “America First” stance with the traditionally hypocritical stance of imperialism that always pretends to do good for the world it seeks to dominate, oppress, exploit and otherwise destroy. The latest version of this discourse is about promoting human rights and democracy. At a time when US and Western democracies are being assailed by a toxic combination of inequality, poverty, distrust, social division and political disaffection and polarisation, at a time when US imperialism’s distinctly anti-democratic edge is becoming ever more evident, this stance is only facing mounting contradictions. The present article explores them.

KEYWORDS:

• Imperialism
• United States
• democracy
• human rights
• indigenous rights

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Radhika Desai

Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, Convenor of the International Manifesto Group and is in her third term as President of the Society for Socialist Studies. She is currently working on a book on the Capitalism, Pestilence and War. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd revised ed., 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: “Social Democrats” and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month. Her edited or co-edited books are: Karl Polanyi and Twenty-first Century Capitalism (2020, with Kari Polanyi Levitt), Revolutions (2020, with Henry Heller), Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism (2017, with Boris Kagarlitsky and Alan Freeman), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009).