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The U.S.-led West doesn't like it when others 'threaten' its dominance. [Photo/CGTN]
Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so goes a proverbial saying, suggesting that a person's sense of morals and ethics diminishes with the increase of power.
The world has witnessed the same idea played out on a global scale for decades, where the U.S. kept gaining power ever since the end of World War II – and more so after the collapse of the Soviet Union marking the end of the Cold War that left the U.S. as the sole superpower – and exercised its global domination with impunity and in total disregard of the principles of international cooperation.
While most of the world, particularly the emerging powers and the Global South, crave a multipolar order that would be more equitable in addressing global challenges, the U.S. and its handful of Western allies aim to perpetuate its hegemony. Despite its global clout in decline for some years now, the U.S.-led West continues to cause disruptions through political, economic, and military actions against emerging powers they see as a threat to their unfettered domination of the global governance institutions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn't off the mark when he reiterated on Tuesday that the West is trying to contain the formation of a multipolar world by activating old conflicts to preserve its hegemony. "Their (Western) hegemony means stagnation for the whole world, for the whole civilization, (it means) obscurantism, the abolition of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism," he said at the 2022 Moscow Conference on International Security. It is quite evident that the U.S.-led West is striving to hold the countries and peoples in chains of the neo-colonial order.
Western provocations and their total disregard of international norms and the red lines set by other countries are the underlying causes behind the recent major global crises such as the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine and the escalating tensions between China and the U.S. over the Taiwan region – the constant eastern expansion of NATO ignoring Russia's red lines on security for the former and a spate of violations of the one-China principle for the latter.
Putin, who has closely watched the Western strategies unfold for decades, rightly pointed out that in an attempt to preserve their domination, the U.S. and its allies rudely interfere in the internal affairs of the countries, organize coups, civil wars, provocations, use blackmail, and pressure to subdue states to its will. This has become a hallmark of the corrupt and unethical ways through which the U.S., along with its motley gang of Western allies, have maintained its hegemony while causing mayhem across the world.
Europe shouldn't be a U.S. sidekick
The situation in Ukraine shows that the U.S. is working on the protraction of the conflict to drain and weaken Russia, both economically and militarily over a long period. But the prolonged crisis won't just hurt Russia, it will be disastrous for European nations that are right now blindly toeing the U.S. line despite facing direct repercussions.
On the contrary, the Russians might just be resilient enough due to their turbulent history to come out of this crisis better than the Europeans, who aren't used to hardships in recent decades.
This conflict, like most conflicts in modern history, is being played out thousands of miles from the U.S., but in the backyard of Europe. Disruptions in gas and energy supplies from Russia and wheat exports from Ukraine are already taking a heavy toll on European nations, some compelled to fall back on their long-disbanded coal-fired power plants to meet immediate demands disregarding the environmental impact.
One wonders for how long will Europe play the sidekick of the U.S. and whether it will for once prioritize the interests of its own people ahead of its desire to dominate the world along with Washington.
No room for a global hegemon
Meanwhile, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to China's Taiwan region was most certainly a "thoroughly planned provocation," as Putin described it, aimed at destabilizing the region while at the same time an "insolent demonstration" of disrespecting the sovereignty of another country – China – which also happens to be the world's second-largest economy and military power.
To undermine China further, the U.S. has set up overlapping alliances – namely the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad (with Australia, India, and Japan); AUKUS (with Australia and the UK); and Partners in the Blue Pacific, or PBP (with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK) – in the Asia-Pacific. Among these, AUKUS is a purely military alliance and is clear evidence of Western attempts to build a NATO-style bloc in the Asia-Pacific region.
Putin argues that by triggering conflicts, "Western globalist elites are also trying to divert the attention of their own citizens from acute socio-economic problems – falling living standards, unemployment, poverty, deindustrialization – to shift their own failures to other countries – to Russia [and] to China."
Any further escalation will have direct consequences for the region including for Washington's Asian allies – Japan and South Korea. The rest of Asia, including the influential ASEAN group of Southeast Asian nations, do not have any appetite for a major conflict between the world's biggest superpowers, and that too in their own neighborhood. Asia will be keenly watching the fallout of the Ukraine crisis on Europe and won't want any of it repeated in their vicinity.
There's no room for a global hegemon in the world anymore.
Multipolar world: Need of the time
On one hand, the idea is already facing massive resistance from multilateral platforms such as the BRICS group of emerging powers comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). On the other, a large number of nations representing the Global South are also increasingly calling out the continuing exploitative domination of the U.S.-led West, despite the end of colonialism.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the Western agenda of maintaining global supremacy is doomed to fail and that a multipolar world order not only is already in the making but is in the interest of the wider global community.
The perpetuation of the U.S. hegemony doesn't have much support beyond the Five Eyes alliance and a few Western allies for the moment. But in due course, most of the U.S.'s Western, and even Asian, allies are likely to realize that their interests aren't served better in siding with a hegemon as its junior partners but in having an equal say in the emerging multipolar world.
In fact, a multipolar world is the need of the time, to deal with the global challenges threatening humanity.
"It is a multipolar world built on international law, on fairer relations, that opens up new opportunities to combat common threats. Among them are regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and cybercrime," as the Russian President summed it up. "All these challenges are global in nature, and they cannot be overcome without combining the efforts and potentials of all states."
