The US only follows an international rules-based order when it suits its own interests
The United States of America is the most aggressive and violent country in the world.
It is addicted to a belief in its exceptionalism, is grounded in aggression and violence both at home and abroad, and finds it hard to admit mistakes.
It is looking more and more like a slow motion train wreck.
Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war.
The record is clear. Over two centuries, the US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments. It has a military and business complex that depends on war for influence and enrichment.
The US assumes a moral superiority it denies to others. It is blinded by its own ideological delusions and self-righteousness.
The US has never had a decade without war. Since its founding in 1776, the country has been at war 93 percent of the time. These wars have extended from its own hemisphere to the Pacific, to Europe and most recently to the Middle East. The US has launched 201 out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of World War II. In recent decades most of these wars have been unsuccessful.
Washington maintains 800 military bases or sites around the world, including in Australia. It has a massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Guam. In contrast, China has just one offshore naval base, in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, primarily to combat pirates.
Records show that the US is a much more aggressive and violent country than China.
The US has been meddling extensively in other countries’ affairs and elections for a century.
It tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War. Many foreign leaders were assassinated.
The overthrow or interference in foreign governments is diverse, including in Honduras, Guatemala, Iran, Haiti, Congo, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently, Syria. Compare that to China!
And this interference continued with the undermining of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine by the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014. Decades earlier, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and his US counterpart Ronald Reagan had agreed that in allowing the reunification of Germany, NATO would not extend eastwards. But with US encouragement, NATO has now provocatively extended right up to the borders of Russia. Not surprisingly, Russia is resisting.
The US encouraged the recent “democratic” insurrection in China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Despite all the evidence of wars and meddling, the “American imperium” continues without serious check or query.
I suggest several reasons why this record has not been challenged.
The first is what is often described as America’s “manifest destiny”; the God-given right to interfere in other countries’ affairs. This right is not extended to others because many Americans see themselves as more virtuous and their system of government better than others. US President Joe Biden today dresses up this manifest destiny in terms of democracy versus autocracy.
The second reason is the power of what president Dwight Eisenhower once called the “military and industrial complex” in the US. Congress increases the enormous military budget year after year.
This complex co-opts institutions and individuals around the globe.
The third reason for the continuing dominance of the “American imperium” is the way the US expects others to abide by a “rules-based international order” that was largely determined at Bretton Woods after World War II and embedded in various UN agencies. That ‘order’ reflects the power and views of the dominant countries in the 1940s. It does not recognize the legitimate interests of such newly emerging countries as China, which now insist on playing a part in an international rules-based order.
The US only follows an international rules-based order when it suits its own interests. It cherry picks what best suits at the time. It pushes for a rules-based system in the South China Sea but has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or accepted International Court of Justice decisions. The invasion of Iraq was a classic case of breaking the rules. It was illegal. The resultant death and destruction in Iraq met the criteria for war crimes. But the culprits got off scot-free.
It is a myth that “democracies” like America will behave internationally at a higher level of morality. Countries act in their own interests as they perceive them. We need to discount the noble ideas espoused by Americans on how they run their own country on the domestic front and look instead at how they consistently treat other countries.
The US claims about how well they run their own country are challenged on so many fronts. Alongside great wealth and privilege, over 40 million US citizens live in poverty, they have a massive prison population with its indelible racist connotations, and guns are ubiquitous. Violence is as American as cherry pie. It is embedded in US behavior both at home and abroad.
The author is Australian founder and publisher of the liberal commentary platform Pearls & Irritations. He had earlier served as secretary of Australia’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ambassador to Japan and chief executive of Qantas Airways.
This is an edited version of the original article that was posted in PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website on Aug 3, at https://johnmenadue.com/our-dangerous-ally-could-drag-us-into-war-with-china/