American arrogance amid Ukraine crisis

America’s global hegemony or liberal international order appears to be shaking

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States in the 1990s reconsolidated strength and expanded hegemony across the world. Since then, America has been manipulating its economic and military prowess to assert influence and monopolise the planet earth through the so-called ‘new world order’.

The US hoped the doctrine would allow the country to sustain world dominance, not realising that strategy could mask a decline too. Same was true when Washington, between 1997 and 2009, enrolled more than a dozen countries into its orbit under the NATO banner. But the Treaty’s open-door policy lost appeal as just Montenegro and North Macedonia joined the military alliance through the next decade.

Before the first Gulf war, Washington assured that Baghdad had no interest in Arab-Arab conflicts including Iraq’s border dispute with Kuwait, emboldening Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to invade the neighbouring emirate. To make NATO relevant internationally, the Bush Sr administration backtracked once Iraq seized Kuwait and distorted facts to justify NATO’s military campaign.

It leaked reports about Iraqi military buildup on the borders of Saudi Arabia and drew analogy of Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait to Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland. Throughout the war, President George HW Bush rebranded him as “Hitler revisited” and used phrases such as “blitzkrieg fashion” and “Death’s Head regiments” for the Iraqi forces. The Pentagon scrutinised media reports under the aegis of national security before release.

A couple of Soviet satellite images subsequently exposed the “pretty serious fib” that Iraqi troops were amassing near the Saudi borders to attack on world’s major oil fields and make global industrial economies hostage. The Middle East watchers largely agreed Hussein’s invasion had roots in historical grievances and urged the Iraqi president to refuse accepting the Britishdrawn lines after World War I to virtually cut Iraq off from the Gulf.

In the second Gulf war, the US “murdered” the truth again, claiming Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Before and after incursion in Iraq, nothing was found either in more than 70 UN inspections or US military searches. Certainly, the US and NATO had the choice to avoid a war; they decided to launch a military offensive on Baghdad in violation of the UN Charter and international law.

The approach “changed Russia”. In 1993, the Kremlin said NATO’s eastward expansion breached the spirit of the 1990 treaty and labeled it a “betrayal”. A vast majority of the Russians on both occasions — when NATO bombarded Moscow’s ally Yugoslavia in 1999 and the Kremlin deployed troops to Crimea in 2014 — backed their government’s claims that America was sparking the conflicts through behind-the-scenes meddling.

Six years onward, in 1997, Moscow questioned Washington’s “double dealing” and initiated a bareknuckle diplomatic battle with its cold war rival a decade later. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly derided the US for fanning conflicts the world over and threatening his country through new missile shield programmes in Poland and the Czech Republic. “One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

Russian media isn’t the odd one out that blames the US for prying Ukrainians to deflect attention from intensifying internal issues including skyrocketing inflation, shrill racism, soaring crime rates, organised shoplifting sprees, vaccine protests, cultural battles on transgender rights, political intolerance, broken family system, increasing suicides, drug dependency and presidential sarcasm.

Western observers too consider the US and NATO arrogant expansionist policy and interference in Ukrainian domestic politics during 2013 and 2014 is behind Moscow’s invasion of Kyiv. The belief — American great empire has waned due to political turbulence at home, entered a period of decline and faces existential challenge in East Asia — is gaining traction in the West. Americans after the Capitol riots fret their country is “falling apart”.

America’s global hegemony or liberal international order — resting on three pillars: economic strength, military might and the soft power of cultural dominance — appears to be shaking over the administration’s myopic foreign policy to spike tensions in other parts of the world. The flippant approach has contracted America’s share of global income with China making a “worldaltering shift”, sharply reduced ability to deter or defeat opponents and decayed culture. McKinney & Company’s analysis, noting Beijing accounted for 50% of the growth in net worth or wealth between 2000 and 2020, describes the US is losing ground globally.

From leading to opposing aggressions, US history is marked by double standards. As the White House has sought global nations to row behind Washington over nebulous security threats, it lacks the moral ethos to call out Russia’s military action in Ukraine and champion peace. Before the invasion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened Putin with Hitler; many countries don’t agree as they watch to protect their interests with one of the biggest arms and energy suppliers.

Over the years, the US has been using sanctions as a leverage to round up Russian and other world economies. Washington still believes these economic tactics can force Moscow to retreat from Kyiv. This may not since Russia has successfully reordered its economy to cope with the restrictions swiped in the aftermath of Crimea annexation. On the other hand America’s response against the Kremlin has already reached the maximum so the only edge is wearing thin too.

Although the second round of talks between Kyiv and Moscow didn’t bring any major breakthrough, it wasn’t expected to. Still negotiations — as both sides reached a consensus to establish humanitarian corridors, “possible temporary ceasefire during evacuations”, and agreed to meet again — should help to chop the boiling temperature and usher the way for peace and stability.

The White House is watching the proceedings in Ukraine from the sidelines because of a messy US past that has been fraught with uninterrupted invasions, seriously limiting the superpower’s capability to intervene in a global peace crisis. Under accelerating trend of the American decline, arrogance seems to be the Hobson’s Choice for Biden to keep “(once) the headquarters of the world” relevant on a standoff, which really matters for the only living planet in the universe over threats of a World War III.