V. Hegemonia Cultural – Espalhando Narrativas Falsas
Conclusão
Introdução
Desde que se tornou o país mais poderoso do mundo após as duas guerras mundiais e a Guerra Fria, os Estados Unidos agiram com mais ousadia para interferir nos assuntos internos de outros países, perseguir, manter e abusar da hegemonia, promover a subversão e a infiltração, e deliberadamente travar guerras, trazendo danos à comunidade internacional.
Os Estados Unidos desenvolveram um manual hegemônico para encenar “revoluções coloridas”, instigar disputas regionais e até mesmo lançar guerras diretamente sob o pretexto de promover a democracia, a liberdade e os direitos humanos. Agarrados à mentalidade da Guerra Fria, os Estados Unidos aumentaram a política do bloco e alimentaram conflitos e confrontos. Sobrecarregou o conceito de segurança nacional, abusou dos controles de exportação e forçou sanções unilaterais sobre outros. Adotou uma abordagem seletiva do direito e das regras internacionais, utilizando-as ou descartando-as como achar melhor, e procurou impor regras que sirvam aos seus próprios interesses em nome da defesa de uma “ordem internacional baseada em regras”.
Este relatório, ao apresentar os fatos relevantes, procura expor o abuso de hegemonia dos EUA nos campos político, militar, econômico, financeiro, tecnológico e cultural, e chamar maior atenção internacional para os perigos das práticas dos EUA para a paz e a estabilidade mundiais e o bem-estar de todos os povos.
I. Hegemonia política – jogando seu peso ao redor
Os Estados Unidos há muito tentam moldar outros países e a ordem mundial com seus próprios valores e sistema político em nome da promoção da democracia e dos direitos humanos.
◆ Casos de interferência dos EUA nos assuntos internos de outros países são abundantes. Em nome da “promoção da democracia”, os Estados Unidos praticaram uma “Doutrina Neo-Monroe” na América Latina, instigaram “revoluções coloridas” na Eurásia e orquestraram a “Primavera Árabe” na Ásia Ocidental e no Norte da África, trazendo caos e desastre a muitos países.
Em 1823, os Estados Unidos anunciaram a Doutrina Monroe. Enquanto promovia uma “América para os americanos”, o que ela realmente queria era uma “América para os Estados Unidos”.
Desde então, as políticas de sucessivos governos dos EUA em relação à América Latina e à Região do Caribe têm sido repletas de interferência política, intervenção militar e subversão do regime. Desde sua hostilidade de 61 anos em relação a Cuba até a derrubada do governo Allende do Chile, a política dos EUA nesta região foi construída sobre uma máxima – aqueles que se submeterem prosperarão; os que resistirem perecerão.
O ano de 2003 marcou o início de uma sucessão de “revoluções coloridas” – a “Revolução Rosa” na Geórgia, a “Revolução Laranja” na Ucrânia e a “Revolução das Tulipas” no Quirguistão. O Departamento de Estado dos EUA admitiu abertamente desempenhar um “papel central” nessas “mudanças de regime”. Os Estados Unidos também interferiram nos assuntos internos das Filipinas, derrubando o presidente Ferdinand Marcos Sr. em 1986 e o presidente Joseph Estrada em 2001 através das chamadas “Revoluções do Poder Popular”.
Em janeiro de 2023, o ex-secretário de Estado dos EUA, Mike Pompeo, lançou seu novo livro Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. Ele revelou nele que os Estados Unidos haviam conspirado para intervir na Venezuela. O plano era forçar o governo Maduro a chegar a um acordo com a oposição, privar a Venezuela de sua capacidade de vender petróleo e ouro para divisas, exercer alta pressão sobre sua economia e influenciar a eleição presidencial de 2018.
◆ Os EUA exercem dois pesos e duas medidas sobre as regras internacionais. Colocando seu interesse próprio em primeiro lugar, os Estados Unidos se afastaram dos tratados e organizações internacionais e colocaram seu direito interno acima do direito internacional. Em abril de 2017, o governo Trump anunciou que cortaria todo o financiamento dos EUA para o Fundo de População das Nações Unidas (UNFPA) com a desculpa de que a organização “apoia ou participa da gestão de um programa de aborto coercitivo ou esterilização involuntária”. Os Estados Unidos deixaram a UNESCO duas vezes em 1984 e 2017. Em 2017, anunciou a saída do Acordo de Paris sobre as alterações climáticas. Em 2018, anunciou sua saída do Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU, citando o “preconceito” da organização contra Israel e o fracasso em proteger os direitos humanos de forma eficaz. Em 2019, os Estados Unidos anunciaram sua retirada do Tratado de Forças Nucleares de Alcance Intermediário para buscar o desenvolvimento irrestrito de armas avançadas. Em 2020, anunciou a retirada do Tratado de Céus Abertos.
Os Estados Unidos também têm sido um obstáculo para o controle de armas biológicas, opondo-se às negociações sobre um protocolo de verificação para a Convenção sobre Armas Biológicas (BWC) e impedindo a verificação internacional das atividades dos países relacionadas a armas biológicas. Como o único país na posse de um arsenal de armas químicas, os Estados Unidos têm repetidamente atrasado a destruição de armas químicas e permaneceram relutantes em cumprir suas obrigações. Tornou-se o maior obstáculo para a realização de “um mundo livre de armas químicas”.
◆ Os Estados Unidos estão unindo pequenos blocos através de seu sistema de alianças. Ele tem forçado uma “Estratégia Indo-Pacífico” na região Ásia-Pacífico, reunindo clubes exclusivos como o Five Eyes, o Quad e o AUKUS, e forçando os países regionais a tomar partido. Tais práticas destinam-se essencialmente a criar divisão na região, alimentar o confronto e minar a paz.
◆ Os EUA arbitrariamente julgam a democracia em outros países e fabricam uma falsa narrativa de “democracia versus autoritarismo” para incitar o estranhamento, a divisão, a rivalidade e o confronto. Em dezembro de 2021, os Estados Unidos sediaram a primeira “Cúpula para a Democracia”, que atraiu críticas e oposição de muitos países por zombar do espírito da democracia e dividir o mundo. Em março de 2023, os Estados Unidos sediarão outra “Cúpula para a Democracia”, que permanece indesejada e novamente não encontrará apoio.
II. Hegemonia Militar – Uso Arbitrário da Força
A história dos Estados Unidos é caracterizada pela violência e expansão. Desde que ganhou a independência em 1776, os Estados Unidos têm buscado constantemente a expansão pela força: massacraram índios, invadiram o Canadá, travaram uma guerra contra o México, instigaram a Guerra Americano-Espanhola e anexaram o Havaí. Após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, as guerras provocadas ou lançadas pelos Estados Unidos incluíram a Guerra da Coreia, a Guerra do Vietnã, a Guerra do Golfo, a Guerra do Kosovo, a Guerra do Afeganistão, a Guerra do Iraque, a Guerra da Líbia e a Guerra da Síria, abusando de sua hegemonia militar para abrir caminho para objetivos expansionistas. Nos últimos anos, o orçamento militar médio anual dos EUA excedeu 700 bilhões de dólares, representando 40% do total mundial, mais do que os 15 países por trás dele juntos. Os Estados Unidos têm cerca de 800 bases militares no exterior, com 173.000 soldados implantados em 159 países.
According to the book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were “spared” because the United States did not find them on the map.
◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019,” the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.
Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.
◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless.
The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.
The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as “pure looting.”
In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.
The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.
III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation
After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including “approval by 85 percent majority,” and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting “seigniorage” from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy.
◆ The United States exploits the world’s wealth with the help of “seigniorage.” It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.
◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon’s secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”
◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America’s strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.
◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America’s strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called “three lost decades.”
◆ America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population. “The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.
IV. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression
The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.
◆ The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly on technology.
In the 1980s, to contain the development of Japan’s semiconductor industry, the United States launched the “301” investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share.
◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept of national security, the United States mobilized state power to suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years.
The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China.
The United States has also practiced double standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United States was carried out.
◆ The United States solidifies its technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building small blocs on technology such as the “chips alliance” and “clean network,” the United States has put “democracy” and “human rights” labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude China’s 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the “5G clean path,” a plan designed to build technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect “cyber security.” The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its technological hegemony through technological alliances.
◆ The United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The list goes on.
U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the United States such as “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the United States is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that “do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules.”
V. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives
The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.
◆ The United States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows, publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.
There are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than 70 percent of the world’s market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.
◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself in “direct intervention,” but also in “media infiltration” and as “a trumpet for the world.” U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.
The U.S. government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks. Google often makes pages disappear.
O Departamento de Defesa dos EUA manipula as mídias sociais. Em dezembro de 2022, o The Intercept, um site investigativo independente dos EUA, revelou que, em julho de 2017, o oficial do Comando Central dos EUA, Nathaniel Kahler, instruiu a equipe de políticas públicas do Twitter a aumentar a presença de 52 contas em língua árabe em uma lista que ele enviou, seis das quais deveriam receber prioridade. Um dos seis foi dedicado a justificar os ataques de drones dos EUA no Iêmen, alegando que os ataques foram precisos e mataram apenas terroristas, não civis. Seguindo a diretiva de Kahler, o Twitter colocou essas contas em língua árabe em uma “lista branca” para amplificar certas mensagens.
◆ Os Estados Unidos praticam dois pesos e duas medidas em matéria de liberdade de imprensa. Ele brutalmente reprime e silencia a mídia de outros países por vários meios. Os Estados Unidos e a Europa barram a grande mídia russa, como o Russia Today e o Sputnik, de seus países. Plataformas como Twitter, Facebook e YouTube restringem abertamente as contas oficiais da Rússia. Netflix, Apple e Google removeram canais e aplicativos russos de seus serviços e lojas de aplicativos. Uma censura draconiana sem precedentes é imposta aos conteúdos relacionados à Rússia.
Os Estados Unidos abusam de sua hegemonia cultural para instigar a “evolução pacífica” nos países socialistas. Ele cria meios de comunicação e equipamentos culturais visando países socialistas. Ele despeja quantias impressionantes de fundos públicos em redes de rádio e TV para apoiar sua infiltração ideológica, e esses porta-vozes bombardeiam países socialistas em dezenas de idiomas com propaganda inflamatória dia e noite.
Os Estados Unidos usam a desinformação como uma lança para atacar outros países e construíram uma cadeia industrial em torno dela: há grupos e indivíduos inventando histórias e vendendo-as em todo o mundo para enganar a opinião pública com o apoio de recursos financeiros quase ilimitados.
Conclusão
Enquanto uma causa justa ganha seu amplo apoio campeão, uma causa injusta condena seu perseguidor a ser um pária. As práticas hegemônicas, dominadoras e intimidadoras de usar a força para intimidar os fracos, tirar dos outros pela força e subterfúgios, e jogar jogos de soma zero estão exercendo graves danos. As tendências históricas de paz, desenvolvimento, cooperação e benefício mútuo são imparáveis. Os Estados Unidos têm se sobreposto à verdade com seu poder e pisoteando a justiça para servir ao interesse próprio. Essas práticas hegemônicas unilaterais, egoístas e regressivas têm atraído críticas e oposição crescentes e intensas da comunidade internacional.
Os países precisam respeitar uns aos outros e tratar uns aos outros como iguais. Os grandes países devem comportar-se de uma forma condizente com o seu estatuto e assumir a liderança na prossecução de um novo modelo de relações Estado-a-Estado que inclua o diálogo e a parceria, e não o confronto ou a aliança. A China se opõe a todas as formas de hegemonismo e política de poder e rejeita a interferência nos assuntos internos de outros países. Os Estados Unidos devem realizar um exame de consciência sério. Deve examinar criticamente o que fez, deixar de lado sua arrogância e preconceito e abandonar suas práticas hegemônicas, dominadoras e intimidadoras.
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