A circus in town Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The so-called Summit for Democracy manipulated by the Biden administration exposed a descending "iron curtain" of Neo-Westernism. This Neo-Westernism is an updated version of Atlanticism which, based on the transatlantic alliance, unites with other Protestant-Catholic countries, non-Christian allies and partners to build an exclusive "new Western club" on different issues so as to strike a blow against the so-called new Eastern countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Hungary.

The main features of this US-led "summit" included adopting "value" as its slogan, forming cliques, and creating confrontations.

It is hard for human beings to entirely get rid of their values but to deliberately reinforce differences in values would inevitably lead to confrontations. Values and political systems forcibly grafted by external forces can easily result in disorder within a country and a failure to ensure its people's well-being.

The fact that the US is the only superpower does not mean its values and political system are universal. American democracy is of limited referential value to other countries. Small and medium-sized countries do not seek to become the most powerful nations, while large countries do not necessarily seek to be the world leader. Pretending to be the purveyor of global values, the US is dividing the world and creating conflicts that are not conducive to world peace and global development.

The Biden administration's "summit for democracy" shows the political preferences of the Democratic Party and highlights Christian values which divide people into two categories, Christians and "others". Based on such criteria, the former, as the chosen ones, are responsible for and obliged to spread the gospel of God all over the world while assimilating and absorbing, or even destroying the latter through political, military, economic, cultural, and social means. This is exactly what Europeans have been doing around the world since the Age of Exploration.

Puritans brought these ideas and practices to the New World and intended to create a great country including the whole American Continent, which is implied by the name of the United States of America. After 200 years of effort, the US, which only covered a part of North America,, still became the most powerful country as well as the world leader after World War II. This convinced the US that it was indeed "the city upon a hill" and it's necessary to promote all things American, especially values and democracy. The victory of the Cold War deepened Americans' faith in their soft power with George W. Bush's "Project on Middle East Democracy", the war on terror, and the "Color Revolutions" as typical examples. However, these diplomatic strategies have not prevented the relative decline of the US. The widening gap between the rich and the poor as well as the middle class' sense of deprivation have led to the rise of isolationism in the US, laying a solid foundation for the emergence of Trumpism.

Nowadays, Washington has no choice but to implement global strategic contraction: Strengthening its investment in key regions, intervening selectively in international affairs, and making allies and partners bear greater responsibilities and obligations. While former US president Donald Trump implemented this contraction in quite a simple but crude way, Biden prefers a much gentler way and the "Values-based Diplomacy" has thus become his policy tool.

The US has "delineated" 110 invitees to attend the "summit", but most of them treated the event as only a temporary political party. Countries and blocs including ASEAN and the EU will adhere to the hedging strategy separating economic issues from security ones.

Exporting wars, launching "color revolutions" and inciting extremist ideologies - in the name of democracy. While the #US has left endless bloodshed and turmoil around the world, it still attempts to establish cliques with "democracy summit."

This political party shows that the US has altered from a confident and open-minded superpower to an ordinary country building fences for its own political, cultural, economic, and security interests while seeking reciprocity in any competition with other countries and regions. As the construction of economic and cultural barriers has received little in the way of responses or expected outcomes, Washington can only resort to desperate political tools and then came the "Summit for Democracy."

In short, the US has no intention or capacity to lead the world. Instead, it retracts and builds a new defensive "political iron curtain" to protect itself rather than an offensive one like what was made by the Truman administration after WWII Within the curtain, Washington remains at the core center, with other members of the Five Eyes alliance in the innermost layer, allies the second, close partners the third, and ordinary partners in the outermost layer. It is a hierarchical but loose system of new Western countries with its main role being to protect the interests of the US and US key allies while objectively dividing the world and creating confrontations.

The author is a research fellow at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn