Web of U.S. Foreign policy
Introduction: This article is in response to the 2nd "Summit for Democracy", co-organised by Washington, which has generated quite a lot of comments on social media, but more tellingly, a sharp appraisal of the current U.S hegemony and geopolitical situation by Russian and Chinese officials no less. This article also includes an overview of U.S. Foreign policy in two visuals.
This latest iteration is being held virtually on March 29-30, with a host of countries taking part, including Costa Rica, Zambia, Armenia, Mexico and India. However, both Turkey and Hungary were blocked from attending the Summit for Democracy.The first “Summit for Democracy” was held in 2021, in order to stop the ‘retreat of democracy’ as stated by Biden back then.
Reading between the lines and the machinations of U.S. officials, the summit is code for maintaining a tight grip on world affairs, ensuring U.S. hegemony, where "there is no multi-polarity: there are only autocrats and democrats", where a set of vague notions are couched in ephemeral terms as outlined in this article. What’s more, as Zoon Ahmed Khan states in the video below, the U.S. is ‘tone-deaf’ in its approach, in defining the world into two spheres, by exclusively categorising countries into democratic and undemocratic ones. Indeed, it is another missed opportunity to bring more global cooperation on better global governance and truly address the glaring issues affecting the world.
In 2021, Biden stated that "all around the world, democracy needs champions". The self-designated champion is none other than the U.S., with its military might, together with economic stranglehold, all of which backed up by an array of covert missions and overt surveillance of the world, in real and virtual spaces.
This is the second instalment by the US in its attempt to maintain its global dominance hegemony and promote its own interests under the guise of promoting democracy and defending “rules-based order”, i.e. selective use of international law. Right on cue, President Biden opened the 2nd Summit with a pledge for the U.S. to spend $690 million bolstering democracy programmes around the globe. It so happens that practically all of these programmes are in fact, solely support an U.S. approved style of democracy, support for certain types of opposition groups such as that belonging to Navalny in Russia or the likes of Tsikhanouskaya in Belarus and Guiado in Venezuela. Included in this pledge are advocacy groups that pushes Washington compliant initiatives, very often done hand in hand with the likes of the National Endowment for Democracy, (NED). In other words, the very tools created by Washington to gain leverage, actively interfere, and externally control the domestic affairs of sovereign states.
If there is doubt as the authenticity of this assertion, then look no further at what happened when Georgia tried to copy the 1938 U.S. law on Foreign Agents Registration Act, by developing a similar law domestically, which led to days of riots by pro-Washington zealots. Of course both the U.S. was extremely displeased at this attempt to copy its own longstanding law and even EU stated that the bill was “incompatible with Georgia’s ambition to join the bloc”. Beyond an absolute farce, but this is a prime example of the kind of control that Washington strives for ceaselessly. See how this all of this relates in Visual two below.
Although this summit isn’t a platform exclusively for those countries that are the core part of the "international community of values”, little doubt is left as to who drives the overall determining narrative. Interestingly, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of Mexico was given the opportunity to give a speech at the summit, where he did not shy away from giving his opinion in a full and frank manner, “In our time, there is still a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. Or a simulated and mediatized democracy. That is to say, in some countries oligarchy reigns under the façade of democracy.”
The US will likely use the summit to criticize Chinese and Russian policies and human rights records, of course viewed in a very blinkered manner. After all, it will be a window dressing exercise, in order to deflect from the deeply unpleasant realities facing the U.S., the UK and EU politically, economically, and socially.
I am not going to dwell on the nitty gritty of the sheer hypocrisy and asinine double standards that forms a major part of an U.S. led "rules-based order", on full display since 1945. Chinese government officials have actively done some research and has just published a report on the domestic state of the U.S. Recently another report on U.S. hegemony was published as well as a series of infographics to underline how exactly the U.S. leads by example.
pic.twitter.com/0IbhkJtJh6
- Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 29, 2023
The "Summit for Democracy" is another example of showmanship featuring a succession of Western racketeers, WEF leader protegees and con artists, with their endless zeal for a 21st century repackaged version of "Manifest Destiny", now called “international community of values”or more simply the world's policeman. The devotees, particularly from Western MSM cling onto the U.S. primacy and are only able to see a multipolar in sinister overtones, matching exactly Washington's insistence on a duality of "democratic v undemocratic".
Call it what you want, the notion of upholding a "rules-based order" is sophistry, pure and simple. Telling like it is:
"Case in point: a desire to strengthen the current order is one of the main reasons the Biden administration has worked so hard to assemble a set of like-minded nations this week, in the second iteration of its so-called Democracy Summit. One can understand why: Saying the United States is just trying to uphold the rules is politer than saying its goal is to preserve U.S. primacy in perpetuity, weaken China permanently, topple governments it doesn’t like, or undermine its other adversaries." Foreign Policy, 27 March 2023
Some glimpses of U.S. Policy
Political hegemony
Coming back to the ploy to rouse the Euro-Atlantic elites to maintain a Washington-centric world, Biden's 2021 comment: "By voices that seek to fan the flames of societal division and political polarization" is telling, in using a standard technique of deflection, because the U.S. is the master of societal division, by encouraging polarisation elsewhere in the world, with a focus on prising apart territories and nations:
- Kurds and the Peshmerga, then the SDF,
- the KLA & Kosovars,
- the UPA OUN and Western Ukrainians,
- the MEK and Iranians,
- East Turkestan Liberation Organization and Uyghurs
This list is just a sample of US endorsed secessionist groups, (as outlined in Visual Two). To note that this is just one element of how the U.S. maintains its hegemonic status.
The Chinese report published by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Relations in February 2023, “US Hegemony and Its Perils” outlines the types of hegemony implemented by the U.S.:
I. Political Hegemony-Throwing Its Weight Around
II. Military Hegemony-Wanton Use of Force
III. Economic Hegemony-Looting and Exploitation
IV. Technological Hegemony-Monopoly and Suppression
V. Cultural Hegemony-Spreading False Narratives
The two visuals on the U.S foreign policy encapsulates these types of hegemonic behaviour.
A long-standing plan
In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America's political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union. NYT 1992.
Financial U.S. policy
Washington's coercive monopoly under the guise of democracy is embedded by the mighty dollar. Yet, the US Dollar as the global reserve currency is nearing its end, along with the Bretton Woods system, the monopoly of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as well. There are small ongoing but swift changes of policies of late, regarding trade and payment systems:
- Kenya, (oil trading with Saudi Arabia and UAE in Kenyan Shillings).
- Russia, (use of the Mir system and to use Chinese yuan instead of US dollars to settle trade with Asia, Africa, and Latin America).
- Indonesia (raising a point that alternatives to Visa/Mastercard are neeeded) .
- UAE & France, (China's CNOOC and the French TotalEnergies completed the world's first LNG trade with settlement in Yuan).
- Brazil,(export clearing for yuan trade with China).
- The BRICS GDP collective is set to accelerate past that of the G7.
One significant issue is the long-arm jurisdiction of U.S. domestic regulations that ensures an overriding unilateral control, through the implementations of sanctions. This results in specific countries, individuals and entities sanctioned at a whim, often on dubious and arbitrary pretexts, (often human rights or terrorism).
Another nail in the U.S. Dollar as a global reserve currency is the fact that Washington froze Russian foreign reserves, which triggered some alarm bells for other countries and aslo some soul searching as to how to get out the U.S. imposed monetary impasse.
In 1971, the US Secretary to the Treasury, John Connally said that "the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem." U.S. economist Michael Hudson explains the difference between African debt and U.S. debts in this video clip highlighting the grim reality of how the U.S. dollar and U.S. implemented debts lock in African countries into a quagmire.
Cultural and economic Hegemony
It is an excuse for the US to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations and also undermine their sovereignty, the latest example is Uganda and a bill criminalising LGBTQ+ people. "John Kirby said if the law were enacted Washington would “have to take a look” at imposing economic sanctions on Uganda." [AP 22 March 2023].
This is the sordid reality of U.S. policy, always on the quest to dominate and coerce other countries in order to maintain U.S. exceptionalism at all costs. These aspects are outlined in details by Nikolay Petrushev in a recent interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, [translation], specifically mentions "since at least 1945, the source of any escalation of tension on a global scale is the unrestrained desire of the U.S. authorities to maintain their dominant role in the world."
The first visual could be more complicated and more detailed, especially the aspects relating to exiled groups, insurgents and type of regime change. For this reason, the second visual is also provided to get the broader picture of how U.S. exceptionalism is enforced globally.
All in end, U.S. foreign policy is incredibly messy, very murky and hinges upon on a whole range of covert activities and military missions. [Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, Iraq are the well-known examples].
How the U.S. preserves its primacy is provided in part in the two visuals.
- What do you think? You can make a comment.
Visual 2
The article outlines the mindset and logic of action that drives U.S. foreign policy. Noteworthy are the references to specific events in the infographic.
