adminFinian Cunningham Correspondent
US deteriorating relations with China are the latest manifestation of America’s self-declared “manifest destiny” to behave like a global hegemony.
The behaviour of the United States is the archetypal response of a tyrant whose days are numbered. Or an empire that is crumbling before its very eyes. In denial of demise, it wields a still formidable military power in a bid to compensate for impotence in all other spheres: culturally, morally, economically, politically, the once virile giant is but a shell of its former self.
Instead of bowing out gracefully to the realities of a changing world, Washington is using militarism like viagra to postpone the inevitable.
Following the Second World War, American world leadership was indisputable. “Pax Americana” — a world order under US financial and political terms — appeared to reign supreme. But even in those halcyon days, trouble was in store for the more perceptive of American planners.
In a secret memo, PSS/23, written in 1948 and declassified in 1974, the eminent US State Department planner George Kennan had this to say of the emerging global order and in particular US relations with Asia:
“We must be very careful when we speak of exercising ‘leadership’ in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6,3 percent of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia . . . In the face of this situation . . . We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better”.
Note how Kennan, who also authored the Cold War policy of “containment” toward the Soviet Union, is encumbered with conceited notions of “American exceptionalism” — natural leadership, idealism and so on.
Nevertheless the revealing apprehension in Kennan’s words is the realisation that American economic dominance was disproportionate and unsustainable. He admitted with refreshing candidness that such an inherent imbalance of resources and global human needs would have to increasingly rely on brute power to maintain the disparity.
To reiterate Kennan: “The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better”.
Indeed, that day seems to be have arrived. Almost in every continent, America is abandoning any semblance of diplomacy and instead is trying to use raw, unilateral, military force to assert its perceived — albeit unjustified — rights to dominance.
Washington’s sanctioning and threatening of Venezuela, Iran, Russia — the latter through unprecedented nato war manoeuvres — are prime examples. The arraignment of FIFA football officials in Switzerland last week over alleged corruption at the behest of American law enforcement authorities is another example of how Washington views itself as having the prerogative to impose its will regardless of foreign jurisdictions.
US deteriorating relations with China are the latest manifestation of America’s self-declared “manifest destiny” to behave like a global hegemony.
Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter at the weekend stepped into the sensitive issue of territorial disputes between China and its Asian neighbours. Ashton’s steps were those of someone wearing hobnail boots. He “demanded” that China immediately cease all its land reclamation projects in the South China Sea.
Only weeks before, US Secretary of State John Kerry made similar high-handed demands while visiting Beijing. Previously, US Admiral Harry Harris lambasted China for building “a great wall of sand” in the South China Sea — a strategically important global trade route.
Washington is increasingly and openly jettisoning its erstwhile image of “neutral broker” and adopting a provocative partisan position, accusing China of militarism and expansionism that is allegedly threatening American regional allies in the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan. Newly burnished “defence pacts” are giving the US the automatic “right” to go to war to “protect” partners if its “vital interests are threatened”.
The increasing deployment of American navy, warplanes and missile systems — under the guise of “protecting its partners” — is fuelling militarisation of the territorial disputes.
China, for its part, says that its own military presence in the region is to protect its voluminous trade routes. Beijing has pointedly refused to cease its maritime development projects, mainly land reclamation in shoals and reefs that it says are strictly within its territorial limits.
In response to Washington’s latest ultimatums, Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the US, expressed his country’s alarm at the way Washington is “escalating” tensions in the region and making it “less stable”.
Somebody needs to take away the viagra and slip a sedative into its cup of coca. – SCF.
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