The
CIA used Syria as an illicit base of operations to torture so-called
"ghost detainees", as part of a program known as extraordinary
rendition. This program was established in the mid-1990s and expanded in
the 2000s.
One target of this program, Syrian-born Canadian
Maher Arar, was detained in New York and sent to Syria, where he was
interrogated and tortured. Arar, a telecommunications engineer who has
been a Canadian citizen since 1991, was asked to confess his connections
to al-Qaeda and to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Arar was
held for more than a year; after his release, he sued the US government.
According to a US Judge (and confirmed by Canadian investigators):
During his first twelve days in Syrian detention, Arar was interrogated
for eighteen hours per day and was physically and psychologically
tortured. He was beaten on his palms, hips, and lower back with a
two-inch-thick electric cable. His captors also used their fists to beat
him on his stomach, his face, and the back of his neck. He was
subjected to excruciating pain and pleaded with his captors to stop, but
they would not. He was placed in a room where he could hear the screams
of other detainees being tortured and was told that he, too, would be
placed in a spine-breaking "chair", hung upside down in a "tire" for
beatings, and subjected to electric shocks. To lessen his exposure to
the torture, Arar falsely confessed, among other things, to having
trained with terrorists in Afghanistan, even though he had never been to
Afghanistan and had never been involved in terrorist activity.
Arar alleges that his interrogation in Syria was coordinated and
planned by US officials, who sent the Syrians a dossier containing
specific questions. As evidence of this, Arar notes that the
interrogations in the United States and Syria contained identical
questions, including a specific question about his relationship with a
particular individual wanted for terrorism. In return, the Syrian
officials supplied US officials with all information extracted from
Arar; plaintiff cites a statement by one Syrian official who has
publicly stated that the Syrian government shared information with the
United States that it extracted from Arar. See Complaint Ex. E (21
January 2004 transcript of CBS's Sixty Minutes II: "His Year in Hell").
The
US initially invoked the "state secrets privilege". When legal
proceedings began anyway, the Ashcroft Justice Department was ridiculed
for arguing that Arar was in fact a member of al-Qaeda. The Canadian
government apologized to Arar but the US has not admitted wrongdoing.
Journalist
Stephen Grey has identified eight other people tortured on behalf of
the CIA at the same prison ("Palestine Branch") in Syria. The CIA
imprisoned a German businessman, Mohammad Haydr Zammar, and transferred
him from Morocco to the Syrian prison. They subsequently offered German
intelligence officials the opportunity to submit questions for Zammar,
and asked Germany to overlook Syria's human rights abuses because of
cooperation in the War on Terror.
According to a 2013 report by
the Open Society Foundations, Syria was one of the "most common
destinations for rendered suspects" under the program. Former CIA agent
Robert Baer described the policy in 2004: "If you want a serious
interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be
tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear –
never to see them again – you send them to Egypt".
On
Sunday, 26 October 2008, the CIA conducted a paramilitary raid on the
town of Sukkariyeh in eastern Syria. The raid involved "about two dozen
US commandos in specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters". The US said
it had killed an Iraqi who was supplying insurgents from across the
Syrian border.
Syria accused the US of committing "terrorist
aggression" and said that eight civilians had been killed. The US
responded that all people killed in the raid were "militants". The
Syrian government closed an American cultural center and the
US-sponsored Damascus Community School in response.[38] The incident
also led to a mass rally in Damascus in which protestors criticized the
raid (the Syrian government supported the rally but deployed riot police
to protect the US buildings from angry protestors).
Following
the raid, the New York Times revealed the existence of a secret 2004
military order authorizing actions by the CIA and the Special Forces in
15–20 countries, including Syria. US officials acknowledged that they
had conducted other raids in Syria since 2004, but did not provide
details.
When Assad was toppled, US (and its proxy puppet Israel)
immediately started an intense bomb campaign against ISIS, which US
previously had happily let harrass Assad. US used all means available to
weaken/topple the Syrian government.
Nato-Turkey supports what
Nato-US has designated as terrorists, i.e. the HTP-led insurgents led by
a radical islamist group with roots in Al Qaeda, while US supports
Kurds whom Turket has designated as terrorists.
When Syria's
civil war began, Ankara sided with the rebels, breaking off all
diplomatic relations with Damascus. More recently, President Erdogan has
attempted to revive diplomatic ties but Assad rejected the overture,
saying normalization was out of the question until Turkish troops are
withdrawn from northern Syria.
Turkey's ultimate goal is to
topple the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria,
where the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an offshoot of the banned
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is in conrol.
At the moment, the
two most powerful groups operating in the region are HTS and the SNA.
The latter, according to Turkish Middle East expert Erhan Kelesoglu,
immediately started an offensive against the Kurds as soon as Aleppo
fell.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) and also known as the
Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), is a coalition of armed Syrian
mostly terrorist groups in the Syrian proxy war. Comprising various
factions that emerged at the start of the war in July 2011, it was
officially established in 2017 under the auspices of Turkey, which
provides funding, training, and military support.
Does
Tom Tugendhat unwittingly (hopefully just because of scarce
understanding?!) constitute part of the core of Western (read 'dollar
thieve US') evil today?
Tom Tugendhat: I’d never
really considered myself Jewish before I entered parliament in 2015. As a
Catholic Brit with a French mother and English father the Austrian
bit—our name—was a legacy of long ago. At a push, I would have said I
was Jew-ish.
Tom Tugendhat: Britain has an opportunity
to adapt to the new realities of global foreign affairs. The rise of
India, Russia, China, and the Pacific alliance provide new channels of
engagement with the world as well as opportunities to promote democracy
and liberty (sic*) on a global scale not seen since the height of the
British Empire. The problem is that we’re not taking the opportunity
presented to us. What it will require is strong national leadership, a
clear sense of national purpose, and a reaffirmed commitment to the
international rules based order ("rules" forced on the world by dollar
embezzler US now desperate dictatorship - Peter Klevius comment).
*
A much bigger share of people in meritocratic China suppoorts the
government than does any Western country, and especially not US and UK -
not to mnention on how a tiny "democratic" basis Tom Tugendhat slipped
into the parliament, and when there then heavily inflated with evil
sub-political etc. forces.
Warmonger Tom Tugendhat was
born in Westminster, London, the son of Sir Michael Tugendhat, a High
Court judge and his French-born wife Blandine de Loisne. He is a nephew
of Lord Tugendhat, a businessman, former Vice President of the European
Commission and Conservative Party politician.
He was
educated at St Paul's School, London, an all-boys private school, before
studying theology at the University of Bristol. Tugendhat then did a
Master's degree course in Islamic studies at Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge, and learning Arabic in Yemen. Following university, he
briefly served as a journalist at the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.
Tugendhat
was elected as the Member of Parliament for Tonbridge and Malling, a
safe Conservative seat in Kent, at the 2015 general election. In 2013,
Tugendhat was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for Tonbridge
and Malling in an open primary. At the 2015 general election, Tugendhat
was elected as MP for Tonbridge and Malling, winning with 59% of the
few votes.
Tugendhat voted against Brexit, supporting
continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 referendum. He
voted in favour of the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May's
government on each of the three occasions it was put to a vote.
At the snap 2017 general election, Tugendhat was re-elected but seeing his majority decrease.
On
12 July 2017, Tugendhat was elected chair of the Foreign Affairs
Committee, becoming the youngest person to hold the post. After the
poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury by a nerve agent,
Tugendhat said the attack was "if not an act of war (...) certainly a
warlike act by the Russian Federation".
Peter Klevius: So what was dollar embezzler (since 1971-) US murdering of Iran's presidential candidate?!
In
February 2018, Tugendhat praised Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman: "He is rightly showing a vision for Saudi Arabia that sees
her taking her place as a player in the global economy and I think that
is incredibly positive, not just for Saudi Arabia, but for the world."
Peter
Klevius: So the Saudi dictator family's spread of Salafist terror on
the street of UK and around the wprld didn't bother you - but China's
peaceful and infrastructure building BRI technological success is
somthing you consider the biggest threat!
Under
Tugendhat's chairmanship the Foreign Affairs Committee focused on
British foreign policy priorities after Brexit, such as "the
implications" of China's growing role in the international system.
Peter Klevius: Can I hear Uncle Sam's master voice behind this mouse squeak?!
At the 2019 general election, Tugendhat was again re-elected.
In
January 2022, he stated he would consider running for the office of
Prime Minister if Boris Johnson stood down. So BBC took Boris down so to
pave the way.
Tom Tugendhat suggested expelling all Russian citizens from the UK.
On 6 September 2022, he was appointed Minister of State for Security in the Home Office as part of Liz Truss's cabinet.[
Peter Klevius: An equally clever move by China hater Truss as her "plan" for UK economy.
He was retained in this role by the Sunak government.
Peter Klevius: Probably to satisfy the warmonger extremists in the party who questioned weather Sunak was enough Sinophobic.
In
this role he continued taking a hawkish position on the People's
Republic of China and, equally, the PRC has maintained travel bans
against him. On the order by dollar freeloader (since 1971-) US
Tugendhat commissioned the National Cyber Security Centre to investigate
ways that TikTok may compromise UK's national security.
Tugendhat
also, again on suggestion by UK's master Sam, decided to join official
talks with a government minister of Taiwan, breaking convention, in June
2023, on the topic of mutual "security interests".
Peter Klevius: Read 'US wish to weaken China!
On
29 May 2018, Tugendhat set out his own views on UK foreign policy in a
speech at the Royal United Services Institute. He advocated giving the
FCO greater powers to determine overall foreign policy strategy.
Peter
Klevius: The Foreign, Commonwealth Office is "promoting British
interests worldwide" (sic). Doesn't every country want to "promote its
interests" worldwide - and does it via diplomacy and a foreign office?!
Should China also have a (much more deserved) "Chinese common wealth"
worldwide?! The idea is of course a copy of dollar embezzler (since
1971-) US "American interest". But China isn't even allowed to have
peaceful and deeply important philosophical teachings by Confucius (551 –
c. 479 BCE)
in the same universities where Saudi sponsored Human Rights violating sharia is accepted.
In
a recorded conversation with American politician Mike Gallagher,
Tugendhat gave an off-the-cuff outline of his foreign policy outlook as
"trying to defend the world in which the values that matter to the
people of Kent, prosper.
In April 2020, Tugendhat founded the "China Research Group" alongside fellow Conservative MP Neil O'Brien.
Peter Klevius: The only appropriate name wold be China hate group!
The
group was formed to gain a "better understanding of China's economic
ambitions and global role". This is to include Huawei's role in the UK's
5G network (see: Concerns over Chinese involvement in 5G wireless
networks), China's "COVID-19 disinformation campaign", and its foreign
policy, in particular its relations with poorer regions of the world.
Peter Klevius: This was all on order by US and led to Boris Johnson having to get rid of his beloved Huawei phome!
Tugendhat is considered to be a China hawk in the House of Commons, alongside Bob Seely and Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
Tugendhat
is a strong supporter of Israel. He condemned the United Nations
Security Council for its official criticism of Israel's building
settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. In January 2017, he
wrote that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict "doesn't matter" to the
protestors of the Arab Spring, and concluded that "Why was
Israel-Palestine more pressing than other disputed territories such as
Western Sahara, Kashmir or Tibet? It isn't.
Tugendhat
was a participant at the 30 May–2 June 2019 Bilderberg Meeting in
Montreux, Switzerland, and the 2-5 June 2022 Bilderberg meeting in
Washington, D.C.
In the wake of the Fall of Kabul in
August 2021, Tugendhat described the event in The Times as Britain's
"biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez".
Peter Klevius: So why is he so eager creating new such disasters?!
Tugendhat holds dual British and French citizenship. His wife Anissia is a French judge and senior civil servant.
Peter
Klevius: Yhat means he could be deported on the grounds that his
actions aren't conducive to the public good of UK. Unless, of course, he
deletes his foreign citizenship.
Tugendhat is a Roman
Catholic who identifies with Jewish people. His paternal grandfather was
an Austrian Jewish emigrant, from Vienna, who converted to Roman
Catholicism. Following the December 2019 general election, Tugendhat
criticised the antisemitism he had faced during the campaign: "It was a
campaign that wasn't always as clean as previous ones. For the first
time I faced antisemitism, which I found particularly offensive and very
surprising for a community like this and frankly rather distasteful.
It's very un-Tonbridge, it's very un-Kent and it's very un-British.
Peter
Klevius: I thought it was very "British" to abuse religious tensions by
supporting "British interests" no matter which side it hurts - while
keeping babbling about "tolerance", anti-semitism and "islamophobia".
Monotheist religion is the cancer of Mideast and the West. The extremist
variants murder and terrorize each other, but when pressed, always
stick together against the free world based on (negative) Human Rights!
On
17 November 2022 at Westminster Magistrates' Court, Tugendhat was
banned from driving for six months after he was caught driving with his
mobile phone in his hand on 14 April 2022. He received six points on his
licence for the offence, in addition to six he already had for two
previous driving offences. He was also ordered to pay a £1,000 fine, a
surcharge of £100 and costs of £110. In a written guilty plea, Tugendhat
said he was holding the phone but not using it and had later taken a
driving course.
Peter Klevius: Why wasn't he deported
because of repeated and extremely dangerous behavior?! After all, even a
minor crime can be enough to deport a dual citizen. Peter Klevius has
only once (when he was young) made a traffic violation - and that was
only because the garage which should have replaced both front shock
absorbers but only changed one without telling, which caused the car to
go in the terrain in a sandy curve (but with no one else involved except
Peter and his daughter in the car). After taht Peter Klevius drove
without any flaws for decades on slippery dark roads and city traffic
without doing any such stupid things as Tugendhat. Peter Klevius bought
his first mobile 1991 and also had it hanging by the steering wheel but
never using it while driving, because Peter Klevius IQ 200+ has made him
an extreme coward because he imagines all kinds of threats to safety
most people don't.
Why be an abused "ally" to a desperate
and therefore dangerous Devil (US criminal fight to keep its stolen
dollar hegemony - to whatever price) instead of supporting peace and
prosperity?!
US Hegemony and Its Perils
February 2023
Contents
Introduction
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
Conclusion
Introduction
Since
becoming the world's most powerful country after the two world wars and
the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in
the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse
hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars,
bringing harm to the international community.
The United States
has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage "color revolutions,"
instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the
guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the
Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and
stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of
national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral
sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to
international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees
fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the
name of upholding a "rules-based international order."
This
report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse
of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial,
technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international
attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and
stability and the well-being of all peoples.
I. Political Hegemony -- Throwing Its Weight Around
The
United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the
world order with its own values and political system in the name of
promoting democracy and human rights.
◆ Instances of U.S.
interference in other countries' internal affairs abound. In the name of
"promoting democracy," the United States practiced a "Neo-Monroe
Doctrine" in Latin America, instigated "color revolutions" in Eurasia,
and orchestrated the "Arab Spring" in West Asia and North Africa,
bringing chaos and disaster to many countries.
In 1823, the
United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an "America
for the Americans," what it truly wanted was an "America for the United
States."
Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments
toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with
political interference, military intervention and regime subversion.
From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow
of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been
built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall
perish.
The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of
"color revolutions" -- the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, the "Orange
Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan. The
U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a "central role" in
these "regime changes." The United States also interfered in the
internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos
Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called
"People Power Revolutions."
In January 2023, former U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch:
Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United
States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the
Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive
Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange,
exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential
election.
◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international
rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked
away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic
law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration
announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization "supports,
or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion
or involuntary sterilization." The United States quit UNESCO twice in
1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on
climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights
Council, citing the organization's "bias" against Israel and failure to
protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced
its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek
unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced
pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.
The United States has
also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing
negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons
Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries'
activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in
possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has
repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained
reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest
obstacle to realizing "a world free of chemical weapons."
◆ The
United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance
system. It has been forcing an "Indo-Pacific Strategy" onto the
Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the
Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such
practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke
confrontation and undermine peace.
◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes
judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false
narrative of "democracy versus authoritarianism" to incite estrangement,
division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United
States hosted the first "Summit for Democracy," which drew criticism and
opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of
democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will
host another "Summit for Democracy," which remains unwelcome and will
again find no support.
II. Military Hegemony -- Wanton Use of Force
The
history of the United States is characterized by violence and
expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has
constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded
Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War,
and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or
launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War,
the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the
Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the
way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average
annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting
for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind
it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases,
with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
According to the
book America Invades: How We've Invaded or been Militarily Involved with
almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been
militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by
the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were
"spared" because the United States did not find them on the map.
◆
As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is
undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world.
According to a Tufts University report, "Introducing the Military
Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions,
1776-2019," the United States undertook nearly 400 military
interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in
Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the
Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent
in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and
North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.
Alex Lo, a
South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States
has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding.
It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing
countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with
pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old
tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.
◆ U.S.
military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the
wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name
of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000
of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The
2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths,
including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left
more than a million homeless.
The United States has created 37
million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian
refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584
civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833
killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children.
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 two-decades-long war in Afghanistan
devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to
69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September
11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10
million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the
foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people
into destitution. After the "Kabul debacle" in 2021, the United States
announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets
belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as "pure
looting."
In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman
Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war
in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory,
thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest.
The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people
of any country with underground resources.
The United States has
also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and
the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and
biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite
bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian
facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental
pollution.
III. Economic Hegemony -- Looting and Exploitation
After
World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods
System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which,
together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary
system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States
has also established institutional hegemony in the international
economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting
systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including
"approval by 85 percent majority," and its domestic trade laws and
regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar's status as the major
international reserve currency, the United States is basically
collecting "seigniorage" from around the world; and using its control
over international organizations, it coerces other countries into
serving America's political and economic strategy.
◆ The United
States exploits the world's wealth with the help of "seigniorage." It
costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other
countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain
one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United
States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by
its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources
and factories of other nations.
◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is
the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global
financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global
market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay
the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and
turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the
international financial market and substantial depreciation of other
currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a
result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high
inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly
what Nixon's secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with
self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that "the dollar is our
currency, but it is your problem."
◆ With its control over
international economic and financial organizations, the United States
imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In
order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the
recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and
open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in
line with America's strategy. According to the Review of International
Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by
the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as
55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.
◆ The
United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion.
In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to
control and use the latter in service of America's strategic goal of
confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States
leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded
the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed
to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The
Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese
economy, leaving Japan to what was later called "three lost decades."
◆
America's economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical
weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and "long-arm
jurisdiction," the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America's Adversaries
Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to
sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics
show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933
percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed
more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far,
the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40
countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK,
Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world's population.
"The United States of America" has turned itself into "the United States
of Sanctions." And "long-arm jurisdiction" has been reduced to nothing
but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to
suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international
business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal
market economy that the United States has long boasted.
IV. Technological Hegemony -- Monopoly and Suppression
The
United States seeks to deter other countries' scientific, technological
and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression
measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.
◆ The
United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of
protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries,
especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the
institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps
excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed
forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in
intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly
on technology.
In the 1980s, to contain the development of
Japan's semiconductor industry, the United States launched the "301"
investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through
multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair
trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the
U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor
enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and
their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile,
with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S.
semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market
share.
◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological
issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept
of national security, the United States mobilized state power to
suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of
Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and
operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from
undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into
unwarrantedly detaining Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three
years.
The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to
clamp down on China's high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness,
and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In
addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology,
artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced
export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese
social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands
and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or
technology to China.
The United States has also practiced double
standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To
sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa
validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain
high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where
Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange
programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and
large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United
States was carried out.
◆ The United States solidifies its
technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building
small blocs on technology such as the "chips alliance" and "clean
network," the United States has put "democracy" and "human rights"
labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into
political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its
technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United
States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the
Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude
China's 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo announced the "5G clean path," a plan designed to build
technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their
shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect "cyber security."
The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its
technological hegemony through technological alliances.
◆ The
United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber
attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as
an "empire of hackers," blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft
around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber
attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to
access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps,
infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The
list goes on.
U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be
targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of
allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and
several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by
the United States such as "Prism," "Dirtbox," "Irritant Horn" and
"Telescreen Operation" are all proof that the United States is closely
monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and
partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the
founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance
programs, said that "do not expect a global surveillance superpower to
act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules."
V. Cultural Hegemony -- Spreading False Narratives
The
global expansion of American culture is an important part of its
external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to
strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.
◆ The United
States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American
values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows,
publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded
non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public
opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural
hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma,
an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural
expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue
and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.
There
are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural
hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than
70 percent of the world's market share. The United States skilfully
exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When
Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values
tied to them.
◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself
in "direct intervention," but also in "media infiltration" and as "a
trumpet for the world." U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly
important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S.
meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.
The U.S.
government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their
obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all
social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content,
reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is
subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks.
Google often makes pages disappear.
U.S. Department of Defense
manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an
independent U.S. investigative website, revealed that in July 2017, U.S.
Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter's public
policy team to augment the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on a
list he sent, six of which were to be given priority. One of the six was
dedicated to justifying U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, such as by
claiming that the attacks were precise and killed only terrorists, not
civilians. Following Kahler's directive, Twitter put those
Arabic-language accounts on a "white list" to amplify certain messages.
◆The
United States practices double standards on the freedom of the press.
It brutally suppresses and silences media of other countries by various
means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media such as
Russia Today and the Sputnik from their countries. Platforms such as
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube openly restrict official accounts of
Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have removed Russian channels and
applications from their services and app stores. Unprecedented draconian
censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.
◆The United
States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate "peaceful evolution" in
socialist countries. It sets up news media and cultural outfits
targeting socialist countries. It pours staggering amounts of public
funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological
infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in
dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night.
The
United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries,
and has built an industrial chain around it: there are groups and
individuals making up stories, and peddling them worldwide to mislead
public opinion with the support of nearly limitless financial resources.
Conclusion
While
a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its
pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying
practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others
by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave
harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and
mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding
truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These
unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn
growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international
community.
Countries need to respect each other and treat each
other as equals. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their
status and take the lead in pursuing a new model of state-to-state
relations featuring dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or
alliance. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and
rejects interference in other countries' internal affairs. The United
States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine
what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its
hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.
