Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, September 6th (international observation) Crimes against the world are numerous — — The beginning of American military hegemony
Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Si Zhu Ruiqing
"This country was established through a ruthless and soul-destroying war. Only by recognizing this can we understand the past and present of the United States. " Holger Hawke, a German historian, wrote in The Scar of America: The War of Independence and the Violent Gene of American Politics.
The history of the founding and development of the United States coincides with its historical pace of war and expansion. Since its independence for more than 240 years, the United States, with its colonial genes and imperial dreams, has evolved from a new political power in a corner of North America to a global military hegemony through continuous wars and military expansion, and has used hegemony to bully and bully.
Countless facts tell the world that America’s military hegemonic behavior of bullying and usurping power violates the general trend of peace and development, brings great catastrophe and endless harm to many countries, is the main source of world unrest and the biggest challenge that threatens the civilization and progress of human society.
"Destiny is Destined by Heaven": Spiritual Hypothesis Supporting Hegemony
The United States boasts itself as a "city on the top of a mountain", while Americans regard themselves as "God’s voters" and think that the United States is a country with a "destiny". For hundreds of years, Americans have given so-called "legitimacy" and "sanctity" to American military expansion and hegemony.
According to the report "The Origin, Reality and Harm of American Military Hegemony" issued by Xinhua News Agency’s national high-end think tank (referred to as the report), the United States relied on force to expand continuously, and used the US-Mexico War and the Spanish-American War to expand westward and seaward. After two world wars, it rose to become a global superpower and formed a dominant unipolar hegemony after the Cold War. In the process of the United States moving towards global military hegemony, the theory of "Destiny by Heaven" has always provided a mental hypothesis and an excuse for action for the United States to develop and consolidate its military hegemony, and has constantly influenced American policies and behaviors — — It is not only the basis and excuse of using military means to expand territory and violently persecute aborigines in American history, but also the ideological root of the United States’ struggle for world dominance, exporting values and foreign military intervention since the 20th century.
George Herring, an American diplomatic scholar, once pointed out that from expelling Native Americans, seizing one-third of Mexico’s territory, colonizing Filipinos and Puerto Ricans, and invading Iraq in 2003, "the United States ‘ Great mission ’ The understanding has been used to rationalize its military expansion. "
In addition, Americans are constantly trying to find a theoretical basis for their own expansion behavior. Social Darwinists in the United States say that countries, like nature, follow the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest. Scholars of international relations put forward hegemonic stability theory, democratic peace theory and so on, advocating that the unipolar system of the world led by the United States can bring lasting peace.
The report holds that, in fact, these arguments can’t stand the test of history and reality. No matter how they are changed, they are all theories that defend and serve the military hegemony and interests of the United States, and their core reflects the imperial thoughts of the United States of belligerence, expansion, intervention and moral whitewash.
Soft and Hard: Various Means to Maintain Hegemony
"War has become an inseparable part of this country’s history. Rather than saying that the United States has been at war since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it is better to say that the war itself created the United States. The war fought by the United States has made the United States today and will also shape the future United States. " French historian Thomas Rabineau described the "unbreakable" relationship between the United States and the war.
War and military action are the most direct means for the United States to maintain its military hegemony. In its more than 240-year history, the United States has not fought for less than 20 years, making it the most combative country in the history of the world. Through successive wars, the United States laid military bases covering the whole world as strategic anchor points to control the world, regarded Latin American and Caribbean countries as "backyards", controlled the geopolitical throats of Eurasia such as the Middle East, deployed troops to Africa, and controlled important resources and raw materials by military means.
According to a 2021 study by Quincy Institute of Governing the Country, an American think tank, at present, the United States has 750 military bases in 80 overseas countries and regions, almost three times the number of American embassies, consulates and missions abroad, and the annual operating cost may be as high as 55 billion US dollars. Since 2001 alone, overseas military bases have supported the United States in launching wars or military operations in at least 25 countries.
The report pointed out that in order to maintain global military hegemony, the United States not only directly controls it by launching or intervening in wars, laying a global network of military bases, but also indirectly controls it by building an alliance system and using rules and mechanisms.
Marked by the establishment of NATO in 1949, the United States began to build a military alliance, and then established bilateral alliances such as the United States, the Philippines, the United States and Japan, and the United States and South Korea, in an attempt to gain the overall military strength advantage through alliance so as to deter opponents and realize their own political and security interests. Nowadays, more and more countries find that the alliance system is actually a tool for the United States to maintain military hegemony, and as an "ally", it has to obey the will of the United States. As Sevim Dagdelen, a member of the German Bundestag, said, "What the United States wants is not an ally, but a loyal servant."
Various rules and mechanisms are another important means of stealth control in the United States, such as using laws and regulations such as the Export Management Regulations and the Arms Export Control Law to build a dual-use and military export control system; Establish legislation in specific areas such as the Atomic Energy Law; Establish or lead multilateral mechanisms such as Paris Coordinating Committee, Missile Technology Control Regime and Wassenaar Arrangement. The existence of these international rules and mechanisms essentially serves American security interests.
In recent years, Americans have also concocted the phrase "rules-based international order" to beautify packaging hegemonism. Alexander gusev, director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Planning and Forecasting, pointed out that the United States deliberately keeps the definition of "rules-based international order" vague, because the less specific these so-called "rules" are, the more it can "dress up" them at will. Once a country violates the will of the United States, the United States will accuse it of "violating the rules" and there is reason to punish it.
Endless harm: the disaster caused by the abuse of hegemony
"We can have a special national flag — — Our country can do the same: we can just keep our usual national flag, paint the white stripes black and replace the stars with skull symbols. " In 1901, Mark Twain, an American writer, wrote such words to condemn the imperialist behavior of the United States in waging war and bloody slaughter in the Philippines.
The chariots driven by American military hegemony have brought endless harm. The war to conquer Indians directly wiped out millions of Indian population; In the colonial war in the Philippines, 200,000 to 1 million Filipinos died; In the Korean War, more than 3 million civilians died; In the Vietnam War, 2 million civilians died; In the Iraq war, 200,000 to 250,000 civilians died … … According to the figures released this year by Brown University’s "War Cost" project, after the "September 11" incident, the United States launched wars or "anti-terrorist actions" in at least 85 countries around the world, which directly led to more than 940,000 deaths, including 432,000 civilians, and 38 million people were displaced or became refugees.
As Walter Russell Meade, an American scholar and professor at Bard College, said, "The United States is the most dangerous military force in the history of the world."
American military behavior in the world not only directly caused huge humanitarian disasters, but also brought a series of complex social problems including social unrest, refugee tide, psychological trauma, ecological crisis and so on.
For example, the US military left about 350,000 tons of explosive bombs and mines in Vietnam, and it is estimated that it will still take 300 years to completely remove them. From 2002 to 2016, there were at least 270 environmental pollution incidents at three US military bases in Okinawa, Japan, most of which were not notified to the Japanese government. In May, 2022, the US military base in Longshan, which South Korea is recovering, was seriously polluted by exposed soil and groundwater. The Ministry of Environment of South Korea found that the total petroleum hydrocarbons in the soil of the dormitory site in Nanyingqu of the base exceeded the standard by 29 times, and the carcinogens benzene and phenol in the groundwater exceeded the standard by 3.4 times and 2.8 times respectively.
According to the data released by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs of Brown University in 2019, since the global war on terrorism in 2001, the US military has produced 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases in the process of equipment and deployment, combat operations, weapons manufacturing, etc. "It is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world".
American military hegemonic behavior has brought disasters to all countries in the world, but also brought serious trauma to the United States itself. Rabineau pointed out in the book "American War Culture" that almost every generation in the United States has swallowed the evil consequences of the political, economic and social chaos caused by the war.
According to the data of Brown University’s "War Cost" project, more than 7,000 American soldiers and about 8,000 American defense contractors were killed in the war launched by the United States after the "9.11" incident. More than 30,000 American soldiers committed suicide, which is four times the number of people killed in the battle. The sky-high military expenditure invested by the United States to maintain military hegemony has also put an increasingly heavy burden on American nationals. After 2001, the war-related expenditure in the United States has exceeded 5.8 trillion US dollars. More importantly, America’s military hegemony and foreign war acts have bred and encouraged extremist forces and self-consumed, and the "9.11" incident is a typical case.
"It is for the United States to build a country in war, expand in war and dominate in war." The report writes that the military expansion of the United States continues today, and American military hegemonism is still bullying and destroying the world we live together.