Gaza, Ukraine, TikTok: US double standards are eroding its global power
From US support for Israel in Gaza to Biden’s turnaround on using TikTok for his re-election campaign, America’s breathtakingly transparent double standards are killing its credibility
The beloved phrase “city upon a hill”, cited by America’s forefather John Winthrop, is often used to denote the exceptionalism of America’s power, founded on “universal” human values and principles for others to follow.
In the late 1950s, I was a great fan of the United States. Having a rudimentary command of English, I remember reading a Chinese translation of Little House on the Prairie from the now-defunct US Information Agency Library in Macau.
In the summer of 1990, my faith in America was manifest when, as an “international visitor” invited by the US government, I shared my outlook on China post-Tiananmen Square with several captains of industry, including Steve Forbes personally.
In recent years and months, however, my faith has been almost completely shattered as American double standards become breathtakingly transparent.
US President Joe Biden’s attempt to restrain Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military excesses has struggled against an influential lobby supported by an entrenched military-industrial complex, the reach of which was forewarned by president Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. This complex has since become well-oiled by what award-winning New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer calls Dark Money in her 2016 bestselling book.
Today, the US remains the indispensable backer of Israel’s all-out and brutal operations to eliminate Hamas in pursuit of “total victory”, oblivious to what has been described as “a humanitarian catastrophe of biblical proportions”. Following the latest Rafah incursions, some 1.3 million Gaza citizens remain trapped and in want of water, food and medical care, including innocent women and children.
The US is also the biggest beneficiary of the protracted war in Ukraine against Russia, at the expense of much Ukrainian bloodshed and devastation.
America’s giant military suppliers are reporting oversized profits. As tremors from the Ukraine war and an overhyped “Russo-phobia” spread, European funds have been flowing to the US and into the dollar, seeking safer haven.
Ukraine is but the latest in a long saga of catastrophic and unproductive wars the US has been involved in, waged at the cost of millions dead or homeless, gradually forgotten. Witness America’s ignominious retreat from Afghanistan in 2021, handing the country over to an oppressive Taliban government.
Before that, there was the ruinous 2003 Iraq war, later proved to have been waged on trumped-up charges of “weapons of mass destruction”. A 2015 report found that, since its founding in 1776, America had been at war in 222 out of 239 years, befitting its warmonger epithet.
04:33
War crimes tribunal going after Putin, but ignoring bigger war criminals?
War crimes tribunal going after Putin, but ignoring bigger war criminals?
While justification for most of these wars was carefully nuanced, the irony of double standards reached new heights when the Biden re-election campaign decided to use TikTok. The China-affiliated short-video app, hugely popular with young people across the globe, has been banned on US government devices and across US states on what many see as unproven “national security” concerns.
And then there is Gaza. Last November, the US voted against a UN general assembly motion for a humanitarian pause in Gaza that was overwhelmingly supported by 120 members. America’s increasingly transparent double standards there, as a Time magazine think piece put it, are “losing the Global South”, including many nations otherwise friendly to the US.
The contributions of the Global South countries to the global economy have expanded from 19 per cent in 1990 to 42 per cent in 2022. Their growing gravitas has made them more confident in guarding their sovereignty and development interests. Hedging against American hegemony, a growing number has applied to join the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa)-plus grouping and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation led by China and Russia.
Over 3,000 projects have been signed with the Global South under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, involving close to US$1 trillion of investment, providing much-needed socio-economic infrastructure including schools, hospitals, power plants, highways, railways, bridges, pipelines and ports.
What is more, America has unwittingly pushed Russia, China and Iran closer towards an informal “anti-hegemonic alliance”, forewarned by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a doyen of American foreign policy, in his seminal book The Grand Chessboard.
America’s increasingly transparent double standards are weakening its credibility and influence. The cause is a deep-seated and binary black-or-white, with-or-against-us, win-or-lose mindset, unable to master the fine art of achieving harmony despite differences cherished in Chinese philosophy.
Like with every family, every country’s unique geographical, historical, political, cultural, socioeconomic and security characteristics often defy one-size-fits-all yardsticks on political legitimacy or behavioural correctness, save in the most extreme circumstances. Rather than coercive tactics, quiet dialogue for constructive solutions often pays better dividends.
Specifically, all-out, across-the-board tariffs are mutually damaging in a closely interconnected and interdependent world. They are much less productive than frank discussions for mutually agreed solutions to address legitimate economic and security concerns.
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An unwinnable conflict? The US-China trade war, 5 years on
An unwinnable conflict? The US-China trade war, 5 years on
These considerations apply to US-China tensions over the South China Sea, Taiwan, trade, technology, military development, intellectual property, market reciprocity, human rights, geopolitics and more.
This is why at their recent bilateral meeting at the Munich Security Conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reminded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of “the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation”, of the US “taking an objective and rational view of China’s development” to “pursue a positive and pragmatic China policy” honouring President Biden’s commitments to President Xi Jinping in San Francisco last year.
In a newly upended and unstable world, it’s about time for America to reconfigure its mindset and behaviour in the interests of healthier US-China relations and for sustainable world peace and prosperity.
Andrew K.P. Leung is an independent China strategist.[email protected]
