The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world," first U.S. President George Washington said in his farewell presidential address in September 1796. Two centuries later, it seems that the United States has already forgotten the exhortation of its founding father.

For a long time, the U.S. alliance system has adhered to the Cold War mentality, and has been obsessed with zero-sum games. It trampled on justice for self-interest, provoked conflicts and wars, imposed unilateral sanctions, and reaped world dividends, posing serious threats to and undermining the international system with the United Nations as the core and the international order based on international law.

Since the new U.S. administration took office, it has re-enhanced its control of the alliance system under the pretext of returning to multilateralism. The fact, however, is that the U.S. government aims to build "small circles" and "group politics" to divide the world by forcing others to choose sides between different ideological camps. It has also attempted to use such small circles to contain and suppress China, and to pursue unilateralism with the camouflage of multilateralism.

The U.S. alliance system goes against the historical trend. It flexes its muscles and claims to have gained wide support, but in fact it is just a paper tiger and has gradually lost its popularity. Its crimes of violence, plunder, infringement, sabotage, lying, concealing, and infighting are becoming increasingly flagrant, and it is falling into the abyss of "a gang" step by step.

The following is a presentation of the "seven sins" of the U.S. alliance system, which demonstrates its hegemonic mindset and power politics.

THE FIRST SIN: VIOLENCE

During the past 240-plus years after it declared independence on July 4th, 1776, there are only less than 20 years during which the United States had not involved in any war. According to incomplete statistics, from the end of World War II in 1945 to 2001, among the 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions of the world, 201 were initiated by the United States, accounting for 81 percent of the total number. Of them, there were 13 overseas wars, in most of which U.S. allies were involved. Under the guns and bayonets of the United States and its allies, countless people have been displaced and even lost their lives. The economic and social development of regional countries has suffered drastically. Many countries are still in great misery.

Major aggressive wars waged by the United States and its allies after World War II include:

◆The Korean War. Since June 1950, the United States has gathered more than a dozen countries to form the so-called "United Nations Army" to intervene in a civil war between the North and the South of the Korean Peninsula. The war resulted in the death of more than 3 million civilians and another 3 million refugees. During the war, the U.S. military secretly carried out a germ warfare in the northern region of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and parts of northeastern China, spreading by planes large numbers of insects, mice, rabbits and other vectors with bacteria that could cause plague, cholera and typhoid. The germ warfare has resulted in large casualties among Chinese and Korean soldiers and civilians.

◆The Vietnam War. The Vietnam War that lasted from 1955 to 1975 is one of the longest and most brutal wars since the end of World War II. The war has caused as many as 2 million civilian deaths and rendered over 3 million people displaced. The U.S. forces dropped 20 million gallons (about 75.71 million liters) of defoliants in Vietnam during the war, directly causing over 400,000 Vietnamese deaths. Another approximately 2 million Vietnamese who came into contact with this chemical got cancers and other diseases. Besides, it is estimated that at least 350,000 tons of unexploded mines and bombs have been left by the U.S. military in Vietnam, and these mines and bombs are still explosive, which will take 300 years to be cleaned out.

◆The Kosovo War. In 1999, NATO troops led by the United States blatantly set the UN Security Council aside and carried out a 78-day continuous bombing of Yugoslavia under the guise of "preventing humanitarian disasters," killing and injuring over 8,000 innocent civilians and uprooting nearly 1 million. More than 2 million people have lost their source of livelihood. NATO troops targeted the infrastructure of Yugoslavia and even bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. Serbian economists estimated that the total economic loss caused by the bombings was as much as 29.6 billion U.S. dollars. Lots of bridges, roads, railways, and other buildings were destroyed during the bombings, affecting 25,000 households, 176 cultural sites, 69 schools, 19 hospitals, and 20 health centers. About 1.5 million children could not go to school. Apart from that, during this war, NATO troops led by the United States also used cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs banned by international conventions, leading to a surge in cancer and leukemia cases in Yugoslavia and inflicting disastrous impact on the ecological environment of Yugoslavia and Europe. In March 2000, the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo confirmed that the U.S. military had launched a total of 31,000 depleted uranium bombs to destroy Yugoslavia's tanks and fortifications. There were more than 100 drop sites in Kosovo and Metohija. NATO used 2 tons of depleted uranium in southern Serbia, and 13 tons in Kosovo and Metohija, for a total of 15 tons of depleted uranium. In addition, from April 17-18, 1999, NATO aircraft blew up a chemical plant in Pancevo, causing the carcinogen content in the city to reach 10,600 times the normal level. As of May 2019, 366 Italian soldiers who participated in NATO military operations had died of cancer, and 7,500 were suffering badly from illness.

◆The Afghanistan War. In October 2001, the United States and NATO invaded Afghanistan in the name of combating al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military operations have killed and injured more than 100,000 civilians, and created about 11 million refugees. In 2019, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani said that 45,000 soldiers in Afghan security forces have been killed since 2014. A UN report in 2019 showed that 32,000 Afghan civilians had died in the war, while the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the United States stated that the number of deaths among the resistance forces was 42,000. Scholars at Kabul University estimated that since its beginning, the Afghanistan War has caused about 250 casualties and a loss of 60 million U.S. dollars per day. In 2020, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stated that there was evidence that nearly 100 Afghan prisoners had been tortured, abused and even raped during interrogation. U.S. military forces and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency may have committed war crimes for torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. In November 2020, the Australian military released an investigation report of the country's troops in Afghanistan, confirming that Australian soldiers were suspected of participating in the killing of prisoners and civilians in Afghanistan. On April 14, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the mission of preventing terrorists from obtaining safe shelter in Afghanistan had long been over and that all U.S. troops would withdraw from the country before Sept. 11. The U.S. military was withdrawing from Afghanistan hastily, leaving behind a mess of rampant violence and devastation.

◆The Iraq War. In March 2003, despite broad opposition of the international community, the United States, along with Britain and other countries, still invaded Iraq on unfounded charges, which led to around 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including 16,000 directly killed by U.S. forces. Today in Iraq, there are still 25 million mines and other explosive remnants that need to be removed. According to public statistics, the total number of depleted uranium bombs exploded in Iraq exceeded 3,400 tons, with an average of nearly 8 kilograms of uranium compounds remaining per square kilometer. In 2008, the UN General Assembly voted to ban the use of depleted uranium bombs in civilian areas. 141 countries supported it. The United States, Britain, France and Israel voted against it. In addition, the U.S. and British forces have seriously violated international humanitarian principles and abused prisoners of war. A set of photos released by the CBS showed that after the war in Iraq, the U.S. military police brutally tortured Iraqi prisoners of war, such as ordering them to stack their bodies naked, or to stand on boxes with their heads covered and live wires connected to their hands. In November 2019, investigators from the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) and "Operation Northmoor" revealed that the relevant investigations were suspended by the British government in 2017. The British government and the army covered up the credible evidence of war crimes of killing civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq committed by their soldiers.

The multiple wars of aggression launched by the United States and its allies have caused a large number of civilian casualties and property losses in other countries, and brought about a series of social problems. In March 2021, the U.S. anti-war organization CODEPINK issued a report stating that in the past 20 years, the United States and its allies have been constantly bombing other countries, dropping more than 40 bombs and missiles per day on average. Since 2001, the United States and its allies have dropped 326,000 bombs and missiles in other countries, mainly in the Middle East. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen were the most severely attacked countries.

◆The United States continues supplying weapons to its allies, leading to regional conflicts.

After 2017, the United States increased the sales of advanced weapons to its allies as an important means to control and consolidate alliances. Then President Donald Trump frequently touted U.S.-made weapons during meetings with leaders of other countries. In addition, U.S. defense contractors can directly sell military drones to foreign governments without approval from U.S. Department of Defense. In 2018, the U.S. arms exports amounted to 192.3 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 13 percent over the previous year. In 2020, the U.S. arms sales accounted for more than 85 percent of the global total, and nearly half of them went to the Middle East. In March 2021, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden confirmed that the United States has always been the world's largest arms exporter, whose exports in the past five years accounted for more than one-third of the world's total, with more than half going to the Middle East. The size of arms purchases by Middle Eastern countries accounted for one third of the world's total, of which nearly 70 percent came from the United States, Britain, and France.

◆U.S. allies have long participated in U.S. military operations overseas and conspired to commit violence.

Australia is the only ally that has participated in every major U.S. military operations overseas since World War II, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Kosovo War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the Syria War. In November 2020, the Australian Defence Force released an investigation report, which confirmed that Australian soldiers were suspected of torturing and killing 39 Afghan civilians, including children. The report has shocked the world and triggered widespread criticism in the international community. Recently, Michael Pezzullo, secretary of the department of home affairs of Australia, commented on China-U.S. tensions over Taiwan, saying that "free nations again hear the beating drums (of war)", deliberately inciting confrontation and exaggerating the threat of war.

The United States has a number of military bases in the Middle East, with more than 70,000 U.S. troops stationed in the region. The United States also deploys advanced military equipment in the region, such as aircraft carrier groups, stealth fighters, and strategic nuclear submarines, flaunting its power from time to time as it tries to maintain strategic deterrence in the region at all times. Under the anti-terrorism banner, the United States used force to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, and even violently overthrew the legitimate governments of sovereign countries. The United States dispatched drones to remove Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Quds Force in Iran. In recent years, several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated, behind which there are shadows of U.S.-Israel conspiracy. The United States condoned Israel for launching air strikes against Syria, Lebanon and other countries, which seriously infringed on the sovereignty of relevant countries. The United States also acquiesced in Turkey's invasion of Syria, and allowed Turkey to attack Kurdish forces in Syria and invade northern Syria in the name of anti-terrorism. During the Libyan war, the United States, Britain, France, Canada and other countries jointly implemented armed intervention on the grounds of implementing the UN Security Council's no-fly resolution, with the actual purpose of supporting the opposition groups in Libya to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Since the launch of the so-called "war on terrorism" in 2001, the United States and its allies have caused at least 480,000 deaths in the region, most of which are innocent civilians.

◆Gun violence is rampant in the United States.

On April 3, 2021, The New York Times reported that more than 1.5 million Americans have died from gun-related suicides, murders, and accidents since 1975, more than the total number of deaths caused by all U.S. wars since the Civil War. According to data released by the U.S. Gun Violence Archives, in 2020, more than 40,000 people were killed in shootings in the United States, setting a record high, and there were 592 mass shootings in the country, an average of more than 1.6 per day. On June 14, 2021, The Washington Post reported that from January to May 2021 alone, more than 8,100 people died in shootings in the United States, about 54 people per day, which is 14 more than the average of the previous six years in the same period. While the country is plagued with gun violence, there is no progress in strengthening gun control. The two major parties in the United States have been in a tug of war over gun control, making it difficult for any act to pass Congress. Congress has adopted nearly no gun laws of practical significance since 1994.

◆Police violence continues in the United States and its allies, and has caused a large number of casualties.

During the "Yellow Vest" movement in France, the police used chemical sprays, tear gas, rubber bullets and other methods excessively to suppress violence. In recent demonstrations in Northern Ireland and other places, police violence also caused many injuries and bloodshed and aroused public outrage.

On Feb. 26, 2021, during the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a number of UN special rapporteurs and human rights experts issued a joint statement calling on the U.S. government to adopt wide-ranging reforms to put an end to police violence, and to vigorously address systemic racism and racial discrimination. The experts also expressed concern that U.S. legal and policy frameworks allow law enforcement officers to use lethal force whenever it is deemed "reasonable," and urged the U.S. authorities to address the increased "militarization" of policing. On April 21, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement over the George Floyd case that impunity for crimes and human rights violations by law enforcement officers must end, and robust measures must be taken to prevent further arbitrary killings. (more)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 2)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 3)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 4)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 5)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 6)

The seven sins of the alliance system of the United States (part 7)