It has been shown over and over again that the United States much prefers the rule of regressive, backwards religious fanatics and dictators than it does independent, secular or what is worse, socialist governments in Arab or Central and South American countries. Any country that refuses to be wholly servile to US interests and wants instead to establish a sovereign nation will immediately be put down, their leaders assassinated, their economies devastated by US sanctions.
Of course, Americas destabilization and regime change ventures in smaller and weaker states like Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya and Egypt were never initiated because the latter nations posed a military or economic threat to the US. The same cannot be said of Russia and China. Both are nuclear, economic powers in their own right and have simply ceased to be intimidated by the US.
And that explains America’s bellicose rhetoric and continuous propaganda about the threat these latter countries pose to the rest of the world. However, anyone who even has a limited understanding of geopolitical history knows that it is not China or Russia we should be worrying about, but the US itself. As Noam Chomsky has said over and over “the United States is absolutely the most dangerous country in the world.” Of course, you won’t hear this sort of conclusion drawn by Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson—in their world the myth of American exceptionalism and moral superiority continues unabated, and Russia and China are always the bad guys.
It is true: both China and Russian are repressive regimes, and as powerful nations both want to organize the world according to their own establishment interests. But in the last 50 years neither of these nations can be accused of using their militaries to threaten or topple any state that doesn’t agree with them, or impose crippling economic sanctions in order to bring a nation to its knees. The same cannot be said for America. The reality is that China is not, as the neoliberal Fraser institute, concludes ‘world freedom’s greatest threat’, and Russia does not pose any sort of existential threat to America.
But then, reality has never counted for much in America. It is precisely the American capacity to persistently deny reality and escape responsibility for its history, its racism, its bullying and terrorizing of weaker nations, its secret black site torture facilities, its use of nuclear weapons, its denial of climate change reality, its drone weapons programs, its hateful border policies, its dehumanizing detention and prison system and its refusal to reign in unaccountable corporations that is the true threat to global stability.
So, where are we now? Clearly, both Russia and China are fed up with America, and are finally saying out loud that the US has no right to morally judge them given the havoc it continually wreaks around the world, not to mention the way it treats its own citizens. In unusually blunt rhetoric Vladimir Putin went on the Russian state broadcasting station to respond to Biden’s claim that he was “a killer”, “didn’t have a soul” and will “pay a price” for his actions. Here is part of what Putin said:
“Although they think that we are the same as they are, we are different people. We have a different genetic, cultural and moral code. But we know how to defend our own interests. And we will work with them, but in those areas in which we ourselves are interested, and on those conditions that we consider beneficial for ourselves. And they will have to reckon with it. They will have to reckon with this, despite all attempts to stop our development. Despite the sanctions, insults, they will have to reckon with this.”
Senior Chinese diplomats in similar fashion responded much more aggressively to American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s claim that China has become increasingly authoritarian and aggressive at home and abroad and are threatening “the rules-based order that maintains global stability”. Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi, responded by denouncing American hypocrisy. Here is what he said:
“The US does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. The US uses its military force and financial hegemony to carry out long-arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries. It abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and to incite some countries to attack China.”
It is clear that for both China and Russia, the days when the US could economically and militarily bully the world and force conformity to its agenda will soon be over. The American empire is crumbling and the rest of the world is finally realizing that given its belligerant foreign policy, it no longer has the right (if it ever did) to claim exceptional status or moral superiority over other nations.
Moreover, by its continuing combative rhetoric and antiquated cold-war attitudes the US has unilaterally created the conditions for a China-Russia economic and likely military alliance, which could very well escalate the potential for a much more devastating hot war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated that both Russia and China have concluded that the US is playing a destabilising role relying on Cold War military alliances and trying to set up new alliances to undermine any country that might challenge its hegemony.
What he did not say is that the US has been doing this ever since the end of World War II. Lately, however, major powers like China and Russia are no longer listening to America, but instead are using soft power to create wide-ranging economic alliances and build a new world order that very likely will pose a radical challenge to US hegemony. It may, after all, be a good thing if America were to step back from its quarrelsome rhetoric for a moment and relate to other countries on the basis of mutual respect and self-interest.
But to expect foresight, wisdom and diplomacy in foreign policy from imperialist, neoliberal America, no matter what political party is running things, may just be a bridge too far.