A 2018 Pew Research Center report reveals that the majority of countries in the world prefer the United States (US) as the world leader over China, owing to the former’s ideological stance.
This report illustrated the widespread belief in Pax Americana, a state of “relative international peace” led by the hegemonic power of the US.
Mistrust of China is driven by concerns regarding its human rights record, neocolonial tendencies, despotic foreign interventions, absence of free and fair elections, meddling in foreign elections, and currency manipulation.
However, the mythical nature of Pax Americana raises the question of whether the US really performs better along any of those parameters.
If the world must have a superpower, is it really better off with the US rather than China?
Human rights activists and world leaders point to the brutal silencing of protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989; continued arrests and persecution of disestablishmentarian elements; removal of human rights provisions from United Nations Resolutions and elimination of the UN Secretary General’s human rights cell; abuse of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang; and media censorship.
While these criticisms are merited, does the US genuinely have a better human rights record?
The US is built on the bedrock of brutal land theft from Indigenous populations and enslavement of African-Americans, the repercussions of which are still felt to this day.
Both Native American and African-American populations have disproprortionately high rates of poverty and suicide, low rates of gradauation, and lower life expectancies. Black Americans are discriminated against within US legislative, judicial, executive, criminal justice, and societal frameworks. They form a disproportionate percentage of prison populations, and are more likely to be incarcerated–or given longer sentences–for the same crimes as their white counterparts.
Over the last 40 years, the US has also built the world’s largest immigrant detention centre along its southern border with Mexico. Some individuals have been held there for years; sexual and physical abuse is rampant inside these overcrowded centres, and access to hygiene or medical care is limited. Under President Trump, these conditions have only worsened, with children now being separated from their families, placed in standing-room-only cells, and not being provided hot meals.
These human rights abuses aren’t limited to US borders, either. The country and its soldiers have committed unspeakable atrocities across the globe. These include but are not limited to the torture and killing of prisoners (and civilians in incidents like the My Lai Massacre) in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s; similar violations in the Wars on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century–both inside and outside torture chambers like the Abhu Ghraib prison; and drone strikes in Pakistan, which have resulted in 10-20% civilian casualties.
The US’ human rights violations are thus less overt under systemic discrimination, while its foreign policy ‘mishaps’ are excused by its sheer economic and military might. Conversely, China’s human rights record is used to justify its unsuitability as a leader of peacekeeping.
Likewise, China is criticized for its neocolonial aspirations in Africa, where it has seized the Mombasa port in Kenya over unpaid loans and signed a deal to build roads and bridges in exchange for a bauxite ore in the Ghanaian rainforest, among other such deals.
However, the US is one of the founding fathers of neocolonialist capitalist plunder.
For example, following Hugo Chavez’s nationalization of Venezuela’s oil reserves, which reduced the profits of American oil companies, the US undermined the leadership of both current President Nicolas Maduro and former President Chavez. In 2013, three US diplomats were ordered to leave the country upon discovery that they had held meetings with opposition leaders, in which they urged them to “sabotage the electrical grid” in order to derail the economy. In 2019, Trump formally recognized the opposition leader Juan Guaido as the president.
Similarly, the 2003 Iraq War is argued to have been driven by Saddam Hussein’s nationalization of Iraqi oil reserves. Today, the country’s oil industry is privatized and controlled by foreign firms such as Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell, clearly illustrating the US’ underlying capitalistic motives.
Alongside its neocolonial motivations, China is also maligned for being on the ‘wrong side of history’ in its foreign interventions, from its support for the Soviet Union and North Korea in the Korean War, to its support of North Vietnam and the Vietcong against the US in the Vietnam War.
This narrative is propelled by positioning the US’ stance on geopolitical issues as the norm, thus making any deviations from this immoral. Modern American history is draped in the bloodied flags of the nations in which it has militarily intervened, decade after decade.
In the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1954-1975, the United States aimed to topple North Vietnamese Communists. It is estimated that the United States dropped “three times as many tons of bombs” as the Allies dropped in the entire Second World War. Yet, after two decades, the Communist forces emerged victorious atop a pile of over 1.3 million bodies.
Likewise, the war in Cambodia ended in 1975 with Communist Khmer Rouge forces taking control of Phnomh Penh, despite indiscriminate bombing by the US that resulted in 50,000-150,000 civilian casualties.
Alongside the vast civilian casualties in US military interventions, the larger question is whether they have even worked. The US has been unable to significantly influence Iranian foreign policy despite years of military and diplomatic engagements; it merely watched as Saddam Hussein violently quashed Kurdish and Shia uprisings following the supposed American victory in the Gulf War; and it has failed to curb the rise of Hezbollah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and now ISIS.
Last year was the “bloodiest year” for Afghani civilians since the War on Terror began; and President Trump is now attempting to sign a peace deal with the Taliban, the very group the US set out to defeat at the beginning of the conflict.
That China hasn’t been on the right side of history could be a valid claim, but does it mean anything coming from the US?
China is also accused of not holding free and fair elections in its one party system, where only members of the Communist Party have the right to contest elections, and of meddling in the politics of Taiwan and Hong Kong by planting pro-China candidates.
Though perhaps not to the same degree, can the US really be said to be any different in this regard?
Various reports have corroborated claims of Russian interference in the previous US presidential election, in which they undermined the campaign of Hillary Clinton and bolstered that of Donald Trump through multiple Russian state-run social media pages. Additionally, various Russian officials offered business opportunities and damaging information on Hillary Clinton to Trump, clearly indicating electoral malpractice and conflicts of interest.
Furthermore, the US has a long history of attempted and successful meddling in foreign elections and leadership structures by supporting coups or actively usurping incumbent leaders: Syria in 1949, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, Brazil in 1964, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976, Pakistan in 1977, Chad in 1982, Iraq in 1996, Afghanistan since 2001, Iraq again in 2003, and Syria since 2011, to name but a few instances.
Lastly, China is accused of manipulating its currency to make its exports cheaper by pegging its currency to the value of the US dollar, which is described as a predatory policy predicated on dumping artificially cheap goods and services across the globe.
Yet, similar policies are employed in the United States. For instance, farmers form roughly 2% of the US population, and contribute just 1% to its GDP. However, the US is the world’s largest exporter of food, largest corn producer, third-largest wheat producer, fifth-largest potato producer, tenth-largest sugarcane producer, and twelfth-largest rice producer. The agricultural industry is propped up by $25 billion in annual government subsidies, which artificially reduce the price of US agricultural produce and make it more competitive in the global market.
While China’s currency manipulation is deemed a predatory trade policy, the US’ trade barriers are largely ignored in comparison.
Thus, the United States’ human rights record, neocolonial practices, foreign interventions, electoral processes, influence on foreign elections, and trade policies are equally as egregious as China’s.
However, the deeply entrenched bias towards Western democracies has perpetuated and established the myth of Pax Americana.
The world might not be in better hands if China were the world’s superpower, but is it in good hands to begin with with the US? If this is an era of relative international peace, one shudders to think what an era of relative international conflict would look like under a covetous and violent regime like the US.
Is The World Really Better Off With The United States As Its Leader?
The United States falls short on all the parameters that it imposes on other countries.
December 11, 2019
IMAGE SOURCE: AFPUS President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping