Faces of US: how its global image sinks

By Wang Ruoxin and Wang Xinyuan

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict evolves, the mask is pulled off from the US’ face as its role behind it grows gradually clear. The crisis appears to be another geopolitical conspiracy by NATO and the US that has turned into a tragedy of Ukraine, of Europe, of the international community, and of humanity at large.

From interfering in other countries’ internal affairs to undermining regional peace and stability, from fueling conflicts to feeding on turbulence, from spreading Cold War scheme to defending American hegemony, each time the US comes in with a new face that brings its image to a new low.

The one behind the Ukraine crisis

The Ukraine crisis has complex historical causes behind it, the core of which is NATO’s continuous post-Cold War efforts to undermining Russia’s security by disrupting Ukraine’s political situation, helping anti-Russian forces to hold the reins in Ukraine, and pushing to bring Ukraine into NATO. Those actions have directly intensified contradictions between Russia and Ukraine.

Step by step, the US and NATO have damaged Russia’s national security environment in Europe over the years, the purpose of which is undoubtedly to bring down Russia and maintain “absolute” security for US hegemony. However, the essence of “absolute” security is to damage the security of other countries with constant attempts to surpass and dominate. US and NATO deployment of advanced weapons and military facilities, as well as the development of the “anti-Russian front” in areas close to Russia’s border have worsened the security situation of Russia year by year, and, along with the subsequent expansion of NATO all the way eastward, made Russia unable to trust the US and NATO any more.

The US and some Western countries have successively engaged in geopolitical competition that is quite exclusive in Ukraine, which has pushed the country to the forefront of the geopolitical game between Russia and NATO. As a bridge of between Europe and Asia, Ukraine could have been a communication link and adhesive between Russia and the West, as it also owns a large amount of energy infrastructure connecting Russia and Europe. However, in the past two years, the US’ constant attempt to push Ukraine to join NATO has directly fused the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The one that shadows world peace

According to a report released by the China Society for Human Rights Studies in May 2021, in the long years since American independence on July 4, 1776, the country has only stayed away from war for no more than 20 years. Since World War II, the US has started more than 200 of the over 260 armed conflicts in 158 regions of the world. From the Korean War to the Vietnam War that lasted 20 years, from the Kosovo War to the Afghanistan War that lasted nearly 20 years, people of all these countries and regions have endured profound disasters brought by the US.

An uncountable large number of innocent civilian casualties have been caused by the many wars of aggression launched by the US government. Wherever there is war in the world, there is the US, in or behind it.

Wars have also seriously impacted local economic and social development in victim countries. The US has openly and wantonly placed its own interests above international organizations and the international order, frequently and recklessly provoked military conflicts around the world, overtly and willfully attempted to subvert international rules through war to always “put America first”. The US has become a great shadow of turmoil over the current world.

The one that feeds on distress

While war is a continuation of politics, politics is an expression of economy, economy is a game between different groups of interest. When the US completely withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, it immediately signed an upgraded version of the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership with Ukraine on November 10 last year, through which it deepened cooperation between the two countries in the fields of politics, security, defense, development, economy, energy, education and culture, binding Ukraine deeply to the US-designed geopolitical strategic chess game.

The outbreak of the Ukraine crisis brought good news to the US military-industrial complex (MIC) and financial giants. In fact, after the outbreak, Germany decided to buy warplanes from the US and announced that it would allocate an additional 100 billion euros in special budget to accelerate the modernization of national defense. It is expected that a considerable part of this massive expenditure will flow into the pockets of American arms giants such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

From the global image the US has presented since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it has not only been feeding on war by bloodthirsty machines composed of financial capital, industrial capital and MIC, but also been strangling at-war countries’ economy by calling on numerous countries to impose economic sanctions relying on the institutionalized hegemonic system. The so-called institutionalized hegemony is a paradigm of order established by the US through swaying a series of international organizations, mechanisms and alliances. By virtue of its domination of international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the US gets to hold the power and discourse of setting international financial rules, knocking down the price levels of financial markets, and making creative decisions on various financial instruments and titles. The Wall Street, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communications (SWIFT), international rating agencies, and the exclusive global registry of financial professionals are all symbols of US domination of the world financial order.

The one with the new Cold War scheme

Since the Trump administration identified the “New Era of Competition” in US national security strategy that brought competition between major countries back in international politics in 2017, the strategic intention of the US to provoke group confrontation and ideological antagonism has become increasingly obvious. The Cold War mentality quietly gets back in the US, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as a product of NATO’s eastward expansion, becomes a direct result.

The US Cold War mentality, which stirs up ideological antagonism and regional tension in order to reactivate and reconstruct its alliance system, is exacerbating global division and conflict. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has already aggravated the pandemic-stricken world economy, while energy security and food security have caused widespread concern in all countries around the world. The sinister intention of drawing an ideological line may push international relations back to the dark days of frequent conflicts, split economic ties and interrupted cultural exchanges, and may even bring the world back to the era of nuclear standoff.

After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the “new Cold War” theory has been intensively discussed in the West. Some people in the US and Western countries advocate a return to a “parallel world”, back into the narrow Western world to maintain its stability and prosperity, and let the international community gradually separate into two parts: the West and the rest. In order to maintain its hegemonic position, the US tried to shape this “parallel relationship” into a Cold War confrontation and recreate camp confrontation. Clifford Kiracofe, a former senior member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said that the EU is under increasing pressure to keep pace with US policies, and the Ukraine crisis is just one example. The “hawks” in Washington are seeking to bring back the Cold War in a new form.

The one that poisons body and thought

After World War II, the US danced with the devil, granting political immunity to high-ranking military officials of the notorious Japanese Unit 731, who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, in exchange of the latter’s data on human experimentation, bacteriological experiments, germ warfare, poison gas experiments. The US also hired Shiro Ishii, the director of Unit 731, as a consultant in developing the US military’s biological weapons, thus establishing the Fort Detrick biological weapons research and development base. From that moment on, the US replaced Japan as the evil “poisoner” that endangered the world. From the very beginning, the construction of the US biological weapons laboratory was paved with the evil undertones against humanity, injected with the gene of unscrupulousness, and laid with the hidden danger of poisoning the world.

Since then, the US has continued to open biological laboratories around the world, along with which “accidental diseases” and other health safety accidents have constantly occurred, biologically poisoning the world. The country has become a source of wide-spread viruses and plagues, posing a serious risk to all. In fact, it is more horrific for the US to have psychologically poisoned the world as well, as it fueled extreme nationalism and discrimination, causing a huge disaster for regional peace.

From indulging in white supremacy to using ethnic separatism to break up the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and seize hegemony, and to using extreme nationalism to provoke the Russia-Ukraine conflict to protect its world hegemony, the US, as the “super-spreader” of the virus of extreme nationalism, has actively driven the “epidemic” of ethnic division, racial hatred and ideological confrontation around the globe, with a speed, reach and influence that is unprecedented.

The one that sings the wrong prayer

Even though the US keeps preaching “freedom, democracy and human rights”, its actual actions make its hypocrisy crystal clear to the world.

Despite the fact that US President Joe Biden said on March 11, 2022 that the US is open to helping Ukrainian refugees, the country has not taken in any refugees from Ukraine since the outbreak of the crisis. Meanwhile, more than 3 million Ukrainian refugees have mostly been accepted by Europe, draining Europe with refugee problems.

The US has always advertised itself as “the beacon of human rights”. However, over the years, US international military intervention, unilateral sanctions and shirking international responsibility have led to a great number of human rights disasters. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government has been ignoring people’s right to life and health, allowing the number of deaths to surge, leaving American people’s mental health to deteriorate, and watching the number of homeless people to rise. Recently, the US House of Representatives “reluctantly” cut off $15.6 billion in pandemic prevention funds and instead provided $13.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine and other countries. According to the Associated Press, the vast majority of the money is to be used for US military presence in Eastern Europe and to provide weapons to relevant allies. This is undoubtedly the greatest irony of the American democracy and how it interprets safeguarding “human rights”. On the one hand, it chooses to ignore its own human rights problems in its own country, while on the other hand, it presents itself as a “human rights guardian” of the world, once again revealing the US style of “double standard”.

The one that must not be named

For a long time, the US simply makes use of the international organizations and the international system when they cooperate, and abandons them when they don’t. As a major country, it demonstrates no international responsibility or morality as it should. At a time when all countries in the world are calling for joint efforts to meet global challenges, the US once again put its self-interest above the interests of all mankind and arbitrarily chose to withdraw from various international organizations and conventions, having caused disastrous impacts on the international order and governance system.

Over the years, the US has put its own interests above all others’, put its domestic laws above international law, and frequently imposed illegal unilateral sanctions and military coercion on other countries. While most countries in the world have embraced economic globalization with a cooperative and inclusive mindset, the US frequently wields the huge stick of sanctions taking advantage of its comprehensive strength and close ties with other countries under the trend of economic globalization, and coerces relevant countries to make unequal compromises in line with US interests.

Hypocritical, egotistical, devious, irresponsible, unscrupulous, indifferent to sacrifice, setting camps, obsessed with absolute power… The US is like the Dark Lord to today’s world though merely be named. The US does not stop. It is still seriously undermining the international order, instrumentalizing it, weaponizing it, privatizing it, and forcing its “hegemonic order” onto the world so hard that such actions would be gradually refused and resolutely opposed by the international community.

Supervised by Song Leyong

Directed by Liu Jiaming

Illustration contributed by Wang Ruoxin

Article contributed by Wang Xinyuan

Art designed by Guo Xuan

Video edited by Topfuture Studio