“The US’ irresponsible behavior is the greatest danger to international peace and security.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla’s remarks at the recent High-level Meetings Marking the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations struck a chord among the participants. “It promotes conflicts, unconventional and commercial wars, imposes severe unilateral coercive measures, squanders in arms race, refuses to cooperate in confronting the multiple crises generated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said the Cuban minister.
As a superpower, the US should have undertaken its due international obligations, but has instead upheld the “America first” policy, promoted unilateralism and constantly withdrawn from international organizations and torn apart international treaties. What the US has done has made more and more countries realize that it has become the primary destroyer of the current international order. A review of its behaviors will show us at least “seven sins” of threatening global security.
First sin: interference in other countries’ internal affairs threatens global political security
When the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Latin America September this year, he forced countries around Venezuela to jointly impose pressure on the latter, which was the latest proof of its interference in their internal affairs. Over the years, the world’s only superpower has been busy stirring up wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in many places elsewhere; it has also instigated the Arab Spring in West Asia and North Africa and the “Color Revolution” in Asia and Europe, turning itself into the biggest factor of instability for global political security.
The Russian president Putin recently said at an annual Valdai Discussion Club session that Washington “attempted to extend the action of its own structures, rules and regulations on the whole world” by breaking all rules.
Famous American conservatist Patrick Buchanan wrote an article saying that the US should not be the “country of crusade”, which implied that the country should change course and stop meddling in the internal affairs of others.
Second sin: wielding of sanctions threatens global economic security
The US has kept escalating its sanction against Iran, including financial and trade blockade, even during the COVID-10 outbreak, exposing the latter to much greater difficulties in controlling the virus at home. For many years, Washington, leveraging its international dominance in economy and trade and financial hegemony, has come into the habit of intimidating, sanctioning and blackmailing other countries, such as Iran, Syria, the DPRK and Cuba, putting itself in opposition against justice and morality.
French senator Philippe Bonnecarrere complained about America’s exercise of long-arm jurisdiction in Asia and Europe. With the deepening of economic and financial globalization, economic and financial sanction has been adopted by Washington has a common tool to enforce its hegemonistic foreign policies.
The website of Spanish newspaper Uprising published an article saying that the indiscriminate, illegal and immoral use of sanction by the US is an action of war, and it’s high time that we ended the US-initiated economic war and abolish its unilateral measures against the international law.
Third sin: obsession with arms race threatens global military security
The US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is drawing nearer to expiration, but Washington has remained passive about the renewal negotiations, putting at stake this important arms control treaty aimed at restricting the number of nuclear warheads and carrier vehicles of the two countries. According to American media, the US military is planning to almost completely upgrade its nuclear weapons in the next decades, a program that is expected to cost more than USD1.2 trillion.
By exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Iranian nuclear deal successively, the US and its unilateral actions are posing increasingly grave threats to the global strategic balance and stability.
The US and Russia are getting closer to embarking on an arms race and the White House believes they will win this race, said Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov.
The US Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball warned that a lapse in New START would “open the door to an ever-more dangerous and costly global nuclear arms race” and such “unconstrained nuclear arms racing would be unaffordable and dangerous for both sides.”
Fourth sin: obstruction to emission reduction threatens global eco-security
With wild fires raging across America’s west coast for months, a scene never seen in history, and the Atlantic hurricanes landing on American territory frequently, “the entire country is literally a disaster area... One cause of their rise is climate change,” said The Atlantic Monthly in an article on its website.
In recent years, Washington has not only been “back-pedaling” on its domestic environmental policies, but also seriously impeded the process of global environmental governance. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and refusing to approve the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity…the US today has been publicly recognized as the consensus destroyer and troublemaker for its poor ecological track record.
Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon published an article on The Guardian, a British website, calling the US’ decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement “politically shortsighted, scientifically wrong and morally irresponsible.”
The US administration’s “ostrich policy” on climate change indicates that the country is switching from a responsible stakeholder to an irresponsible one, said Stewart Patrick, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Fifth sin: promotion of cultural hegemony threatens global cultural security
The US has been outputting its so-called “universal values” to other countries all these years, using cultural output as a national strategy disguised by cultural products. The essence is to impose its values upon other countries through soft means such as ideological infiltration to serve its political purposes.
For example, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched a program to attract young Cubans with music, movies, chatting and online games, which the Cuban government said was intended to overthrow its regime.
Cuban newspaper Granma published an article citing the long-standing alliance between US intelligence agencies and the entertainment industry, saying that Hollywood movies have been used as an effective tool to output the American lifestyle and values.
Sixth sin: implementation of cyber monitoring threatens global data security
The US-led Five Eyes Alliance has recently demanded some high-tech companies to insert backdoors in their encrypted applications, allegedly to “maintain public security”, so as to facilitate their cyber enforcement operations, which Britain’s Computer Weekly called completely against the principle of real data security.
Before it has clarified its name on such old hacking events as the Prism, the Equation Group and the Echelon, the US’ blatant demand for high-tech companies to leave backdoors to it has further exposed its double standards on cyber security. In fact, the US is the primary cyber attacker in the world because it has carried out massive cyber monitoring worldwide for a long time, truly meriting its repute as a “hacking empire”.
Deputy Secretary of the Russian National Security Council Oleg Khramov slammed the US for continuously intensifying reconnaissance and destructive activities targeting the cyberspace in foreign countries while accusing others of being the main source of cyber threats. “The majority of hacks are conducted utilizing American IT infrastructure.”
Seventh sin: sabotage of anti-virus cooperation threatens global health security
Ever since the novel corona-virus broke out, the US has not stopped sabotaging the international anti-virus cooperation. It has pulled out of the WHO, voted against the pandemic-related resolution at the UN Assembly, intercepted medical supplies ordered by its European allies, and tried shamelessly to shift the blame to others by spreading “political virus” in the world.
The US administration’s decision to withdraw from the WHO was irresponsible and would seriously damage the global anti-virus cooperation. The withdrawal once again proved its unwillingness to bear international obligations and responsibilities and its arbitrary placement of its own political interests above the world’s common interests.
The entire world is watching the US stepping back from all global roles in this pandemic. Today, peaceful development and win-win cooperation are the right way to go. Any self-centered and hegemonistic behavior of pressuring and coercion that obstructs international cooperation and endangers global security will go nowhere and will be judged on the wrong side of history.
