Interview: Retired admiral says U.S. wants to maintain unipolar world order

ISTANBUL, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The efforts to preserve an utterly unipolar world order lie behind America's savage pursuit of hegemony in all areas of life, retired Turkish Admiral Turker Erturk told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. emerged as the largest and only global power. Today, it plans and conducts operations to maintain a unipolar world order. Our experiences are manifestations of this," said Erturk, who served as commander of the Turkish Naval Academy between 2008 and 2010.

He said the Ukraine crisis is an excellent example of U.S. efforts to maintain its political hegemony, blaming Washington for consciously prolonging the conflict.

"The U.S. had invested much in this crisis to get Ukraine away from Russia," said Erturk.

The conflict "might not have started and could have been prevented," but the United States "didn't want to prevent it," said Erturk, adding that the United States could end the conflict tomorrow if it wanted.

According to Erturk, the United States forbids any country to challenge its hegemony, intending to destroy all nation-states that can potentially jeopardize a unipolar order, and Russia was among them.

"Especially since the beginning of the 2000s, the United States aspires to reduce the number of nation-states even more by exploiting ethnic, religious and sectarian fault lines," Erturk said.

"So you know what this means? Let there be no power to resist the hegemony of the United States. Because nation-states are the power that can resist this the most," Erturk said.

Despite U.S. intentions in the long term, a multipolar world order would best serve the interest of all, the expert said.

"I think there will be an evolution towards multipolarity over time, and the world's interests and security depend on it," he said.

"In other words, if the equilibrium is broken at a certain point when there is only one power, it will not be possible to establish peace and create prosperity," Erturk said.