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US Hegemony and its Perils

Introduction

Since changing into the world’s strongest nation after the 2 world wars and the Chilly Struggle, the US has acted extra boldly to intrude within the inside affairs of different nations, pursue, keep and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing hurt to the worldwide group.

America has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “shade revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even immediately launch wars beneath the guise of selling democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Chilly Struggle mentality, the US 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 method to worldwide regulation and guidelines, using or discarding them because it sees match, and has sought to impose guidelines that serve its personal pursuits within the identify of upholding a “rules-based worldwide order.”

This report, by presenting the related information, seeks to reveal the U.S. abuse of hegemony within the political, navy, 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.

  1. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Round

America has lengthy been making an attempt to mould different nations and the world order with its personal values and political system within the identify of selling democracy and human rights.

◆ Cases of U.S. interference in different nations’ inside affairs abound. Within the identify of “selling democracy,” the US practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “shade revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and catastrophe to many nations.

In 1823, the US introduced the Monroe Doctrine. Whereas touting an “America for the Individuals,” what it really needed was an “America for the US.”

Since then, the insurance policies of successive U.S. governments towards Latin America and the Caribbean Area have been riddled with political interference, navy 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 12 months 2003 marked the start of a succession of “shade revolutions” — the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Division of State overtly admitted enjoying a “central function” in these “regime modifications.” America additionally interfered within the inside affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 by means of the so-called “Individuals Energy Revolutions.”

In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched his new e book By no means Give an Inch: Preventing for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the US had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to drive the Maduro authorities to achieve an settlement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its means to promote oil and gold for overseas trade, exert excessive stress on its economic system, and affect the 2018 presidential election.

◆ The U.S. workouts double requirements on worldwide guidelines. Putting its self-interest first, the US has walked away from worldwide treaties and organizations, and put its home regulation above worldwide regulation. In April 2017, the Trump administration introduced that it will lower off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Inhabitants Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the group “helps, or participates within the administration of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” America give up UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it introduced leaving the Paris Settlement 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 US introduced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Vary Nuclear Forces Treaty to hunt unfettered improvement of superior weapons. In 2020, it introduced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.

America has additionally been a stumbling block to organic arms management by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Organic Weapons Conference (BWC) and impeding worldwide verification of nations’ actions regarding organic weapons. As the one nation in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the US has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has turn out to be the largest impediment to realizing “a world freed from chemical weapons.”

◆ America is piecing collectively small blocs by means of its alliance system. It has been forcing an “Indo-Pacific Technique” onto the Asia-Pacific area, assembling unique golf equipment just like the 5 Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional nations to take sides. Such practices are basically meant to create division within the area, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.

◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in different nations, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the US hosted the primary “Summit for Democracy,” which drew criticism and opposition from many nations for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the US will host one other “Summit for Democracy,” which stays unwelcome and can once more discover no help.

  1. Army Hegemony — Wanton Use of Drive

The historical past of the US is characterised by violence and growth. Because it gained independence in 1776, the US has always sought growth by drive: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a warfare in opposition to Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish Struggle, and annexed Hawaii. After World Struggle II, the wars both provoked or launched by the US included the Korean Struggle, the Vietnam Struggle, the Gulf Struggle, the Kosovo Struggle, the Struggle in Afghanistan, the Iraq Struggle, the Libyan Struggle and the Syrian Struggle, abusing its navy hegemony to pave the best way for expansionist aims. In recent times, the U.S. common annual navy funds has exceeded 700 billion U.S. {dollars}, accounting for 40 p.c of the world’s whole, greater than the 15 nations behind it mixed. America has about 800 abroad navy bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 nations.

In accordance with the e book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Concerned with nearly Each Nation on Earth, the US has fought or been militarily concerned with nearly all of the 190-odd nations acknowledged by the United Nations with solely three exceptions. The three nations had been “spared” as a result of the US didn’t discover them on the map.

◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the US is undoubtedly essentially the most warlike nation within the historical past of the world. In accordance with a Tufts College report, “Introducing the Army Intervention Undertaking: A brand new Dataset on U.S. Army Interventions, 1776-2019,” the US undertook almost 400 navy interventions globally between these years, 34 p.c of which had been in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 p.c in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 p.c within the Center East and North Africa, and 13 p.c in Europe. At the moment, its navy intervention within the Center East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.

Alex Lo, a South China Morning Put up columnist, identified that the US has hardly ever distinguished between diplomacy and warfare since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in lots of growing nations within the twentieth century and instantly changed them with pro-American puppet regimes. Right now, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the US is repeating its previous techniques of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.

◆ U.S. navy hegemony has induced humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and navy operations launched by the US within the identify of combating terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured hundreds of thousands and displaced tens of hundreds of thousands. The 2003 Iraq Struggle resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, together with over 16,000 immediately killed by the U.S. navy, and left greater than one million homeless.

America has created 37 million refugees world wide. 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 ladies 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 2-decades-long warfare in Afghanistan devastated the nation. A complete of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan troopers and cops unrelated to the September 11 assaults had been killed in U.S. navy operations, and greater than 10 million individuals had been displaced. The warfare in Afghanistan destroyed the inspiration of financial improvement there and plunged the Afghan individuals into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the US introduced that it will freeze some 9.5 billion {dollars} in belongings belonging to the Afghan central financial institution, a transfer thought-about as “pure looting.”

In September 2022, Turkish Inside Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the US has waged a proxy warfare in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium subject and heroin manufacturing unit, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. America does no matter it takes to rob and enslave the individuals of any nation with underground assets.

America has additionally adopted appalling strategies in warfare. Through the Korean Struggle, the Vietnam Struggle, the Gulf Struggle, the Kosovo Struggle, the Struggle in Afghanistan and the Iraq Struggle, the US used large 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. Financial Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation

After World Struggle II, the US led efforts to arrange the Bretton Woods System, the Worldwide Financial Fund and the World Financial institution, which, along with the Marshall Plan, shaped the worldwide financial system centered across the U.S. greenback. As well as, the US has additionally established institutional hegemony within the worldwide financial and monetary sector by manipulating the weighted voting techniques, guidelines and preparations of worldwide organizations together with “approval by 85 p.c majority,” and its home commerce legal guidelines and rules. By making the most of the greenback’s standing as the main worldwide reserve foreign money, the US is principally accumulating “seigniorage” from world wide; and utilizing its management over worldwide organizations, it coerces different nations into serving America’s political and financial technique.

◆ America exploits the world’s wealth with the assistance of “seigniorage.” It prices solely about 17 cents to provide a 100 greenback invoice, however different nations needed to pony up 100 greenback of precise items with a view to get hold of one. It was identified greater than half a century in the past, that the US loved exorbitant privilege and deficit with out tears created by its greenback, and used the nugatory paper be aware to plunder the assets and factories of different nations.

◆ The hegemony of U.S. greenback is the principle supply of instability and uncertainty on the earth economic system. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the US abused its international monetary hegemony and injected trillions of {dollars} into the worldwide market, leaving different nations, 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. Because of this, a lot of growing nations had been challenged by excessive inflation, foreign money 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 greenback is our foreign money, however it’s your drawback.”

◆ With its management over worldwide financial and monetary organizations, the US imposes further situations to their help to different nations. With a purpose to scale back obstacles to U.S. capital influx and hypothesis, the recipient nations are required to advance monetary liberalization and open up monetary markets in order that their financial insurance policies would fall in step with America’s technique. In accordance with the Overview of Worldwide Political Economic system, together with the 1,550 debt reduction packages prolonged by the IMF to its 131 member nations from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 further political situations had been hooked up.

◆ America willfully suppresses its opponents with financial coercion. Within the Nineteen Eighties, to eradicate the financial menace posed by Japan, and to manage and use the latter in service of America’s strategic aim of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the US leveraged its hegemonic monetary energy in opposition to Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. Because of this, 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 referred to as “three misplaced many years.”

◆ America’s financial and monetary hegemony has turn out to be a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the US has enacted such home legal guidelines because the Worldwide Emergency Financial Powers Act, the International Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Via Sanctions Act, and launched a collection of govt orders to sanction particular nations, organizations or people. Statistics present that U.S. sanctions in opposition to overseas entities elevated by 933 p.c from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed greater than 3,900 sanctions, which implies three sanctions per day. To this point, the US had or has imposed financial sanctions on almost 40 nations internationally, together with Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting almost half of the world’s inhabitants. “America of America” has turned itself into “the US of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been diminished to nothing however a device for the US to make use of its technique of state energy to suppress financial opponents and intrude in regular worldwide enterprise. It is a severe departure from the rules of liberal market economic system that the US has lengthy boasted.

  1. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression

America seeks to discourage different nations’ scientific, technological and financial improvement by wielding monopoly energy, suppression measures and know-how restrictions in high-tech fields.

◆ America monopolizes mental property within the identify of safety. Making the most of the weak place of different nations, particularly growing ones, on mental property rights and the institutional emptiness in related fields, the US reaps extreme earnings by means of monopoly. In 1994, the US pushed ahead the Settlement on Commerce-Associated Facets of Mental Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized course of and requirements in mental property safety in an try and solidify its monopoly on know-how.

Within the Nineteen Eighties, to comprise the event of Japan’s semiconductor business, the US launched the “301” investigation, constructed bargaining energy in bilateral negotiations by means of multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair commerce, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to signal the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Settlement. Because of this, Japanese semiconductor enterprises had been nearly fully pushed out of worldwide competitors, and their market share dropped from 50 p.c to 10 p.c. In the meantime, with the help of the U.S. authorities, a lot of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the chance and grabbed bigger market share.

◆ America politicizes, weaponizes technological points and makes use of them as ideological instruments. Overstretching the idea of nationwide safety, the US mobilized state energy to suppress and sanction Chinese language firm Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei merchandise into the U.S. market, lower off its provide of chips and working techniques, and coerced different nations to ban Huawei from endeavor native 5G community building. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for almost three years.

America 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 language enterprises on sanction lists. As well as, the US has additionally imposed controls on biotechnology, synthetic intelligence and different high-end applied sciences, bolstered export restrictions, tightened funding screening, suppressed Chinese language social media apps corresponding to TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to limit exports of chips and associated gear or know-how to China.

America has additionally practiced double requirements in its coverage on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese language researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese language college students majoring in sure high-tech-related disciplines, repeated instances have occurred the place Chinese language students and college students going to the US for trade packages and examine had been unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese language students working in the US was carried out.

◆ America solidifies its technological monopoly within the identify of defending democracy. By constructing small blocs on know-how such because the “chips alliance” and “clear community,” the US 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 nations. In Might 2019, the US enlisted 32 nations to the Prague 5G Safety Convention 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 clear path,” a plan designed to construct technological alliance within the 5G subject with companions bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the necessity to shield “cyber safety.” The measures, in essence, are the U.S. makes an attempt to keep up its technological hegemony by means of technological alliances.

◆ America abuses its technological hegemony by finishing up cyber assaults and eavesdropping. America has lengthy been infamous as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft world wide. It has all types of means to implement pervasive cyber assaults and surveillance, together with utilizing analog base station indicators to entry cell phones for information theft, manipulating cellular apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing by means of undersea cables. The listing goes on.

U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All might be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied nations corresponding to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several other French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and assaults launched by the US corresponding to “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the US is carefully monitoring its allies and companions. Such eavesdropping on allies and companions has already induced worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founding father of Wikileaks, a web site that has uncovered U.S. surveillance packages, stated that “don’t count on a world surveillance superpower to behave with honor or respect. There is just one rule: there are not any guidelines.”

  1. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives

The worldwide growth of American tradition is a crucial a part of its exterior technique. America has usually used cultural instruments to strengthen and keep its hegemony on the earth.

◆ America embeds American values in its merchandise corresponding to motion pictures. American values and way of life are a tied product to its motion pictures and TV reveals, publications, media content material, and packages by the government-funded non-profit cultural establishments. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion area through which American tradition reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, uncovered the actual weapons in U.S. cultural growth: the Hollywood, the picture design factories on Madison Avenue and the manufacturing traces of Mattel Firm and Coca-Cola.

There are numerous automobiles the US makes use of to maintain its cultural hegemony. American motion pictures are essentially the most used; they now occupy greater than 70 p.c of the world’s market share. America skilfully exploits its cultural range to enchantment to numerous ethnicities. When Hollywood motion pictures descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.

◆ American cultural hegemony not solely reveals itself in “direct intervention,” but in addition in “media infiltration” and as “a trumpet for the world.” U.S.-dominated Western media has a very essential function in shaping international public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling within the inside affairs of different nations.

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 each one social media platforms work with the U.S. authorities to censor content material, reported Fox Enterprise Community. Public opinion in the US is topic to authorities intervention to limit all unfavorable remarks. Google usually makes pages disappear.

U.S. Division of Protection manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an unbiased U.S. investigative web site, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter’s public coverage group to enhance the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on an inventory he despatched, six of which had been to be given precedence. One of many six was devoted to justifying U.S. drone assaults in Yemen, corresponding 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 listing” to amplify sure messages.

◆America practices double requirements on the liberty of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of different nations by varied means. America and Europe bar mainstream Russian media corresponding to Russia Right now and the Sputnik from their nations. Platforms corresponding to Twitter, Fb and YouTube overtly limit official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have eliminated Russian channels and purposes from their providers and app shops. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.

◆America abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate “peaceable evolution” in socialist nations. It units up information media and cultural outfits concentrating on socialist nations. It pours staggering quantities of public funds into radio and TV networks to help their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist nations in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and evening.

America makes use of misinformation as a spear to assault different nations, 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 help of almost limitless monetary assets.

Conclusion

Whereas a simply trigger wins its champion broad help, 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 drive and subterfuge, and enjoying zero-sum video games are exerting grave hurt. The historic tendencies of peace, improvement, cooperation, and mutual profit are unstoppable. America has been overriding reality 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 group.

International locations must respect one another and deal with one another as equals. Massive nations 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 nations’ inside affairs. America should conduct severe soul-searching. It should critically look at what it has achieved, let go of its vanity and prejudice, and give up its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.

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