The Taipei 101 skyscraper dominates the urban landscape in Taipei, Taiwan, China. [Photo/Xinhua]
Some American politicians continue to preach “maintaining the rules-based international order.” But in reality, the country turns out to be the biggest destroyer of rules and order, and their repeated reference means nothing more than their preference for US hegemony.
As a founding member of the United Nations and the world’s only superpower, the United States consistently places its own domestic law above international law and respects international rules only as it sees fit. This is the biggest damage done to the international order.
While urging other countries to uphold the international order, the United States has blocked negotiations for a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to ratify numerous international conventions, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The United States has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and other organizations, and even from the Trans-Pacific Partnership it had championed.
The so-called “rules-based international order” of the United States is actually a set of rules made by a small number of countries to serve the selfish interests of the United States in its quest for hegemony.
John Bolton, the former national security adviser at the White House, said earlier in an unabashed interview that he had helped plan coups in foreign countries. Bolton’s admission is so revealing.
Leading American politicians trumpet the so-called “rules-based international order” for one purpose: to ensure that the United States can easily intervene in the affairs of other countries and overthrow their governments at will. It is exactly this type of “rules” and “order” that they want to protect.
For years, the United States has created political unrest in Latin America, played a role in the Arab Spring, and fueled color revolutions in Europe and Asia. The United States has deliberately invaded and intervened militarily in other countries, killing over 800,000 people and turning more than 20 million into refugees in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. The United States says little, however, about how many innocent lives have been lost and how many families have been torn apart as a high price for this order it defended.
The Taiwan issue has always been the most important and sensitive issue at the heart of China-US relations. The China-US Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, issued in December 1978, states: “The United States Government accepts the Chinese position that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
However, the United States has significantly eased restrictions on official relations with Taiwan and increased military contacts with the region, as evidenced by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this month. The deviation of the United States from the one-China principle will surely do a great deal of damage to the mutual trust between the two countries.
The one-China principle, reaffirmed by United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 2758, is an integral part of the post-World War II international order, an established international consensus, and a widely accepted basic norm in relations international.
By violating the one-China principle, the United States is also challenging the post-war international order, which is sure to face widespread opposition from the international community.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed in June that they have sought to build an imperfect but liberal order. But, judging by the actions of the USA, it is neither liberal nor regulatory; it is hegemony, arrogance and bullying, and an attempt by the United States and a handful of other countries to impose rules that suit themselves.
People around the world will not want the kind of “imperfect” but “liberal” order distributed by the United States. What they want is an equal and shared right to security, development and prosperity for all. It is high time for the United States to reflect on itself and take real responsibility for world peace and development.
