Tag: American Exceptionalism

American Double Standards

Or in other words the American hypocritical approach to the world around us.

Hypocritical?

Yes, we profess a policy of equality, freedom and democracy but our actions have been anything but….

Here’s a thought that means nothing…..

“If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us”. – Chief Prosecutor, Jackson, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

Americans have a double standard and that is what is American Exceptionalism…..

Since the foundation of the USA about 250 years ago, Americans have seen themselves as the savior of mankind and as the unchallenged leader of the “free world”. Since 1798 the USA has undertaken 469 military interventions. 251 of these interventions alone were undertaken over a 30 year period since 1991[i]. Common to almost all of those interventions is that they were carried out from a high moral position, often with altruistic undertones. The USA perceives itself as a force of good directed by God himself against the evils of the world. The US armed forces intervene from principles of a freedom agenda. Most recently we have seen this during the “liberation” of the Iraqi people from the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein. In the name of freedom the US armed forces aimed at introducing the first democratic state in the middle east, according to deputy secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz. However, actions taken by the USA are often in direct contradiction to what it dictates others to do. The USA urges nations to adhere to the Universal Human Rights Principles, while the CIA snatches terror suspects in foreign countries and submits them to torture in secret places or as they did in the prison in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where the US military and CIA hired mercenaries from such countries as South Africa and Serbia to carry out their dirty work.

Normally such outright conflict between declared policies, built on humanitarian and democratic values on one hand and on the other hand actions which violate these very same values would be met with disrespect and criticism. However, this is not the case when the offender is the USA. Europeans and allies usually meet such American behavior with silence and at best with understanding and support. There is a general acceptance among Western allies that the USA is in its good right to do whatever, it considers best for the USA, even when the implication is that the behavior in question conflicts with internationally agreed-upon conventions. This is referred to as American Exceptionalism. Why does shifting American governments believe that it is not be obliged to follow international conventions, sometimes even ratified by its government, as in the case of the International Human Rights Convention and the Geneva Convention? Why does the US government believe that international commitments are less relevant to it than to other countries? Curiously, and to mislead the public, the official USA has invented a particular vocabulary to conceal its crimes. The bigotry practiced by the Americans in international diplomacy, is also obvious in the use of new terms for old misdeeds. Thus torture is referred to as ‘enhanced interrogation’, and preventive wars are called ‘anticipatory self-defense’.

An Exceptional Nation: American Double Standards

Remember when you were a kid and your father told you to ‘do as I say not as I do’?

That should be the motto of the US.

Biden’s words on foreign policy are indicative of this situation……

The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the presidency, centering on the destruction of American democracy if elected, and secondly, a positive domestic record of the Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs.

What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so from Democratic Party advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of foreign policy, only a deafening silence. It is as if the leadership of the Democratic Party wants the voting public to forget that there is a world out there beyond national boundaries. And it has good reasons to adopt this evasive approach, especially in an election year.

And yet this national posture seems strange as the US has so heavily invested in military capabilities to secure its global dominance in the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago.  And as a consequence, finds itself currently engaged controversially in the wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza. It appears that even Biden is reluctant to claim credit in national settings for US support of Israel and Ukraine, and prefers to speak in generalities about the greatness of America as a country whose future is bright except to the extent dimmed by the threat advent of Trump and Trumpism. This tendency to ignore the world should be more troubling to American voters than even Biden’s refusal to leave the presidential stage in light of his thinly deniable disabilities of age and mental health that have put his 2024 candidacy in peril. Such an evasive pattern gives voice to absurdly grandiose, yet distorting, assessments of the present broad political situation.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/09/critiquing-bidens-worldview-democratic-party-tactics-and-americas-destiny/

We could do so much better….but will we?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

American Hegemony

I guess the best place to start is to define the word ‘hegemony’ for those not sure of what it actually means…..

Hegemony comes from the Greek word hēgemonía, which means leadership and rule. In international relations, hegemony refers to the ability of an actor with overwhelming capability to shape the international system through both coercive and non-coercive means. Usually this actor is understood to be a single state, such as Great Britain in the 19th century or the United States in the 20th and 21st century. However, it could also refer to the dominance of a cohesive political community with external decision-making power, such as the European Union. Hegemony is distinct from Empire because a hegemonic power rules by influencing other states rather than by controlling them or their territory. Unipolarity refers to the distribution of military capabilities, whereas hegemony also refers to economic, social, and cultural power. The literature on hegemony tries to explain the United States’ role in the international system as a function of its privileged position within the system. Some scholars also see hegemony as an institutionalized coalition of powerful and wealthy states. Central questions to the debate are whether a hegemonic actor is well placed to shape the system, what strategies hegemonic powers use to define the system, if there are particular costs and benefits associated with exercising hegemonic influence, if other states gain or lose from hegemony, and under what conditions hegemonic powers endure.

With that in the rear-view mirror….let us continue…..

The US has been the main mover and shaker on the international scene since WW2 and the start of the “Red Menace”…..but recently that influence is starting to wane.

American hegemony is now on life support. Intensive care specialists are still scurrying about trying to resuscitate the patient. Family and friends are saying he’s still putting up a fight. However, the undertakers of this dying order have already arrived, and are standing just outside the door: one is named Russia, and the other China. When the obituary is read we will learn that the deceased is survived by an older cousin representing a different order – balance of power realism.

As John Mearsheimer observed, the unipolar moment after the fall of the former Soviet Union was an absolutely unique period of history. At that moment, and for the next 30 years, America was the only superpower left standing. Francis Fukuyama’s vision of democratizing the world proved to be an irresistible temptation for Western foreign policy elites. So, the evangelists of this new world order set out to spread democracy throughout Eastern Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

They used the existing architecture of cold war institutions like the UN, NATO, the EC, the WB, IMF, and WTO to spread liberal values, and to “addict people to capitalism.” Blinded by their own idealism, they couldn’t imagine anyone would reject such a generous offer. After all, as President George W. Bush often boasted, “Freedom is in the heart of every individual.” In other words, given the opportunity everyone would naturally choose to be free. Of course, this idea is an echo from President Wilson’s dictum, “The world must be made safe for democracy [emphasis mine].”

American Hegemony and the Politics of Provocation

After WW2 the US and its allies wanted the world to be based on the ‘rule of law’….but since those ‘glory days’ the US has moved further and further away from that high and noble goal.

The piece begins with a brief recitation of the origins and importance of self-determination and state sovereignty to the international system. This is immediately followed by a claim on behalf of the “coalition of democracies” to a right to violate these principles more or less at will.

This coalition, Spencer-Churchill writes, has “legally and morally valid justifications for intervention in a foreign country” first, “when there is a dire security threat that emerges within its sphere of influence” and second, “because liberal democracies have an unprecedented understanding of the world population’s aspirations for human rights-based rule of law and innovation-based prosperity for middle-income countries.” The policies of liberal democracies, he asserts “are moving in concert with the broader direction of history.” The citation for this last statement is a link to a brief summary of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History.”

Why US hegemony is incompatible with a ‘rules-based international order’

How will this slide in principles end?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is American Exceptionalism Dying?

American Exceptionalism?

Where on Earth did that term come from?

(Pause for the Google machine to engage)

It was first used 150 years ago by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville (“There is something about Americans that is exceptional”)…..

I too have written about this situation several times as well…..

https://lobotero.com/2015/03/06/the-real-american-exceptionalism-the-unz-review/

https://lobotero.com/2016/06/09/he-doesnt-believe-in-american-exceptionalism/

https://lobotero.com/2017/02/28/american-exceptionalism-and-the-beat-goes-on/

As a teacher I get to read grad students papers and I found a recent one interesting about the term American Exceptionalism…..

The romantic notion of American exceptionalism undermines the effectiveness of US foreign policy, and clinging to this outdated notion harms specific areas of international cooperation. It should by now be clear that we aren’t special, and if we run foreign policy on deluded notions and poorly-earned arrogance it will only cause harm to those forming useful coalitions and partnerships. For example, on climate change, hubris will make a new administration focus on shaming other countries, when a show of some level of stability and making real changes domestically would go a long way towards real leadership.

Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term for the U.S. over 150 years ago (“The position of the Americans is…quite exceptional”). In a much less oft quoted sentence in that same paragraph, de Tocqueville goes on to say, “Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit…seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts…” And yet this notion lingers, not only in political language and symbols, but at the core of foreign policy formulation

Opinion – Eulogy for American Exceptionalism

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

American Exceptionalism And The Beat Goes On

An interesting topic…..go to the streets and ask any 10 people the definition of American Exceptionalism and I would wager you would get 10 different answers.

Some Americans love the idea but few have any idea what that idea is all about.  The American Conservative has issued an article……

One of the more tedious arguments from hawks over the last eight years is that the U.S. “retreated” under Obama. This was always false, and there was no real “retreat” from the world. Nonetheless, the lie became a habit and it has since hardened into conventional D.C. wisdom. Obama didn’t “retreat” from internationalism, but the purpose in promoting this falsehood was to identify internationalism with extremely meddlesome interventionism and to treat everything else as the rejection of internationalism. This nonsense made for a somewhat useful talking point so long as hawks didn’t get too specific about what they meant, but when forced to describe what Obama’s “retreat” was they had to acknowledge that they meant that he didn’t start or escalate enough wars to their satisfaction. According to them, Obama’s big failing is that he didn’t involve the U.S. enough in the killing of Syrians. To put it mildly, that is an odd understanding of what internationalism means.

Source: ‘American Exceptionalism’ and Our Warped Foreign Policy ‘Idealists’ | The American Conservative

Then we have the Trump mantra of America First…..,but if he is successful could there be consequences?

Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed for the first time that China should take the lead in shaping the “new world order” and safeguarding international security, one of the latest moves putting him in stark contrast to Donald Trump and the US president’s “America First” policy.

Xi had on numerous occasions called for China to play an important part in building the new world order. But during a Feb. 17 national security seminar in Beijing, he indicated China should “guide” the international community in the effort. A Feb. 20 commentary (link in Chinese) by the Chinese Communist Party’s central party school, which trains officials, noted the distinction. It has since been widely shared by state-controlled media.

Source: Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to lead the “new world order” — Quartz

I love foreign policy and this situation needs observing closely….the fate of this globe could be the balance……

Thoughts?