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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
Washington’s hackneyed mentality
    2016-11-07  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    A GREAT many people, myself included, are under the impression that there is a huge discrepancy between America’s self-perception and its public image and between its self-proclaimed role as the world leader and peacekeeper and its actual identity as the world bully and troublemaker.

    Despite its repeated pledges to maintain its role as the world leader in this century and beyond, its outdated mentality stays unchanged: adherence to hegemony; retention of the Cold-War apparatus: NATO and other military alliances; refusal to abandon the policy of antagonizing some countries while favoring others; and worst of all, the practice of imposing its own values and ideas on other nations.

    The U.S. is the only country that can’t live a single day without creating enemies. Any newly elected president’s top priority is to make sure there are enough hotspots around the world so that his 10 aircraft carriers can swagger around the world, displaying American “greatness.”

    If the decades-long confrontation between the U.S.-led Western camp and the USSR-led Eastern bloc during the Cold War was understandable because of the sharply confronting political systems and ideologies, it is a sheer mystery as to why the U.S. keeps making enemies everywhere after the end of the Cold War.

    Looking back, Russia, America’s former archenemy, became a second-class nation after the disintegration of the USSR and was eager to make friends with the U.S. by trying very hard to copy America’s political and economic systems.

    But the whole world has witnessed how the U.S. has been cornering Russia step by step by enlarging NATO to compress Russia’s strategic space. Washington did a great job, as it has successfully reshaped Russia as its major foe again.

    Washington’s desire to create more enemies has never fallen through. One of the latest successful cases was the emergence and rise of IS, the most ferocious terror organization in the 21 century. The credit goes to no one else but Uncle Sam. It is he that asserted that the Saddam Hussein-ruled Iraq hid WMDs and threatened America’s safety, leading the U.S.-led coalition to invade the remote country, hang Saddam, kill countless innocent civilians, only to find nothing, before pulling out and leaving a torn Iraq in shambles behind.

    

    Not content with his misconduct in Iraq, the U.S. went on meddling with the internal unrest in Libya and Syria, until making the Middle East a living hell for the people and a paradise for terrorists and extremists. As a result, IS is running amok and refugees are swarming into Europe.

    Still unsatisfied with the mounting mess, the U.S., putting aside a chaotic Middle East and Ukraine, is going all out to provoke China, a peace-loving nation, in the hope of turning China into its principal foe.

    As China has never tried to challenge America’s role as “the world leader,” Washington has to resort to some hilarious tricks to irritate China, such as the fabricated charge that China doesn’t live by “the international rules.” Brazen American politicians never feel ashamed of accusing others without producing evidence.

    Nor do they find it ridiculous to send aircraft carriers to the South China Sea to maintain “freedom of navigation.” Everyone on earth knows that only pirates and Uncle Sam have the intention and ability to sabotage freedom of navigation for others. China, on the other hand, is a firm supporter of freedom of navigation, as shown by the Chinese navy’ s nine-year successful escort missions in the Gulf of Aden.

    Unlike China who is an active advocate of mutual security and development, the U.S. is keen on zero-sum games. It tried in vain to obstruct China’s effort to establish the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, an apparent bonanza for many countries hungry for infrastructure capital; it remains reticent on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, another Chinese endeavor to promote prosperity in Asia and Europe.

    The only “active role” America is playing in the Asia-Pacific is splitting Asia by luring or coercing some countries to stand off against others.

    The fact that the world is becoming even more dangerous despite Washington’s pledge to make it safer proves only two things: either it has an ulterior motive or it is incompetent.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)

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