U.S., biggest saboteur of post-WWII global peace (Part 2)

ADDICTION TO INTERVENTIONISM

To maintain and consolidate its hegemony, the United States has resorted to all means, from hatching "peaceful evolutions," instigating "color revolutions," to even directly subverting the governments of other countries.

This July, anti-government demonstrations broke out in parts of Cuba. Evidence released by the Cuban government shows that since mid-June, some anti-Cuba forces in the United States, funded by the U.S. government, have deliberately spread the lie through social networks that the Cuban medical system, attacked by COVID-19, has collapsed, and used it as a pretext for instigating military intervention in Cuba to subvert the Cuban government. U.S. sanctions ensued against some Cuban military officials and entities on the grounds of the so-called "governmental suppression" of the demonstrators.

This year, local media in Cuba revealed that in the last two decades, agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have allotted nearly 250 million U.S. dollars to a series of subversive programs targeting Cuba.

At a high-level meeting on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UN, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the irresponsible behavior of the United States is the biggest threat to global peace and security.

The United States has an addiction to interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

U.S. author William Blum said in his book America's Deadliest Export: Democracy that since the end of World War II, the United States has endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected, grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, and attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

During the Cold War, the United States launched activities of infiltration, instigating rebellion, disruption and destruction against the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

After the end of the Cold War, the United States even more brazenly promoted interventionism and frequently exported "color revolutions." At the end of 2003, it forced the resignation of then President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze for the so-called "fraud" in vote counting in the parliamentary elections. The incident is known as "Rose Revolution." In October 2004, it concocted the scandal of "fraud" in the Ukrainian elections, incited young people in the country to march in the streets and supported Viktor Yushchenko's rise to power. This is the so-called "Orange Revolution." In March 2005, it incited Kyrgyzstan's opposition to protest against the results of the parliamentary elections, which eventually led to riots. Then President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akayev was forced to flee and announce his resignation in this so-called "Tulip Revolution." In the past decade, the United States has repeatedly intervened or manipulated "color revolutions" in some countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and West Asia, and North Africa.

Behind the series of "color revolutions" orchestrated by the United States, a self-proclaimed unofficial and non-profit organization has come under the spotlight: the NED, known as "the largest sponsor for global color revolutions." Founded in 1983, it has close ties with the U.S. Department of State, the USAID, the Central Intelligence Agency and the like.

Each year, it offers more than 1,600 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups in more than 90 countries. The foundation is also a funding source behind some separatist forces against China, supporting dozens of China-related schemes every year. It has so far provided about 100 million dollars for more than 100 anti-China groups, including the groups clearly identified as terrorist organizations by China such as the so-called "Tibetan Youth Congress" and "World Uyghur Congress." A lot of funds for "Hong Kong independence" activities have also come from the foundation.

DOLLAR HEGEMONY

After World War II, the United States has been taking advantage of the hegemony of the U.S. dollar to wring gains from the creation and flow of the world's wealth.

It has used the dollar hegemony to increase the financial risk of developing countries, plunder their wealth, including resources and real estates, and obtain the monopoly rights of such public service industries in these countries as water, electricity and transportation.

In those Latin American countries that adopted the Washington Consensus, the economic growth rate in the 1990s decreased by 50 percent on average from that in the 1980s.

American "economic killers," covered with the legal cloak of economists, bankers and international financial advisors, manipulate other countries by economic means, trick developing countries into falling into preset economic traps, control the economic lifeline and natural resources of these countries, let funds flow into the United States continuously, and consolidate and expand the economic, political and military hegemony of the United States in the world, said American economist John Perkins in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man published in 2004.

This has long been the case in international trade: The United States prints dollars, and other countries of the world turn resources and goods for dollars in global trade, and then buy U.S. treasury bonds and corporate securities as their foreign exchange reserves, thus enabling U.S. dollars to flow back to the United States and prop up its economy. Niall Ferguson, an American historian, once called the phenomenon "the biggest free lunch in modern economic history."

Despite ballooning fiscal deficits and government debt, U.S. debts can still enjoy low interest rates due to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar, allowing the United States to gather funds from around the world at extremely low costs.

Relying on the hegemony of the dollar, the United States has been enjoying the privilege of printing money with virtually no restrictions.

After the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve launched three rounds of quantitative easing policies from the end of 2008 to October 2014, transferring the crisis to the whole world through excessive issuance of dollars.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, in order to stimulate the U.S. economy and its stock market, the Federal Reserve has once again resorted to the "super easing" mode featuring zero interest rate and unlimited quantitative easing. After the Biden administration came to power, it quickly rolled out a 1.9-trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan.

What is more noteworthy is that every time the Federal Reserve salvages the U.S. market, the beneficiaries are not ordinary Americans, but the top 1 percent American elites, who receive almost all of the profits the United States extracted from around the world. Most of the top 1 percent elites are the most powerful and well-funded interest groups, including Internet giants, Wall Street, the health insurance industry, drug companies, the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial complex.

The U.S. financial and high-tech industries have expanded rapidly during the pandemic, and big U.S. companies have received huge subsidies through various economic stimulus packages. At the same time, most of the excess dollars flowed into the U.S. stock market, which further inflated the wealth of the wealthy. According to data from U.S. Forbes website in January this year, although tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year, the total wealth of the more than 650 U.S. billionaires has increased 1.3 trillion dollars, up 38.6 percent, while the five richest Americans' wealth increased from 358 billion dollars to 661 billion dollars in total, up 85 percent.

Frenzied money printing created the illusion of temporary prosperity in the United States, but great dangers lie behind it. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet now exceeds 8 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt stands at 28.5 trillion dollars. Fitch, an international rating agency, lowered its outlook on the U.S. sovereign credit rating to "Negative" in July 2020, saying that soaring debts and deficits were eroding the U.S. sovereign credit.

The U.S. practice of printing money to make other countries "pay" for its deficits will eventually endanger the dominance of the dollar. In recent years, in order to get rid of the hegemony of the dollar, Russia, the European Union, China and other countries have accelerated their efforts to de-dollarize. George Soros once said in 2018 that the dollar would lose its status as the world's main reserve currency and medium of exchange in the next few years.

LONG-ARM JURISDICTION

In his book titled "The American Trap" published in 2019, Frederic Pierucci, former executive of Alstom, gave a first-hand account of Washington's cracking down on Alstom in the name of fighting corruption.

He noted in the book that for more than a decade, the United States has managed to dismantle many large European multinationals under the guise of fighting corruption.

Washington has over the years exploited such means as long-arm jurisdiction and economic sanctions to contain its enemies and rival countries, thwarting their development to maintain its own hegemony.

For example, the United States enacted the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to expand its sanctions against Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran. It activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act to step up its embargo against Cuba and unilaterally slap heavy economic sanctions on foreign businesses which have economic ties with Cuba.

The United States has continued to expand the extraterritorial application of its domestic laws, and has forcibly placed foreign individuals and entities under its jurisdiction, regardless of the rules of jurisdiction in international law.

Under its domestic laws, the United States has access to user data and transfer information from many European banks through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system. In recent years, European enterprises have been constantly attacked by the U.S. Department of Justice and relevant financial regulators, and some enterprises accused of "corruption" or violating the U.S. ban in trade with Cuba, Libya, the DPRK, Iran and other countries have been fined hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, said Ali Laidi, a researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

These moves have inflicted upon some countries dreadful hardship and even humanitarian crises, which have been no less destructive than wars. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Venezuela, Syria and Iran, long subjected to U.S. sanctions, have seen deteriorating economic and medical situations, as well as a severe epidemic situation at home. Nevertheless, Washington has gone further on its sanctions, making the situations even worse in these countries.

"With their illegal and inhuman sanctions, and terrorist actions, the Americans have inflicted 150 billion dollars of damage on the people of Iran," said then Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in September 2020.

The United States rigged economic rules, using them when they are compatible with its interests.

Under the Trump administration, to undermine China's security and stability and curb China's development, the United States formally rejected China's market economy status in documents submitted to the WTO, provoked trade disputes with China, and imposed a series of unilateral sanctions on Chinese high-tech enterprises. After taking office, the Biden administration continued to abuse the power of the state, introducing a series of bills and executive orders to suppress and restrict Huawei and other Chinese companies by all means.

The United States has even cracked down on its allies. After World War II, the rapid economic rise of Japan drew ruthless repression from the United States, as evidenced by the Plaza Accord. During the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, the United States assumed that the project was detrimental to its interests in the region, and imposed multiple rounds of sanctions to obstruct the progress of the project, provoking strong dissatisfaction of its European allies including Germany. (more)