The U.S. Department of Defense recently released its 2021 Global Posture Review (GPR), claiming that the U.S. will enhance military infrastructure in Guam and Australia. The report, which is full of Cold-War mentality, is the embodiment of the country’s age-old hegemonic mindset and the result of its habit of maintaining hegemony with military means.
Over the years, the U.S. has been wantonly flaunting its military power around the world. For the ultimate purpose of maintaining U.S. hegemony, it has frequently imposed military pressure on other countries and even provoked conflicts and wars.
To the U.S., hegemony always goes hand in hand with war. As a matter of fact, from the Westward Movement to the Mexican-American War and then the Spanish-American War, a series of expansions accompanied the U.S. in the early stage of its development.
After the end of World War II, the U.S. became the world’s strongest country in terms of comprehensive national strength and war became an important means for the country to maintain the hegemony.
Its ambition to maintain U.S. hegemony has inflicted one war after another upon foreign countries, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the U.S. Invasion of Panama, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan Civil War and the Syrian Civil War. Even the huge cost of defeat didn’t stop the country from waging more wars.
U.S. magazine The National Interest quoted Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, as saying that in “every 15 years or so,” the U.S. would get involved in a conflict.
From Asia to America, from Europe to Africa, the places where the evil war machine of the U.S. goes are deprived of peace and tranquility.
In order to maintain its hegemony, the U.S. has operated a giant war machine and even established military bases all over the world. Since 1945, the country has built nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries around the world and constantly bolstered its military presence.
The Middle East alone sees more than 70,000 permanently stationed U.S. troops. The U.S. also deploys advanced military equipment in the region, such as aircraft carrier battle groups, stealth fighters and strategic nuclear submarines, trying to maintain strategic deterrence in the region at all times.
Overseas military bases of the U.S. have exacerbated geopolitical tensions and actually made the U.S. and the world less safe, pointed out U.S. writer David Vine in his book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.
Thirty years has passed since the end of the Cold War, yet U.S. foreign policies still can’t shake off the influence of the Cold War mentality and remain highly dependent on military means.
Over the past three decades, the U.S. has always maintained its military deployment around the world and, in pursuit of its own absolute security, undermined the legitimate security interests of other countries.
It has constantly searched for “imaginary enemies” and exaggerated external threats despite the risk of provoking confrontation between major countries.
Relying on its superior military strength, the U.S. has waged wars directly or fought proxy wars, and interfered in the internal affairs of other countries on various pretexts, frequently causing security crises and humanitarian disasters.
A report released by U.S. antiwar organization Code Pink revealed that during the past two decades, the U.S. and its allies have dropped an average of more than 40 bombs and missiles a day, leading to untold casualties.
The U.S. has reveled in its own power following the Cold War and appeared selfishly fixated on its own politics and interests, said an article published on the website of the Los Angeles Times.
The transformation of the international landscape is at a crossroads. Fostering democratic relations between nations represents the general trend of the times, while building a world that is free from fear and enjoys universal security is a widely shared appeal of the international community.
However, the U.S., going against the prevailing trend of the times, has constantly upgraded its nuclear arsenal, lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, established the Space Force and the Space Command, speeded up weapon tests in outer space, increased military deployment in the Asian-Pacific region, and instigated its allies to join it in imposing military pressure on others.
The U.S. has remained the world’s largest military spender for years, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
In 2020, despite economic crises and fiscal challenges, the military expenditure of the U.S. increased by 4.4 percent over 2019 and accounted for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total military expenditure.
At present, people in all countries across the world long for peace and development more than ever before, and their call for equity and justice and determination in pursuing win-win cooperation are growing stronger.
If the U.S. continues to be obsessed with the power of fist and the law of the jungle, it will only find itself on the wrong side of history and expose to more people around the world its true colors as a hegemonist.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)
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