BEIJING, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) — U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils
February 2023
Contents
Introduction
I. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Around
II. Military Hegemony — Wanton Use of Force
III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation
IV. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression
V. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives
Conclusion
Introduction
Since turning into the world’s strongest nation after the 2 world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted extra boldly to intervene within the inside affairs of different international locations, pursue, preserve and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing hurt to the worldwide neighborhood.
The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even straight launch wars beneath the guise of selling democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked battle and confrontation. It has overstretched the idea of nationwide safety, abused export controls and compelled unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective strategy to worldwide legislation and guidelines, using or discarding them because it sees match, and has sought to impose guidelines that serve its personal pursuits within the title of upholding a “rules-based international order.”
This report, by presenting the related info, seeks to reveal the U.S. abuse of hegemony within the political, army, financial, monetary, technological and cultural fields, and to attract higher worldwide consideration to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.
I. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Around
The United States has lengthy been trying to mould different international locations and the world order with its personal values and political system within the title of selling democracy and human rights.
â—† Instances of U.S. interference in different international locations’ inside affairs abound. In the title of “promoting democracy,” the United States practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “color revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and catastrophe to many international locations.
In 1823, the United States introduced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an “America for the Americans,” what it actually wished was an “America for the United States.”
Since then, the insurance policies of successive U.S. governments towards Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, army intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility towards and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende authorities of Chile, U.S. coverage on this area has been constructed on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those that resist shall perish.
The yr 2003 marked the start of a succession of “color revolutions” — the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State overtly admitted taking part in a “central role” in these “regime changes.” The United States additionally interfered within the inside affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 by the so-called “People Power Revolutions.”
In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched his new e book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to power the Maduro authorities to achieve an settlement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its capacity to promote oil and gold for overseas trade, exert excessive strain on its economic system, and affect the 2018 presidential election.
â—† The U.S. workout routines double requirements on worldwide guidelines. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from worldwide treaties and organizations, and put its home legislation above worldwide legislation. In April 2017, the Trump administration introduced that it might minimize off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the group “supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The United States stop UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it introduced leaving the Paris Agreement on local weather change. In 2018, it introduced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the group’s “bias” in opposition to Israel and failure to guard human rights successfully. In 2019, the United States introduced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to hunt unfettered growth of superior weapons. In 2020, it introduced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.
The United States has additionally been a stumbling block to organic arms management by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding worldwide verification of nations’ actions regarding organic weapons. As the one nation in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has turn into the largest impediment to realizing “a world free of chemical weapons.”
â—† The United States is piecing collectively small blocs by its alliance system. It has been forcing an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” onto the Asia-Pacific area, assembling unique golf equipment just like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional international locations to take sides. Such practices are primarily meant to create division within the area, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.
â—† The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in different international locations, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the primary “Summit for Democracy,” which drew criticism and opposition from many international locations for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host one other “Summit for Democracy,” which stays unwelcome and can once more discover no assist.
II. Military Hegemony — Wanton Use of Force
The historical past of the United States is characterised by violence and growth. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has continually sought growth by power: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a struggle in opposition to Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars both provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its army hegemony to pave the way in which for expansionist goals. In current years, the U.S. common annual army price range has exceeded 700 billion U.S. {dollars}, accounting for 40 % of the world’s complete, greater than the 15 international locations behind it mixed. The United States has about 800 abroad army bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 international locations.
According to the e book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with virtually Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily concerned with virtually all of the 190-odd international locations acknowledged by the United Nations with solely three exceptions. The three international locations had been “spared” as a result of the United States didn’t discover them on the map.
â—† As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly essentially the most warlike nation within the historical past of the world. According to a Tufts University report, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019,” the United States undertook practically 400 army interventions globally between these years, 34 % of which had been in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 % in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 % within the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 % in Europe. Currently, its army intervention within the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.
Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, identified that the United States has hardly ever distinguished between diplomacy and struggle since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in lots of creating international locations within the twentieth century and instantly changed them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its outdated ways of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.
â—† U.S. army hegemony has brought about humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and army operations launched by the United States within the title of preventing terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured thousands and thousands and displaced tens of thousands and thousands. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, together with over 16,000 straight killed by the U.S. army, and left greater than 1,000,000 homeless.
The United States has created 37 million refugees around the globe. Since 2012, the variety of Syrian refugees alone has elevated tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths had been documented within the Syrian fightings, together with 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them girls and kids. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.
The two-decades-long struggle in Afghanistan devastated the nation. A complete of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan troopers and law enforcement officials unrelated to the September 11 assaults had been killed in U.S. army operations, and greater than 10 million individuals had been displaced. The struggle in Afghanistan destroyed the muse of financial growth there and plunged the Afghan individuals into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the United States introduced that it might freeze some 9.5 billion {dollars} in belongings belonging to the Afghan central financial institution, a transfer thought of as “pure looting.”
In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy struggle in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium area and heroin manufacturing facility, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does no matter it takes to rob and enslave the individuals of any nation with underground assets.
The United States has additionally adopted appalling strategies in struggle. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used huge portions of chemical and organic weapons in addition to cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, inflicting huge injury on civilian services, numerous civilian casualties and lasting environmental air pollution.
III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation
After World War II, the United States led efforts to arrange the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, along with the Marshall Plan, fashioned the worldwide financial system centered across the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has additionally established institutional hegemony within the worldwide financial and monetary sector by manipulating the weighted voting methods, guidelines and preparations of worldwide organizations together with “approval by 85 percent majority,” and its home commerce legal guidelines and rules. By making the most of the dollar’s standing as the most important worldwide reserve forex, the United States is mainly amassing “seigniorage” from around the globe; and utilizing its management over worldwide organizations, it coerces different international locations into serving America’s political and financial technique.
â—† The United States exploits the world’s wealth with the assistance of “seigniorage.” It prices solely about 17 cents to supply a 100 dollar invoice, however different international locations needed to pony up 100 dollar of precise items so as to get hold of one. It was identified greater than half a century in the past, that the United States loved exorbitant privilege and deficit with out tears created by its dollar, and used the nugatory paper notice to plunder the assets and factories of different nations.
â—† The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the primary supply of instability and uncertainty on this planet economic system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its international monetary hegemony and injected trillions of {dollars} into the worldwide market, leaving different international locations, particularly rising economies, to pay the worth. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy financial coverage and turned to aggressive rate of interest hike, inflicting turmoil within the worldwide monetary market and substantial depreciation of different currencies such because the Euro, lots of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a end result, a lot of creating international locations had been challenged by excessive inflation, forex depreciation and capital outflows. This was precisely what Nixon’s secretary of the treasury John Connally as soon as remarked, with self-satisfaction but sharp precision, that “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”
â—† With its management over worldwide financial and monetary organizations, the United States imposes further situations to their help to different international locations. In order to scale back obstacles to U.S. capital influx and hypothesis, the recipient international locations are required to advance monetary liberalization and open up monetary markets in order that their financial insurance policies would fall in keeping with America’s technique. According to the Review of International Political Economy, together with the 1,550 debt aid packages prolonged by the IMF to its 131 member international locations from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 further political situations had been connected.
â—† The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with financial coercion. In the Eighties, to remove the financial risk posed by Japan, and to manage and use the latter in service of America’s strategic purpose of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic monetary energy in opposition to Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a end result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its monetary market and reform its monetary system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the expansion momentum of the Japanese economic system, leaving Japan to what was later known as “three lost decades.”
â—† America’s financial and monetary hegemony has turn into a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the United States has enacted such home legal guidelines because the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and launched a sequence of government orders to sanction particular international locations, organizations or people. Statistics present that U.S. sanctions in opposition to overseas entities elevated by 933 % from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed greater than 3,900 sanctions, which implies three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed financial sanctions on practically 40 international locations the world over, together with Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting practically half of the world’s inhabitants. “The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been decreased to nothing however a instrument for the United States to make use of its technique of state energy to suppress financial rivals and intervene in regular worldwide enterprise. This is a severe departure from the ideas of liberal market economic system that the United States has lengthy boasted.
IV. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression
The United States seeks to discourage different international locations’ scientific, technological and financial growth by wielding monopoly energy, suppression measures and know-how restrictions in high-tech fields.
â—† The United States monopolizes mental property within the title of safety. Taking benefit of the weak place of different international locations, particularly creating ones, on mental property rights and the institutional emptiness in related fields, the United States reaps extreme earnings by monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed ahead the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized course of and requirements in mental property safety in an try and solidify its monopoly on know-how.
In the Eighties, to include the event of Japan’s semiconductor trade, the United States launched the “301” investigation, constructed bargaining energy in bilateral negotiations by multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair commerce, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to signal the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a end result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises had been virtually utterly pushed out of world competitors, and their market share dropped from 50 % to 10 %. Meanwhile, with the assist of the U.S. authorities, a lot of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the chance and grabbed bigger market share.
â—† The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological points and makes use of them as ideological instruments. Overstretching the idea of nationwide safety, the United States mobilized state energy to suppress and sanction Chinese firm Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei merchandise into the U.S. market, minimize off its provide of chips and working methods, and coerced different international locations to ban Huawei from endeavor native 5G community development. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for practically three years.
The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with international competitiveness, and has put greater than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has additionally imposed controls on biotechnology, synthetic intelligence and different high-end applied sciences, strengthened export restrictions, tightened funding screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps akin to TikTook and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to limit exports of chips and associated gear or know-how to China.
The United States has additionally practiced double requirements in its coverage on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese college students majoring in sure high-tech-related disciplines, repeated instances have occurred the place Chinese students and college students going to the United States for trade packages and research had been unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese students working within the United States was carried out.
â—† The United States solidifies its technological monopoly within the title of defending democracy. By constructing small blocs on know-how such because the “chips alliance” and “clean network,” the United States has put “democracy” and “human rights” labels on high-technology, and turned technological points into political and ideological points, in order to manufacture excuses for its technological blockade in opposition to different international locations. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 international locations to the Prague 5G Security Conference within the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an try and exclude China’s 5G merchandise. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo introduced the “5G clean path,” a plan designed to construct technological alliance within the 5G area with companions bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the necessity to defend “cyber security.” The measures, in essence, are the U.S. makes an attempt to keep up its technological hegemony by technological alliances.
â—† The United States abuses its technological hegemony by finishing up cyber assaults and eavesdropping. The United States has lengthy been infamous as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the globe. It has all types of means to implement pervasive cyber assaults and surveillance, together with utilizing analog base station alerts to entry cell phones for information theft, manipulating cell apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing by undersea cables. The checklist goes on.
U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All may be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied international locations akin to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and assaults launched by the United States akin to “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the United States is carefully monitoring its allies and companions. Such eavesdropping on allies and companions has already brought about worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founding father of Wikileaks, a web site that has uncovered U.S. surveillance packages, mentioned that “do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules.”
V. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives
The international growth of American tradition is a crucial a part of its exterior technique. The United States has typically used cultural instruments to strengthen and preserve its hegemony on this planet.
â—† The United States embeds American values in its merchandise akin to films. American values and life-style are a tied product to its films and TV exhibits, publications, media content material, and packages by the government-funded non-profit cultural establishments. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion area wherein American tradition reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, uncovered the true weapons in U.S. cultural growth: the Hollywood, the picture design factories on Madison Avenue and the manufacturing traces of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.
There are varied automobiles the United States makes use of to maintain its cultural hegemony. American films are essentially the most used; they now occupy greater than 70 % of the world’s market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural variety to enchantment to numerous ethnicities. When Hollywood films descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.
â—† American cultural hegemony not solely exhibits itself in “direct intervention,” but additionally in “media infiltration” and as “a trumpet for the world.” U.S.-dominated Western media has a very necessary function in shaping international public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling within the inside affairs of different international locations.
The U.S. authorities strictly censors all social media firms and calls for their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that every one social media platforms work with the U.S. authorities to censor content material, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion within the United States is topic to authorities intervention to limit all unfavorable remarks. Google typically makes pages disappear.
U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an impartial U.S. investigative web site, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter’s public coverage staff to reinforce the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on an inventory he despatched, six of which had been to be given precedence. One of the six was devoted to justifying U.S. drone assaults in Yemen, akin to by claiming that the assaults had been exact and killed solely terrorists, not civilians. Following Kahler’s directive, Twitter put these Arabic-language accounts on a “white list” to amplify sure messages.
â—†The United States practices double requirements on the liberty of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of different international locations by varied means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media akin to Russia Today and the Sputnik from their international locations. Platforms akin to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube overtly limit official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have eliminated Russian channels and functions from their providers and app shops. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.
â—†The United States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate “peaceful evolution” in socialist international locations. It units up news media and cultural outfits concentrating on socialist international locations. It pours staggering quantities of public funds into radio and TV networks to assist their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist international locations in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night time.
The United States makes use of misinformation as a spear to assault different international locations, and has constructed an industrial chain round it: there are teams and people making up tales, and peddling them worldwide to mislead public opinion with the assist of practically limitless monetary assets.
Conclusion
While a simply trigger wins its champion huge assist, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of utilizing energy to intimidate the weak, taking from others by power and subterfuge, and taking part in zero-sum video games are exerting grave hurt. The historic traits of peace, growth, cooperation, and mutual profit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding fact with its energy and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn rising, intense criticism and opposition from the worldwide neighborhood.
Countries must respect one another and deal with one another as equals. Big international locations ought to behave in a way befitting their standing and take the lead in pursuing a brand new mannequin of state-to-state relations that includes dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or alliance. China opposes all types of hegemonism and energy politics, and rejects interference in different international locations’ inside affairs. The United States should conduct severe soul-searching. It should critically study what it has finished, let go of its vanity and prejudice, and stop its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.