New US President Joe Biden's first year in office ends on a shock note designed to prove that it is too early to talk about the imminent decline of his barely ascended political star. Immediately after the second in the last six months negotiations with Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden got the opportunity for two days to feel like the president of not just the United States of America, but - take it higher! - United Democracies of the World. A bizarre alliance of more than 100 states, of which he himself became the founding father, initiating the holding of the global Summit for Democracy on December 9-10.

Opening the summit, Joe Biden urged its participants to embark on a new democratic campaign, of which he appointed himself a commander. “I have conceived this meeting for a long time for one simple reason. In the face of constantly troubling challenges to democracy and universal human rights around the world, democracy needs those who will defend it, ”the US President said. "Through external pressure, autocrats seek to strengthen their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, justify repressive practical measures and policies as a more effective way to solve modern problems," the American leader continued to ring all Washington democratic bells.

Among those invited to such a Summit for Democracy, Russia, China, and Turkey, the key US NATO ally on its eastern flank, and more than half of the former Soviet republics (how can we not recall Brzezinski's "great chessboard") were predictably absent.

However, at the same time, the face control of the Biden administration, which stretched for several months, among others, passed Ukraine, Georgia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where democracy did not spend the night, the Kingdom of Tonga lost in the Pacific Ocean, which has always stood on the fact that democracy is clearly contraindicated for it.

Together with them, Taiwan and the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaido, half-forgotten to this day, is the "interim president" who has not become permanent.

Predictably, the idea of ​​a Summit for Democracy sparked a storm of indignation among those who remained on the other side of the barricades and were ranked among the forces of authoritarianism, from which emanate the main threat to the free democratic world.

One of the most implacable critics of the new US-led democratic alliance was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who made several statements designed not to leave a stone unturned on Joe Biden's project.

The main pathos of the angry philippics of the Russian minister was that, with its own long history of destruction of the world and democracy, Washington has no right to even hint about its leadership in the democratic world.

And in general, after all that America has done, it does not and cannot have any "copyrights" to world democracy.

“The Americans themselves decided who to invite to this meeting of theirs and who not.

Meanwhile, after the bombing of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, after a 20-year "experiment" in Afghanistan and other adventures, Washington's attempts to usurp the right to determine the degree of "democracy" of this or that state look simply cynical, "Sergei Lavrov noted.

In general, as one would expect, in its dispute with Washington, Moscow used its crown thesis that, by hosting the Summit for Democracy, the United States should first answer the main question itself: "Is it democracy itself?"

This thesis remains one of the main counterarguments of the Russian side, when in America they once again start talking about an authoritarian, undemocratic Russia, which was expelled from the G8 world club of democracies in 2014.

Conversations like “you better look at yourself” are nothing new.

Nevertheless, the main news is that it was Joe Biden who ventured to implement the new liberal project, which should become an offensive “compulsion to democratic values”.

President of the strategic retreat of America, which is losing interest in burning its fingers and continuing to carry the "torch of freedom and democracy" around the world.

In fact, if you think about it, the Summit for Democracy is an attempt to breathe new life into the forgotten old American idea of ​​creating a Community for Democracy, which was actively promoted by the Clinton administration in the 90s.

The US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, one of the iconic figures of international diplomacy at the end of the 20th century, became the curator of the Community for Democracy project long before the appearance of the Nuland cookies.

However, then there was a completely different era in the yard.

Another was America itself, for which the golden age of Clintonism continued, the other was the Russia of its first President Boris Yeltsin, which demonstrated a determination to break with the communist past and quickly join the ranks of the "civilized democratic community."

There were also dozens of countries in the world that either broke with communism or lost faith in the development model that lost its attractiveness after the collapse of the USSR.

Despite the bombing of Yugoslavia, many states did not recoil from the global liberal project of the United States, the further implementation of which in Afghanistan, Iraq, the countries of the "Arab spring" and many other corners of the planet, from Myanmar to Ukraine, left behind mountains of corpses and crunchy glass underfoot. "Democratic showcases".

Since then, much in America and around the world has changed beyond recognition.

First, to this day, the idea of ​​liberal democracy has dangerously mutated in the United States itself, as evidenced by the four-year rule of President Trump, which culminated in the storming of the Capitol on January 6 this year - an event unheard of by American standards.

Secondly, the liberal democratic project, which caused heartburn in the previous US President Donald Trump, as such has ceased to be of interest outside the United States.

At the same time, the United States itself, we repeat once again, has lost interest and the ability to artificially maintain the burning of the "torches of democracy" smoldering with black soot.

The most striking manifestation of this metamorphosis was the chaotic flight of the United States from Afghanistan, which buried the main liberal project of the early 21st century, in the implementation of which tens of billions of dollars were invested.

It is not surprising that the leaders with eyes and ears declaring their adherence to the liberal democratic model of states, such as Poland or Ukraine, set themselves very pragmatic utilitarian goals: or other problems.

Perhaps this is the only thing that unites the motley group of participants in the Summit for Democracy - a kind of geopolitical analogue of Eurovision, where everyone prepares to perform their own number, sing their own song.

“The figure of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, personifies the global fate of the idea of ​​liberal democracy, which the United States actively imposed on the world.

The experience of the development of America, which throughout its existence has been the global bearer of the ideas of a democratic political system, reveals one extremely important feature of democracy - historically, it may have exhausted itself, but the United States has nothing to replace it with, ”says the chief researcher at the US Institute Of Canada RAS Vladimir Vasiliev.

According to the expert, in this situation, the Summit for Democracy looks like a “democratic global veche” of countries that allegedly share the values ​​of the liberal political system.

However, in reality, we are witnessing an attempt to lay down a new geopolitical vertical, built according to the classical canons of the colonial system of the past: center - periphery.

That is, this whole structure will have to look like this: the American core with concentric circles of peripheral democracies of the second and third grade - “banana”, “orange”, “coconut” and others, far away from it.

The question "What about democracy?"

these new democratic colonies or semi-colonies do not ask themselves.

And why ask him - Joe Biden will definitely not ask them about it.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.