Global Policy Forum

By Kai-Alexander Schlevogt

In historical annals, 1999 will be recorded as the year in which the United States finally and unmistakably unmasked its real face. The world policeman has become a danger for global order and world peace, which it always claimed to promote and protect. The international community, under the leadership of China, must take determined and concerted actions to block its destructive influence and foster the harmonious co-existence of sovereign nations. The recurring theme of all the US' decisions and actions is to preserve its national sovereignty and international hegemony at all expenses. All other slogans are hypocritical deceptions, pretending to justify unjustifiable action. At home, the US wants to be the sole decision-maker. Abroad, its objective is to become a true empire, in both economic and military terms. All conduct aims to help the US empire to exceed the influence and might of any previous supreme power in history.

Let us analyze several typical examples of the US' dangerous, nationalist and imperialist behaviour:

The United States does not pay its United Nations (UN) debt. It is thus responsible for the budgetary problems of the UN. It endangers many important programmes, such as poverty relief projects. As a punishment, it should be expelled from the family of nations forever or levied a heavy penalty.

Demonstrating its full contempt for the UN, the United States infiltrated its weapons inspection teams in Iraq with spies. It thus consciously undermined the credibility of the United Nation and embarrassed it in front of the whole world.

The United States failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, signed by more than 150 states. It thus will be responsible for a new arms race and the spread of nuclear weapons, endangering world peace. The United States also risks jeopardizing the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was simultaneously negotiated. Citing the spiteful, Republican-dominated Senate as an excuse does not count, because the Senate is still part of the US constitutional framework for making strategic decisions. Selfishly, the United States is only against such non-nuclear devices as landmines and chemical and biological weapons. This is because it thus eliminates the only threats that small countries can possibly pose. Such weapons, which can have potential huge destructive power, are the only arms these countries can easily produce. While being unable to develop nuclear weapons, small nations can nevertheless achieve significant destructive potential. For example, all talk about the inhumanity of landmines becomes cynical in comparison to the cruelty of nuclear weapons, which only the United States had the shamelessness to use. US criticism of nuclear tests by other nations, such as India and Pakistan, has turned out to be outright hypocritical.

President Bill Clinton signed a bill that mandates him to build an anti-missile defence shield over the United States as soon as it is technically feasible. This breaches the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and seriously endangers the world's balance of power. This action, too, will lead to another arms race. Whichever country is first in developing effective nuclear defence will have a window of opportunity to attack other countries. The United States thus put a knife at the throat of Russia and provokes a serious conflict. The shield might also neutralize its nuclear threat, which has become more important to Russia in view of the catastrophic state of its conventional forces. The provocation will further endanger the Russian ratification of the START-2 accord on slashing long-range arsenals. If the world's nuclear powers do not deliver on their promised cuts, nuclear weapons might further proliferate.

During the Cold War, the United States secretly placed nuclear weapons in various countries around the world, without the leaders' knowledge. The United States thus created huge security risks not only for those countries, but also for world peace. This incident shows that the United States has a true colonial empire, completely controlling its possessions. Otherwise, without the governments being mere puppets, how could it secretly place such difficult items as nuclear weapons in their territories? The author is a professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Beijing University. He is also an associate with the Harvard Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Business School.