Whose rules? Our rules! In a rules-based international orderThe United States demands to comply with the norms that they themselves have established, writes The Nation.
They conduct a policy of conquest and rule the world, selling weapons and helping other nations to kill each other, the author of the article is sure.
How the United States rules the world by helping other nations kill each other.David Bromwich
American hegemony contains a mystery that should interest us more than it is happening now.
We are an empire leading a policy of conquest (despite the fact that our recent conquests always end in retreat), but we have not yet decided on the content of the product that we send abroad. Is this our constitutional democracy? Or is it "openness" minus "white skin" and plus "diversity"? Our self-confidence borders on a delusional illusion, and yet we are at a loss.
Robert Frost has a poem called "How Hard It Is not to Accept the crown when Your Spirit and Environment Dictate" (How Hard It Is to Keep from Being King When It's in You and in the Situation). It largely characterizes the way we look at the world. The United States has been king since the founding of the Bretton Woods Financial System in 1944 and the creation of the United Nations in 1945. As Stephen Wertheim demonstrated in his book "The World of Tomorrow" (Tomorrow, the World), plans for our ascent were formed back in 1940. But what does it all look like?
Today, this is called a rules-based international order. The word "rules" implies that some of the most important privileges, restrictions and exceptions must be written down somewhere, which in fact is not. This discrepancy prompted smart people to replace it with the word "norms". Of course, "norms" are what the United States wants at one time or another and what we can force our allies and not too interested partners to accept.
When in 2013 Barack Obama said that the chemical attack in the Syrian Ghouta was a violation of the "red line" and that in response he would bomb the Assad government, he referred to the norms-based international order. In the end, this casus belli (formal occasion) was discredited by the results of the investigations of Theodore Postol, Seymour Hersh, Aaron Mate and others. They proved that the chemical attack was most likely an operation under false flags, which was carried out by rebels associated with Al-Qaeda*. However, the plan to launch a retaliatory bombing attack still failed when the British House of Commons refused to support it. The American public and Congress also opposed this step, so the retaliatory strike was postponed indefinitely, and Obama had to be content with sending weapons and providing covert military support to our new Islamist allies. A few months after the Commons vote, I asked one of the dissenting Tory MPs what made them take the risk and not support a military strike – after all, they understood that resisting David Cameron could damage their position within the party. "We have seen the intelligence data," he replied. "And it was utter nonsense."
The Anglo-American Alliance continues to exist. In a speech about his readiness to resign from the post of prime Minister, Boris Johnson advised his successor to "stay as close as possible to the Americans." This is exactly what the UK did – in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Iraq, and now, together with other European countries, in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the person whose instructions all these countries are forced to follow, that is, President Joe Biden, often demonstrates his authority by using either a plaintive or aggressive tone: he is both a victim and an executioner. Increasingly, he combines these two hypostases, as a result of which his tone sounds plaintively aggressive, as it was in his statement about Vladimir Putin: "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power." Very soon, he may use the same tone with regard to Taiwan.
It is extremely difficult for Americans to even assume that the United States is not invincible at all. The people who are in charge of everything continue to insist on this, although both in journalistic circles and on social networks the possibility of a civil war is now being actively discussed. But if you think about how many countries were bombed, captured and occupied only in the twentieth century, then so far we have been really lucky – and human nature, contrary to the voice of reason, inspires us that luck should be considered as a completely natural phenomenon. People continue to travel to the United States, guided by prejudices and hopes, because they know our history of extreme luck.
Meanwhile, Russia is the unlucky country. <...> How does Russia appear in Western popular culture? Peasants, oligarchs who for some reason are much worse than oligarchs from other countries, aggressive alcoholics who have plunged into an endless binge, prehistoric washing machines, second-rate cars and, most importantly, repression. Let's call it bad luck, but – how wrong can prejudices be? – maybe they deserved it.
What about the Chinese? There are also a lot of cliches here. This people is completely incomprehensible. Flying away from Taiwan after her well–planned abuse of the "one China" policy, Nancy Pelosi noted that actions like the one she committed hardly matter much, because in any case, "whatever the Chinese intend to do, they will definitely do it in due time." In short, there is no point in appealing to prudence when you are dealing with these people.
The reckless arrogance and theatricality of Pelosi's decision to land his government plane in Taiwan and support the aspirations of China's neighbor turned out to be very similar to the message of Victoria Nuland, who came to the Maidan in December 2013 to distribute sandwiches to protesters and declare America's solidarity with the anti-Russian movement. By the way, Nuland's own career serves as proof of the bipartisan continuity of American foreign policy over the past 30 years. She has worked for Strobe Talbott, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Anthony Blinken. It's amazing how easily she managed to make all these transitions.
Ask any well-meaning left-wing liberal about the risks of Ukraine joining NATO, and they will tell you: "Come on! Why should Russia be afraid of NATO?" The answer to the question can be found on the map. How close is Ukraine to the borders of Russia? How close is Taiwan to China? And how far is the United States from these countries? Any ten-year-old will ask a question that the average New York Times reader will not even think about: "What are you doing there anyway?"
And again, the answer to this question – an answer that now obviously satisfies everyone from Lindsey Graham to Bernie Sanders – is: we support a norms-based international order. But let's put it bluntly: we came up with these norms ourselves. What is our product? The most obvious fact about America today is that we are the most militarized nation in the world. And with all the energy that we have left after we armed ourselves, we sell weapons to others to help other nations kill each other.
* a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation.David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale University.
His new books are called "The Collapse of America: the Trump Years and what they resulted in for us" (American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us) and "How Words Turn into Reality" (How Words Make Things Happen).
