The so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act," which maliciously denigrates the human rights situation in China's Xinjiang while disregarding facts and truth, will come into effect on June 21.
The act is the latest example of how the US launches disinformation campaigns against China. Experts noted that starting from funding anti-China think tanks and scholars to authoring malicious, false reports, the hyping up of relative topics in the media, and interference from US politicians, the US government enacts such evil laws. In its mastery of creating disinformation, the US, on April 27, announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board under the US Department of Homeland Security. However, the board was shut down after just three weeks after serious concerns were raised.
"The US government itself is the primary spreader of disinformation. German writer Michael Lüders pointed out in his book The Hypocritical Superpower that the US government is very adept at selecting and distorting facts, limiting the source of information, and polarizing public opinion in order to blur facts and influence people's judgment. When the waters are muddied, it is certainly easier to fish for geopolitical and economic gains," said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian at a media briefing on June 8, in response to a question related to the Disinformation Governance Board.
Last month, former US President Barack Obama's speech on disinformation and democracy sparked heated discussions. While what he tried to say was that disinformation is harmful to US democracy, many netizens pointed out that his words actually exposed how the US had launched disinformation campaigns in other countries, including meticulous propaganda operations designed to mislead citizens and result in a lack of confidence in their leaders.
"Large-scale propaganda is an important part of the US global strategy to establish, maintain, and consolidate its global dominance. The institutionalized US foreign communication strategy was accelerated after World War II," Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Cuban Ambassador to China, Carlos Miguel Pereira, told the Global Times that the US likes to fuel its powerful propaganda machine to present a distorted world view that does not correspond to reality to protect its political interests.
Lüders told the Global Times in a previous interview that the US is "hypocritical because while it always cites higher values, in reality, it pursues a kind of power politic that is tough and cold-blooded. Its reference to 'higher values' is being manipulated."
Experts noted that the US employed "white", "black" and "gray" propaganda, and the latter two are mostly carried out by agencies such as the CIA and Defense Department in a covert manner. It is estimated that 40 percent of the CIA's covert operations are propaganda programs.
Three types of propaganda
In 1951, the US government set up the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), a committee comprised of the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA. In 1953, the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) under the command of the National Security Council was formed to further propose the US government's information and psychological warfare programs while the PSB was abolished.
In 1961, former US President Kennedy abolished the OCB as it was believed that secret wars should not be publicly overseen by so many officials. Since then, the agency in charge of psychological warfare became a mystery.
However, based on the analyzed related materials and US government documents, we can still have a broad understanding of how the US conducts information and psychological war abroad, Lü said.
After more than a century of practice, the US formed a complete set of international communications mechanisms. That is, the NSC led inter-department cooperation, to conduct either covert or overt communications operations. They use "idealism" as a cover to achieve their "realistic" interests in their international communication disclosures. This strategic communication, to a great extent, helps maintain US global dominance, Lü noted to the Global Times.
According to Lü, an important characteristic of US national and international communication is that it pursues "ideological thrust" and "weaponized information." That is to say, all the conveyed messages must serve US national strategic interests and goals.
Lü listed three types of propaganda that the US adopts in its strategic communication.
The "white" propaganda refers to osmotic propaganda based on the government's public activities, including public diplomacy led by the US State Department and the state-owned media represented by Voice of America.
The "black" propaganda refers to propaganda activities carried out through covert action. Many propagandist activities carried out by the CIA, the Department of Defense, and other agencies fall in this category, which includes a large number of infiltration activities such as secretly controlling domestic and foreign media and buying off politicians.
The CIA has a long history of manipulating media outlets worldwide for its secret propaganda purposes. According to an article in The New York Times in 1977, dozens of English and foreign language publications have been owned, subsidized, or influenced by the CIA over the past three decades. To shape world opinion, the CIA was able to call upon many news outlets in its worldwide propaganda campaign.
Some of its officials admitted to The New York Times that they were concerned about the possibility of "blow-back" - that is - some of the purposely misleading or downright false information spread by the CIA abroad may be picked up by US reporters overseas and included in their dispatches to publications at home.
The "gray" propaganda refers to engaging "opinion leaders" and workers in the media industry in relevant countries to act as spokespersons for US interests by means of behind-the-scenes bribes and inducements, so as to promote the interests of the US and influence the decisions of relevant governments, Lü said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2005, the US military secretly paid newspapers in Iraq to run stories written by US military information operations troops with help from a defense contractor to "burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq." Nearly $1,500, for instance, was paid to Addustour newspaper to run an article titled "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development." The Los Angeles Times also found out that the Pentagon had contracted a Washington-based firm named the Lincoln Group to plant these stories.
The "gray propaganda" and "black propaganda" are mostly carried out by agencies including the CIA and the US Defense Department and the secrecy of these plans is hard to uncover, Lü said.
Scholar Loch Johnson estimated that a full 40 percent of CIA secret operations are propaganda programs. "Whatever foreign policies or slogans the White House may be pushing" at the time, the CIA "will likely be advancing these same ideas through its covert channels," he said.
Newscasters work on their broadcast at Radio and TV Marti headquarters on Jan 24, 2007 in Miami, Florida. The anti-Castro broadcasting network is overseen by the US Broadcasting Board of Governors. Photo: AFP
US' harm to the world
Ambassador Pereira told the Global Times that the destabilization campaigns and subversion programs from the US government against Cuba are nothing new.
According to the ambassador, in 2021, the Joe Biden administration asked Congress for $20 million for so-called "democracy in Cuba" programs, and almost $13 million for illegal radio and television broadcasts.
The ambassador said that in 2021, they found that the federal agency USAID granted 12 organizations based in Florida, Washington, and Madrid dedicated to the anti-Cuban campaign, more than $6.6 million, in the month of September alone.
"The US has unleashed a media offensive aimed at discrediting the management of the Cuban government, through the manipulation and politicization of issues such as human rights and the fight against terrorism, as well as generating mistrust around the Revolution, for which it deploys today with full intensity, its subversive component to try to influence sensitive and strategic sectors for the future of the country, such as our youth, through social networks, in which private US platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are known to predominate," he said.
Such methods include creating Facebook groups, the use of robots and fake accounts on Twitter, or trying to recruit Cuban residents in Miami to spread falsehoods about Cuba as though they were in the country.
During the violent July 11 unrest in 2021 in Cuba, an account based in Spain and managed by US institution posted more than 1,000 tweets a day to fuel the unrest, according to the diplomat.
From 1996 to 2021, the US Congress allocated around $404 million for supposed democracy programs under the Helms-Burton Act, an act seeking international sanctions against the Castro government. Likewise, between 1984 and 2021, the US Congress had allocated nearly $945 million for illegal broadcasts on Radio and TV Martí.
Radio and TV Martí is a Miami-based radio and television international broadcaster financed by the US federal government which transmits news to Cuba.
In November, the Ethiopian government urged the US government and relevant organizations to stop spreading falsehoods about the country.
Ethiopia's state minister of communication, Kebede Dessisa, said the US government should "refrain from disseminating shameful fake news and defamation regarding Ethiopia," state broadcaster EBC reported.
The US likes to claim that it acts in the name of freedom, democracy, and human rights but there is a huge gap between this idealism and reality. Their disinformation causes great harm which ordinary citizens have to bear, experts said.
The US used white powder as so-called evidence of possession of weapons of mass destruction then waged war on Iraq, killing about 200,000 to 250,000 Iraqi civilians. Citing a staged video by the "White Helmet" and the false intelligence it provided as "evidence", the US launched the so-called "most precise air campaign in history" against Syria, claiming more than 1,600 innocent civilian lives in a single strike.
Info war on China
Since the normalization of China-US relations, the US has not abandoned its use of ideological weapons and US intelligence agencies' rumor mill capabilities to contain China's development and undermine political stability, Lü said.
Since 2018, the US has incessantly hyped "human rights" topics in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Its modus operandi, as Lü pointed out, includes letting the media first create ambiguous topics, followed by intelligence agencies selecting suitable candidates and presenting them as "fugitives" to accept interviews in the media, followed by so-called research reports by anti-China think tanks. After that, the US government usually mobilizes several "human rights organizations" that it either secretly or openly supports to proliferate the topic and call for "sanctions." Thereafter, the US government follows the suit.
Zhao Lijian also listed how the US launched a disinformation campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic at the June 8 media briefing.
"You may still remember that the US downplayed the threat and speed of the coronavirus disease's transmission at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and kept spreading disinformation about the origins of the virus. Disinformation about COVID-19 was rated by a certain US website as "2020 Lie of the Year." As a result, more than one million innocent American lives have been lost to the virus, making the US the country with the highest COVID-19 death toll as well as the most confirmed cases," Zhao said.
"The more lies the US government tells, the greater the reputational damage and its credibility deficit," he said. "The US needs to stop fabricating and disseminating false information, and stop taking pride in being "an empire of lies."
According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, only about 39 percent of American respondents said they trusted their country's government, which is nearly the lowest level ever recorded.
Native Americans, refugees from US-initiated wars, Floyds and children separated from their parents at the border will remember
the US as the greatest “human ...
The masks covering the true face of the US were taken off one after another through the seven stories the Global Times had
published over the course of the past few weeks. These masks are engraved with words such as peace, liberty, security, unity, science, humanity, and global order, hiding the country's true visage that has been distorted with lust, greed, and subjugation.
The masks covering the true face of the US have been removed one after another through the seven investigative stories the
Global Times published over the course of the past few weeks. These masks are engraved with beautiful words such as peace, liberty,
security, unity, science, humanity, and global order, hiding the country's true visage distorted with lust, greed, and subjugation.
Fanning the flames to create turmoil, using economic and financial hegemony to sanction opponents, and forming cliques to create
political isolation - the US is using its hegemony to undermine the international order.
In fact, the US government's approach is quite similar to Voldemort's -
they both believe in power, recruit followers, use violence, and repeatedly want to kill competitors in order to maintain supremacy.
Voldemort' of global order: America is the 'Dark Lord' set on destroying international order
Voldemort: The Dark Lord
Editor's Note:
Since the start of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the role the US and NATO behind the crisis.
From imposing sanctions on "disobedient countries," to coercing other nations to pick sides, lip service on the Ukraine refugee issue, to a questionable overseas human rights record… the US has acted like a "Cold War schemer," or a "vampire" who creates "enemies" and makes its fortunes from pyres of war.
The Global Times is publishing a series of stories and cartoons to demonstrate how the US, abusing its superpower status, has been creating trouble in the world one crisis after another. This is the final installment.
A woman walks past the landmark graffiti on the walls of the former US embassy in Tehran, Iran. Photo: AFP
"Just in one year, our sanctions are likely to wipe out the last 15 years of Russia's economic gains" and make Russia "an outcast on the international stage." These remarks by US President Joe Biden after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict are frightening. The US could implement such a "strangulation" plan economically and politically to a superpower like Russia,, not to mention other countries that are not as powerful.
Fanning the flames to create turmoil, using economic and financial hegemony to sanction opponents, and forming cliques to create political isolation - the US is using its hegemony to undermine the international order.
In fact, the US government's approach is quite similar to Voldemort's - they both believe in power, recruit followers, use violence, and repeatedly want to kill competitors in order to maintain supremacy.
'Paralyzing' sanctions
After the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, the US did not persuade Moscow and Kiev to negotiate and promote peace, but instead continued to provide military assistance to Ukraine in an attempt to prolong the conflict and to bring down Russia.
On April 13, Biden announced that he would provide Ukraine with an additional $800 million in military aid to help Kiev strengthen its defenses. Since the conflict, Washington's aid to Kiev has surpassed $2.4 billion.
In addition to supporting Ukraine ensnare Russia, the US has also imposed "paralyzing" sanctions on Moscow, involving economic, financial, technological and other fields. Kicking some Russian banks out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), canceling the "Most-Favored-Nation" for trade with Russia, depriving Russian citizens access to their overseas assets, restricting the sale of Russian vodka... the US sanctions against Russia are all-inclusive.
Unwilling to act alone, the US is also pulling together European countries, Australia, Japan, South Korea and many other allies to deal with Russia, trying to "turn the ruble into paper." With their joint "efforts," Russia has become the country that has suffered the most sanctions from the US in recent years. According to a report by Sputnik News Agency, data from a sanctions tracking platform shows that since 2014, Russia has been subject to 5,532 sanctions, surpassing Iran and Syria.
Meanwhile, since the conflict began, at least 300 multinational companies have withdrawn from Russia. JPMorgan Chase previously predicted that Russia's GDP will shrink by 12 percent due to Western sanctions. Some Russian experts have warned that living standards in Russians may drop to 1990s levels. Meanwhile, the World Bank predicts that Ukraine's GDP will plummet by about 45.1 percent this year.
The war brought disaster to both Russia and Ukraine, while the US benefited.
A heartless dependence on sanctions
The crazy sanctions against Russia are just the latest manifestation of the US sanction addiction. Over the past 20 years, the US has relied on the tool of sanctions almost to the point of insanity. The number of sanctioned targets on the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control sanctions list has grown from 912 in 2000 to 9,421 in October 2021, a net increase of 933 percent.
Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea are all on the US sanctions list, the reasons given by the US government for punishing these countries include the so-called "anti-terrorism", "anti-corruption", and "protection of human rights, " but the real reasons are in fact closely related to the US' ideological differences and geopolitical interests. The sanctions have ultimately triggered huge humanitarian disasters in these countries, observers said.
On October 25, 2021 people held a demonstration near the US Embassy in Zimbabwe to protest against Western sanctions against Zimbabwe. Photo: Xinhua
John Mueller, professor of political science at the University of Rochester, has compared the threat of chemical and biological weapons to the massive death and destruction caused by US economic sanctions and found that "more people have been killed because of the sanctions than have been killed by all weapons of mass destruction in history."
Except
for sovereign states, companies of all countries will be hunted down by
the US as long as they affect the country's interest. Germany's Siemens, Japan's Toshiba, France's Alstom. The US has set one trap after another for these competitors in the high-tech sector. They were all fined heavily by Washington, and their core businesses were severely affected. Some employees were even arrested by the US government on trumped up charges. Frederic Pierucci, former executive of Alstom, detailed in his book The American Trap about how the US, under the guise of anti-corruption, manage to dismantle many of Europe's biggest multinationals for more than a decade.
The US has always stressed the need to maintain the so-called "rules-based international order," but when it comes to international trade rules, the US applies them when it suits them and abandons when it doesn't. The WTO report shows that two-thirds of the organization's violations are caused by the US, making the country the biggest "non-compliant" nation of WTO ruling.
'Secret Cold War'
The so-called "rules-based order", a termed pushed by the US had gained currency after then US President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq without the approval of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, which "exemplified his general disregard for international restraints on American power," according to an article published on The New York Times (NYT) in June 2021.
Looking back at the wars in the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Syria - the US, under the banner of "upholding justice," "stopping aggression" and "humanitarian intervention," participated in almost all major wars and armed conflicts around the world since WWII to maintain its hegemony. That has led to untold humanitarian disaster to the invaded countries and regions, and plunged them into instability and economic recession.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, once referred to the US as "the most warlike nation in the history of the world." In order to impose its political system and values, the US willfully interferes in other countries' internal affairs. It also provokes the so-called "color revolutions" and incites unrest in the involved countries in addition to military invasions.
According to American scholar Lindsey A. O'Rourke's book Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War, the US engaged in 64 covert attempts at regime change during the Cold War. After the 9/11 attacks, the US started to use "counter-terrorism" as an excuse to force regime change abroad. The war on "terror" spread to more than 40 percent of the world's countries since 2001, according to a special report by the Smithsonian Magazine. Another study conducted by Brown University showed that, the post-9/11 wars have led to over 929,000 deaths and over 38 million refugees and displaced persons.
US' economic bullying not only affects the economic livelihood of the sanctioned countries, but also causes serious damage to the global economic order and economic security. Western sanctions against Russia have also had a profound impact on the global energy, food and financial markets. According to the Financial Times, sanctions against Russia are the biggest blow to globalization, devouring not only the real wealth but also expectations of future global economic growth.
US and UK ambassadors to the United Nations vote on March 31, 1992 for sanctions against Libya.?Photo: AFP
A 'rogue superpower'
As a principal architect and custodian of the international order after WWII, the US is the initiator, founder and participant of many existing international organizations and international treaties. However, if these rules affect US' interests, Washington is quick to push them to one side.
In January 2017, the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. In December 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. And in the following years, the US has withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty and other international agreements.
In terms of international organizations, the US has twice officially withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in October 2017 and again in January 2019. When the International Criminal Court "encroached" on US interests, Washington was quick to threaten sanctions in September 2020.
"In the early 21st century, if any power sought world domination, coercing others and flouting rules, it was the United States," commented a NYT opinion piece in October 2020. Noam Chomsky and other prominent US scholars also bluntly said that the US has become a "rogue superpower."
Experts point out that countries of the world are seeing ever more clearly the behavior of the US in undermining the international order. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, facing the extreme pressure from the US, Serbia refused to follow the West to impose sanctions on Russia. On April 9, Iran, which has suffered from decades of US sanctions, announced the inclusion of 24 Americans on its blacklist of sanctioned individuals for violations of human rights of the Iranian people.
Conclusion
In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort's arrogance and unchecked need for absolute power lead to his eventual demise.
Unmasking the nature of US government as Voldemort, its face has now been revealed to readers piece by piece - the US is not only the Ukraine Crisis Instigator and Cold War Schemer, but also the Instability Brewer, Poison Disseminator, "Vampires" in the war who spread plague and creates hatred, a Human Rights Destroyer who committed grave crimes against humanity, and the ""Voldemort" of Global Order.
The world has suffered from the US for too long, and it is only a matter of time before the US' hegemonic behavior and destruction of the international order backfires.
With its stock market jumping, the dollar strengthening, and global capital flowing in, the US is again reaping profits but bringing financial shockwaves to foreign countries, whether they are what it claims are rivals, like China, or allies, like the EU, by tightening its monetary policy, experts observed.
As the Fed policy tightening accelerates, analysts said that the US is increasingly turning into a world "damager" instead of "protector" when the country finds its global responsibilities clash with its own national interests, and the world is paying the price for the US' domestic problems, like surging inflation.
In recent days, the side effects of US monetary policy, particularly the Fed's hawkish push for raising interest rates, have spread to multiple regions of the world and multiple financial areas.
The US Dollar Index is turning up sharply, at one point touching a ceiling of 100.19 on Friday, the highest level since May 2020. Accompanied by the rise is the weakening of global currencies including the yen, the euro and the yuan.
Global stock and bond markets are also sliding. The 10-year US Treasury yield topped its Chinese equivalent on Monday for the first time in 12 years.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index slipped by 2.61 percent on Monday, the Hong Kong-based Hang Seng Index dropped by more than 3 percent, and the Japanese Nikkei 225 was down 1.81 percent on Tuesday.
Contractions on global financial markets are generally considered to be a result of the Fed's move to increase interest rates recently, the first time in more than three years. Investors are betting on more aggressive rate hikes in the coming months after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell vowed tough action to rein in inflation during a recent speech at the National Association for Business Economics.
The US government has stepped on the gas to drive up interest rates to contain inflation. The US Consumer Price Index jumped by 8.5 percent on a yearly basis in March, touching a 40-year-high due to rising oil, food and housing costs. The growth beat market expectations of 8.4 percent.
However, Chinese experts criticized the US for shifting the burden of its own economic problems to global markets.
"The US is letting global markets pay the price for its own crisis of inflation, depending on the dominant role of the US dollar and the integration of the global economy," Li Haidong, a professor from the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
According to Li, the countries holding massive US dollar assets will feel the pinch from Fed's tightening, but the blow will be even more vital for countries that have a vulnerable social system, as the US action might bring havoc to social stability there.
He also said that when the US government sees a clash between its global responsibility and its own interests, it does not feel guilt in choosing the latter.
"The US' role in the world is turning from that of a protector to a kind of damager, as it thinks that globalization is bad for its own interests," Li said.
Even countries that are in the same league as the US won't escape the US' profit-seeking moves, experts said.
Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times that the US is adding fuel to the flames of the Ukraine crisis, in order to strengthen its position in the so-called Western alliance, as well as further enhance the role of the greenback after investors saw Europe was not secure.
A direct consequence of this strategy is a weaker EU, both businesswise and politically, as the region's independence is undermined, while the military chaos also hurts the region's energy supplies and the euro's attraction to international investors.
Xi said that US monetary policy shifts will put pressure on the Chinese mainland's financial markets, especially as the mainland expands connections with the Hong Kong stock market, which is more vulnerable to US financial volatility.
However, Xi stressed that the impact on the mainland markets won't be severe because of capital flow restrictions, and China's independent monetary policy will not be swayed by external factors like the US Fed's decisions.
Since the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine began, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the roles the US and NATO have played behind the crisis.
From launching color revolutions around the world to leading NATO's eastward expansion to hem in Russia's territorial space; from imposing sanctions on "disobedient countries" to coercing other nations to pick sides… the US has acted like a "Cold War schemer," or a "vampire" who creates "enemies" and makes fortunes from pyres of war. The Global Times is publishing a series of stories and cartoons to unveil how the US, in its superpower status, has been creating trouble in the world one crisis after another.
This is the fourth installment.
Supporters of Pro-Russian groups protest during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin' visit in Bulgaria on March 19, 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: AFP -Anti-government protestors wait at the entrance of a barricade in front of the Dynamo Kiev stadium in Ukraine on February 23, 2014. Photo: AFP
On the evening of December 25, 1991, the hammer and sickle flag representing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was slowly lowered over the Kremlin, and the flag of the Russian Federation in white, blue, and red was raised on the same flagpole.
The change of flags signified the official disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had existed for 74 years, as well as the end of the 44-year Cold War.
There were no ceremonies held in Moscow that night, just the dull tolls of bells from Spasskaya Tower from across the Kremlin. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, Americans proclaimed internationally how they had defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War victory.
It has been 31 years since this period in history, and several major changes have taken place in the world order and international patterns. However, these have not dispelled the arrogance of the US enraptured in the title "winner of the Cold War" and its overconfidence in the "maker of history" conclusion.
Standing at the start of the third decade of the 21st century, people can witness how American politicians still view every country considered to be a threat through the Cold War lens. They are still keen to incite ideological hostility and battle their own imaginary enemies, which makes the dissipation of the dark Cold War clouds virtually impossible. The shadow of the Cold War has spread from Washington to Beijing and Moscow.
From disintegrating the Soviet Union to designing the "Ukrainian Trap" step by step with the intention of achieving the strategic goals of "eliminating" Russia, suppressing Europe, containing China and maintaining an absolute hegemony, the "strategic master plan" adopted by the US can kill many birds with one stone in order to dominate the world.
The US is still a schemer that harbors a Cold War mentality.
US plays 'central role' in political demise of Soviet Union
"NATO is a defensive alliance that has never sought the demise of Russia," said US President Joe Biden, defending the eastward expansion of NATO in a speech he delivered in Warsaw on March 26, but turning a blind eye to the "not one inch eastward" pledge that NATO had made in the 1990s. Biden's words were not a complete lie, as there's little possibility of trying to eliminate (or, achieve the demise) of a nuclear world power with more than 17 million square kilometers of land and a permanent seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
A physical "demise" of Russia is almost impossible. Nonetheless, the US-led NATO has been attempting to "eliminate" Russia in the past decades in various aspects including politically, economically, culturally, and ideologically, in order to keep dividing and weakening Russia, observers noted. Having acted out a similar script on the Soviet Union, the US is now looking forward to an encore performance on present-day Russia.
"The American role in the political defeat of the Soviet Union... was indeed central," Zbigniew Brzezinski, a renowned US geopolitical expert who served as President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981, pointed out in his book Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. "The defeat of the Soviet Union was the consequence of a forty-year bipartisan effort that spanned the presidencies," he wrote. "...almost every US President made a substantial contribution to the outcome."
A prominent example of this "effort" was the US' Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as the "Star Wars program," which was proposed by then US President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. The US proposed the program to try to maintain its nuclear superiority, hoping to bring the Soviet Union's economy to its knees through space arms races.
The US announced the end of the program after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The release of the secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents in the Cold War era showed that the "Star Wars program" that the US had hyped was no more than a calculated strategic deception.
Another "Cold War tool" resorted by the US was its foreign propaganda machine system, such as the Voice of America (VOA). Founded in 1942, VOA began to serve the US' Cold War strategy after WWII, and became the main tool for the US government's promotion to the Soviet people of, not only the American way of life but also the principles of the "free world."
In the 21st century, the US still wields its ideological "soft knife," playing up its color revolution intrigues under the disguise of "democratic values" to countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Tunisia, which only brought about three instances of political turmoil, mass impoverishment and war.
US engrossed in creating purported enemies
The end of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union did not bring about an end to the US' Cold War mindset, which continues to haunt the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the CIA even today. American politicians view the international situation through a "zero-sum game" and "ideological competition" mindset, and keep seeking out purported enemies - now Russia and China.
It is truly a reflection of the US' geopolitical strategic ambition when former US President Barack Obama said that "Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors" or when the incumbent, Biden, said Russia is the country that most "threatens [the] security" of the US while China is US' main competitor. There has long been an anti-Russian consensus among America's political elites.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had pinned great hopes for the West. But as former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "We lied, we cheated, we stole… we had entire training courses" and "It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." That encompasses reasons why an ambitious schemer cannot be trusted.
https://youtu.be/DPt-zXn05ac
From 1999 to 2020, NATO increased its membership from 16 to 30 through an eastward expansion, completing the 3,000-kilometer-long strategic encirclement of Russia.
Since 2014, Russia has been slapped with 5,532 sanctions, according to sanctions monitoring database Castellum.ai, followed by Iran, Syria and North Korea. And Moscow has been subjected to 2,778 new sanctions in less than two weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops' advancement into Ukraine.
At the same time, the US has been trying to undermine Putin's domestic authority, paving the way for a potential "color revolution" in Russia.
Who set the 'Ukraine trap'
Analysts point out that the current situation in Ukraine is a trap that the US has spent years digging into and is determined to draw Russia into.
To prevent Russia from becoming a threat to US hegemony again, the US has promoted two "color revolutions" in Ukraine, first by putting the pro-West Viktor Yushchenko in the presidency in 2005 and then forcing pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych out of office in 2014.
Since August 2021, the US government has been speculating about Russian troops along the border with Ukraine and the possibility of an "imminent invasion" of Ukraine, which further provoked Russia.
It is almost certain that not only does the US want to deter Russia, but it also wants Russia to send troops to Ukraine, said Tang Shiping, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, adding that the real purpose of the US' actions was to force Russia to use force against Ukraine.
Supporters of US-backed Ukrainian opposition leader wave flags during a rally in Kiev, Ukraine on November 28, 2004. Photo: AFP
The tactic of weakening Europe's strategic autonomy by putting it in a dangerous situation, a tactic that the US always used during the Cold War, is being played out again in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this gradual escalation of the situation in Ukraine, the US continues to provide funds and weapons to Ukraine and impose a full range of sanctions on Russia. The sense of crisis created by the US has also strengthened Europe's dependence on the US and NATO, thus greatly enhancing the US' chokehold over Europe, experts noted.
Complex security issues should not be dealt with in a simplistic approach of determining whether "friend or foe" or "black or white," said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a virtual meeting with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell Fontelles on March 29, 2022. "Facts have proven that the outdated Cold War mentality and camp confrontation leads nowhere in Europe, let alone the acts of taking sides and dividing the world," Wang noted.
Dragging the Cold War to the 21st century
"After 1991, the Cold War did not really end, as the US and NATO have not stopped strategically hemming Russia's territorial integrity. In recent years, the US has also regarded China as its main competitor, trying to shape an external environment that is not conducive to China's development through various means," Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times.
American politicians not only harbor a "Cold War mentality," but also continue to promote a new "Cold War strategy."
Robert Gates, former secretary of defense, wrote in the Washington Post on March 3 that "A new American strategy must recognize that we face a global struggle of [an] indeterminate duration against two great powers that share authoritarianism at home and hostility to the United States."
The two countries Gates refers to are undoubtedly Russia and China. Containing them and ensuring that no one can shake US' hegemony has become the core of the US' current global strategy.
"NATO members have demonstrated their loyalty to Washington by vowing to follow its orders aimed at ultimately containing Russia," the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on March 24, adding that Washington once again "disciplined" its allies by pressuring sovereign countries and erasing Europe's strategic autonomy.
Supporters of Pro-Russian groups protest during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin' visit in Bulgaria on March 19, 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: AFP
In terms of China, the US government has introduced the "Pivot to Asia" and the "Indo-Pacific strategy," and has united with Japan, India, Australia, and other countries in the region to consolidate small strategic cliques such as "QUAD" and "AUKUS," trying to contain China from multiple directions.
Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, summed up that the competition between the US and China will be all-rounded, involving governments and societies; in-depth competition could lead to a serious weakening or even decoupling of China-US ties in the fields of industrial chain, science and technology, and people-to-people and cultural exchanges; in terms of intensity, competition is extraordinary.
"Since President Joe Biden entered the White House a year ago, he and his top advisers have insisted they are not looking for a return to the superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated global affairs for nearly five decades. Yet one year into his presidency, Biden's actions have indicated otherwise," a commentary published on the US National Interest website stated, adding that in all areas of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has a Cold War-style mentality.
"The Cold War was not a golden era of foreign relations, but instead was a tragedy that cost millions of lives around the world. Washington cannot fall for feel-good nostalgia about its Cold War victory," it stated
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In Japan, the customer service agent was extremely nice and friendly, but declined his request politely, saying it was against the policy. In Japan, you are rude if you try to change your appointment when the prearranged date is near.
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In Korea, the customer consultant was not particularly friendly, but she changed the delivery date for him anyway. In fact, in Korea it is possible to change your appointment even until the last moment. Koreans are quite flexible about such things. Besides, Koreans are well known to do things quickly, too. Indeed, everything is so fast in Korean society that it surely is convenient to live there.
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Then the journalist wrote that in the United States he could not even talk to the customer service representative. Presumably, when he called, the answering machine put him on hold forever. In my recent experience, I had to wait about 40 minutes before I was finally able to talk to a customer service representative. Although it varies depending on the companies and calling hours, putting a customer on hold for about half an hour seems to be common in the United States these days.
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The Korean correspondent’s comparison of Japan, South Korea and the United States made me smile because it revealed the radical differences among the three countries. Indeed, Japan is a country where people are polite and friendly, and yet they do everything “by the book”. Additionally, in Japanese society it is seriously frowned upon to put someone to much trouble or to take up much of anyone’s time. You should not make yourself an annoyance or nuisance, either.
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South Korea is a country where the people do not always live by the book strictly and thus can be flexible. Although such elasticity may cause problems sometimes, it certainly is convenient for ordinary people’s everyday lives. In addition, Korean society is speedy. Everything is so fast, so you do not need to wait for a long time. Some foreigners like it so much that they decide to live in Korea much longer than they originally planned.
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Compared with Korea, everything is so slow in the United States. For example, when you apply for a driver license or transfer from another state’s license, it usually takes a month to receive the license by mail. In South Korea, you can get your driver license within 10 to 15 minutes. When you submit a paper to an American journal, it takes at least a year to get published. In Korea, it takes only a few weeks.
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Recently, an American friend of mine called a company to paint his house. The company told him that the paint job had to wait for about a year. He also called an electrician to repair an electrical problem in his study. The electrician informed him that he had to be on a waiting list which stretched for about three months. Granted, the Covid-19 pandemic and the current housebuying boom in the United States has had significant effects on supply and demand, but it still is too long to wait.
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In Korea, painters or electricians would come right away when you call them. As for a doctor’s office in Korea, one can drop in anytime, even without an appointment. In the United States, you may have to wait for several months unless it is an emergency.
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In the 1970s, when I lived in the United States, America was a truly advanced country. Everything was so admirable and commendable. At that time, the social system of America was superb, and American society was reasonable and rational. Living in the United States at the time was indeed convenient and pleasurable.
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Half a century has passed. The problem is that the American system has not changed much since then, while other countries have changed rapidly and radically to suit the hyperspeed electronic era. As time goes on, therefore, the once-efficient and impeccable American system has become relatively inefficient and slow.
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Perhaps the American people may not realise it because they have been living in such an environment for a long time. However, in the eyes of young foreigners who are used to speedy procedures and dynamic changes in their country, obviously many things seem to be very slow in the United States.
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In America, when you are a regular customer, not a new one, things are much better. For example, when my toilet began leaking a few days ago, the plumbing company initially set up an appointment to install a new one two weeks later. When notified of the urgency, however, a technician came immediately and took care of it. Thus, it all depends.
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By such comparisons, we can learn many intriguing things about other countries. – The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire with Michael Hudson
https://youtu.be/NK0ls5hV_5Y
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers? America, China, and the Global Order
When the meek are weak, they suffer because they must. But when the strong are insecure, that is when war begins.
AS tensions over the Taiwan Strait mount, everyone needs to think through whether war is inevitable.
Leon Trotsky once said: “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.”
And if we slip into war by what World War I historian Barbara Tuchman called the “March of Folly”, can the great powers step back from mutual nuclear annihilation?
When the world’s unipolar power incurred more pandemic deaths (at last count 752,000) and got defeated in Afghanistan by tribal warriors, no one should be surprised to ask whether America (and by extension Western civilisation) is in a decline.
The prestigious US magazine Foreign Affairs devoted three issues this year to: “Can America Recover?”, “Decline and Fall – Can America ever Lead Again?” and “Can China Keep Rising?”
For those reading the endless barrage of invectives against America’s rivals, it certainly feels like the Cold War has returned with a vengeance.
However, for Greta Thunberg and fellow climate activists, surely the world leaders’ priority is to work together to address our looming climate disaster.
Why are alphas fighting in a burning planet? Shouldn’t we call “time out” to see how to address collectively the urgent and existential issues of human and planetary distress?
Next month, the World Economic Forum is meeting in Dubai with an agenda to move from a Great Reset to a Grand Narrative Initiative “to shape the contours of a more prosperous and inclusive future for humanity that is also more respectful of nature.”
Grand Narrative may sound like a media story but the reality is that the masses are unlikely to buy an elite-driven dream until they are part of the conversation.
Take Harvard historian Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilisations” narrative. Written in 1996, Huntington seemed prescient in predicting the clash between Western civilisation and the rest, namely, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic and Latin American.
He asked poignantly: “The central theme for the West is whether, quite apart from our external challenges, it is capable of stopping and reversing the internal process of decay. Can the West renew itself or will sustained internal rot simply accelerate its end and/or subordination to other economically and demographically more dynamic civilisations?”
Huntington basically reflected the worry of British historian Arnold Toynbee (18891975) that since civilisations are born out of primitive societies, the key is whether the elites can respond effectively to new challenges, internal or external.
Toynbee saw clearer than other Western historians like Gibbon (Decline and Fall of Roman Empire) that collapses are not necessarily due to barbarian invasions but whether the ruling elite can overcome their own greed or interests to address the new challenges.
In pure economic, financial, technology and military terms, few question that the West remains superior in almost all aspects, except in population numbers.
According to the Maddison projections of population and GDP, the rich countries (essentially Western Europe, plus Western offshoots (the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and Japan would be 947 million people and 36.3% of world GDP by 2030, whereas Asia (China, India and other parts of Asia) would have a population of 4.7 billion and 49.6% of GDP.
This reverses the 2003 position when the West (including Japan) accounted for half of world GDP, compared with one-third for Asia.
The dramatic reversal is due to the rise of China, India and the rest of Asia to higher-middle-income levels by 2030, mainly through trade and catch-up in technology.
In the coming decades, roughly one billion rich West must contend with the rising powers of China (1.4 billion), India (1.3 billion) and Islamic countries (1+ billion), which have cultures and ideologies very different from the West.
If the planet heats up as expected, expect more Latin Americans, Africans and Middle East poor arriving on the West’s borders to migrate.
At the same time, with the American demonisation of Russia and China pushing them closer together, the United States is confronting at least three fronts (including the Middle East) amid a fractious domestic arena, where political polarisation prevents policy cohesion and continuity.
This current situation reminds Islamic countries following their great historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD) of the cycle of dynastic and empires that Islam went through.
When the social cohesion or bonds (asabiya) is strong, there is state legitimacy and empires rise. When it is weak, dynasties fall and empires are lost.
After the Jan 6, 2020 insurrection in Washington DC, many are inclined to believe that fratricidal tribalism is happening now inside America.
Similarly, Chinese macro-historians Sima Qian (Records of the Grand Historian, 146-86 BC) and Sima Guang (Comprehensive Mirror for Governance, 1019-1086 AD) also recorded that empires fall not so much from external invasion but internal decay.
In Yale, historian (Rise and Fall of Great Powers) Paul Kennedy’s terminology has the United States arrived at the point of “imperial over-reach”, when the country’s global ambitions and responsibilities exceed its financial and industrial capacity.
After all, the US government debt has reached as high as the end of World War II level without even starting World War III.
But all historians know that rise, decline or fall is never pre-ordained. The past is not a scientific linear predictor of the future. The unipolar order has weakened, without any grand bargain between the great powers on what the new order should even begin to look like.
Any grand bargain requires the incumbent hegemon to admit that there are equals and peers in power that want the rules of the game reset from the old order.
This does not mean that anyone will replace the United States soon because everyone wants to buy time to set their own house in order after the pandemic.
In short, before any Grand Narrative, we need a whole series of conversations with all sides, from the weakest to the most powerful, on what individually and collectively the post-pandemic order should look like.
There can never be one Grand Narrative by the elites until there are enough dialogues between the many.
When the meek are weak, they suffer because they must. But when the strong are insecure, that is when war begins.
By ANDREW SHENG. Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
MAN and nature are running out of time. That’s the core message of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change ...
Moral vacuum at the heart of modernity, now embodied in US laws!
` In short, historically it was the Church that gave the moral blessing
for colonisation, slavery and genocide during the Age of Globalisation.
The tragedy is that the Doctrine of Discovery is now embodied in US
laws.
Unmasking The Superpower: ‘Voldemort’ of global order. Illustration: Xu Zihe/GT
A woman walks past the landmark graffiti on the walls of the former US embassy in Tehran, Iran. Photo: AFP
US and UK ambassadors to the United Nations vote on March 31, 1992 for sanctions against Libya.?Photo: AFP
Supporters of Pro-Russian groups protest during US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin' visit in Bulgaria on March 19, 2022 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: AFP -Anti-government protestors wait at the entrance of a barricade in front of the Dynamo Kiev stadium in Ukraine on February 23, 2014. Photo: AFP
Politeness rules: Japanese players bowing towards fans after a rugby match in Scotland. Japan is a country where people are polite and friendly – and where everything is done by the book. Deviating from the norm is seriously frowned upon. – Reuters
