Biden’s “off-script” remarks were the reflection of his frustrations and anguish with the situation.

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Azov Regiment Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

According to Lü, Putin can be seen as a thorn to Biden. It was Biden who played an important role as a foreign policy maker in Ukraine issues in 2014, but he didn’t achieve exactly what the US wanted. Now, the Ukraine crisis has again become a problem for Biden. “Now the US is in deep distress. It looks like the US has dominated public opinion, but in the battlefields it is Russia taking an upper hand. Besides, the US wishes to redeploy its strength to the Indo-Pacific, but it has to refocus on Europe politically and militarily. This isn’t what Biden wants,” Lü said.

The latest Grinnell College National Poll on March 23 showed a drop in Biden’s job approval to 34 percent, with 52 percent of Americans disapproving of his job performance and 14 percent being unsure. In contrast to Biden’s slide in approval ratings, Putin has seen his remain strong – an early March poll by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center revealed Russian public’s confidence in Putin rose to 79.6 percent. 

“The US has made eye-catching gestures internationally, but ordinary Americans don’t buy it,” Lü noted. Americans have just escaped from a quagmire that trapped them for 20 years, and they are now facing another one – one that could be even worse. 

The American people have to withstand soaring inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, but their government prefers to spend money on “supporting” Ukraine rather than on solving domestic problems. 

Biden’s hostility cannot be reversed: It seems that his ultimate goal is to topple another nuclear power and overthrow its leadership. Many are seriously worrying that the Ukraine crisis will get out of control and escalate into a nuclear war, given that both sides are becoming more ferocious. 

“Many fights start from quarrel. There can be a number of policy implications behind a name-calling remark, and the targeted party may want to be proactive to take an upper hand,” Lü said. 

After the Cold War, the US has fought many wars with countries incapable of air defense. However, Russia is not only capable of air defense; it also has the power to penetrate US’ air defense, Lü noted.

Will it be a shame for American politics if repeated “slips of the tongue” by the country’s top leader trigger a crisis that the American people cannot afford?

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

US President Joe Biden wrapped up his visit to Europe on Saturday. During his four-day trip, Biden engaged in intensive diplomatic events focusing on the Ukraine crisis. He attended summits of NATO, G7 and EU. However, after so many summits with the aim to strengthen the role of so-called trans-Atlantic alliance, no actual measure was put forward to promote peace and talks – not even a public statement.

In contrast, Biden motivated the enhancement of sanctions on Russia, striving to prevent his European allies from falling back on this issue. Besides, the joint statement, which demonstrates Washington’s stance, even took an aim at China, demanding that China cooperate with the West’s sanctions. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan previously set redlines. He told reporters that China and every significant economy should not take advantage of business opportunities created by sanctions, help Moscow evade export controls or process its banned financial transactions.

As the initiator of the Ukraine crisis, the US is trying to push the entire world into its huge trap. The US has lured and threatened developing countries including China, attempting to make the international community share the responsibilities and consequences of the crisis. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that no other country is obligated to pay the price for the crisis created by the US and that Washington is not qualified to set redlines for other countries.

During Biden’s trip to Europe, the US and the EU signed a historic agreement on?liquefied?natural gas, in a bid to reduce?Europe’s?reliance on Russian energy. But many Western media expressed pessimism about the deal because the US doesn’t have enough capacity to export more gas, so the deal will be largely symbolic. This is the strategic risk Washington is happy to take: It has only the ambition to create chaos but has no intent to clean up the mess. From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria, the US has left the world in too many messes.

After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the US has continued to escalate sanctions against Russia and coerce the world to choose sides, adding to the hardship of global economic recovery and causing undue damage to the livelihoods of all countries. People see that the US is turning into a deformed giant, with an arm of sanctions or even war used to suppress others becoming exceptionally developed, and the arm of peace and development becoming greatly atrophied and degenerated. This has led Washington to claim to oppose war while waging war on all fronts, and to claim to maintain peace while wantonly destroying it.

In the 1990s, former US diplomat George Kennan, known as the “father of containment,” warned that “expanding NATO would be the most fatal error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” If NATO’s expansion is the decision of politicians with a penchant for zero-sum games, then Washington has to face the reality that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Although the US has a muscular arm to suppress others, it is still facing an increasingly stretched dilemma, and it cannot weave a network of sanctions against Russia alone. It needs the firm support of its allies, as well as the broad cooperation of non-Western countries.

That’s why warning China not to support Russia has become a deliberately prominent issue in Washington, while pulling in its allies to reinforce sanctions against Russia. Thus, it continues to suppress China, which it considers its strategic rival, while expecting China to cooperate with it in sanctioning Russia. Of course, there is a deeper reason for this: The US would rather have a two-front war against China and Russia, lest China be given a strategic respite. There are waves of smears against China from the US to prevent it from staying out of this trouble.

The US has long sought enemies around the globe, and even if there is none, it creates one. We might remind Washington that the established?powers are often not defeated by emerging powers, but dragged down by the cost of maintaining hegemony. Recently, the US wanted to kick Russia out of the G20, but several countries have clearly expressed their opposition. Today’s world is no longer in the era when a few countries like the US can hoodwink the public; most countries will not join the “self-mutilating game” by helping the US maintain its hegemony.

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Editor’s Note:“This man cannot remain in power.” US President Joe Biden made this remark about Russian leader Vladimir Putin on March 26, 2022 during a speech he made in Poland. Though the White House had tried to explain away the utterance for the president, the real purpose of Washington was ultimately exposed: To bring down Russia, overthrow the Russian government, and maintain US hegemony.The Russia-Ukraine conflict is just the latest of many examples in which the US seeks its own geopolitical interests by intensifying conflicts in other countries or directly launching wars.

In order to seek global hegemony, the US has used many resources including political, economic, cultural, educational, and the manipulation of public opinion platforms, and has created turmoil around the world under the banner of “human rights,” “democracy,” and “freedom.”

During the past 240-plus years after it declared independence on July 4th, 1776, the US was not involved in any war for merely less than 20 years, according to a report released by the China Society for Human Rights Studies in May 2021. Incomplete statistics showed that from the end of WWII in 1945 to 2001, among the 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions globally, 201 were initiated by the US, accounting for 81 percent of the total number.

These wars have devastated the invaded countries, killed millions of civilians, and displaced tens of millions. Looking back at the history of US aggression and intervention, we can see that Washington is the driving force behind the turmoil and the source of the chaos in the world.

From provoking wars around the world to leading NATO’s eastward expansion, from imposing sanctions on “disobedient countries” to coercing other nations to pick sides, the US has acted like a “Cold War schemer,” and an “vampire” who creates “enemies” and make fortunes from pyres of war.

The Global Times is publishing a series of stories and cartoons to unveil how the US, in its superpower status, has been creating trouble in the world one crisis after another. This is the second installment.

Is America belligerent?

Is America belligerent? From a big data perspective, the answer is yes. Since World War II, almost every US president has had a “war of his own.”

In his speech to troops of the US Third Army in 1944, General George S. Patton had made the point very clear. “Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players, and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.”

“That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base,” the general said.

So why is the US always “willing to use troops” after World War II? The answer is that the history of the founding of the US and its expansion is through wars. From the very beginning, productivity and influence under coercive violence seemed to be a creed for the Americans.

After World War II, the US competed with the Soviet Union for global hegemony in the Cold War. Afterward, a wave of interventionism, wars, subversion, and infiltration were proliferated with only one end goal -to maintain its global hegemony.

For more than 200 years, the US has kept waging and participating in wars, and wars have also shaped the US.

Fight for hegemony

“The strategic intention of the US is to pursue hegemony. In other words, the US wants to seek absolute dominance. The US guides its behavior with a peculiar security concept, that is, the more the world outside the US resembles it, the more secure the American political elites feel,” Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

“The actual action derived from this concept is the endless expansion of the US around the world, and Americanization wherever it expands,” he said.

“Warfare has become an American tradition. Without wars, this country would not know what to do with itself. War is a label that defines American identity,” he said.

Taking advantage of internal conflicts in other countries is one of the most common ways that the US incites wars, said international relations experts and military observers. And the Korean War (1950-53) is a typical case to support this finding, they said.

In 1945, before Japan’s surrender, the US and the Soviet Union decided to carve up the Korean Peninsula into two occupation zones. The dividing line was widely known as the 38th Parallel. In this way, the originally united country of Korea was divided into two halves by the hegemony of the great powers.

After the defeat of Japan, the US and the Soviet Union quickly moved toward the “Cold War” period due to the need for an ideology and sphere of influence competition, and the fierce struggle for control of the Korean Peninsula became the most typical manifestation of the confrontation between the two camps.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out. The US quickly intervened and brought the war to the Yalu River. Today, when we look back on this history, it is not difficult to find that both North and South Korea were not willing to be divided by hegemony powers, which was the internal cause of the Korean War. US intervention was the important external cause of the war. Experts said that the history of the Korean War is the evil history of US intervention in other countries and the killing of civilians.

Rubble and trouble

Excluding those who are in a different camp is one of the drives for the US to provoke wars around the world. The former socialist Balkan state Yugoslavia was thus “dismembered” in US’ seek of hegemony.

Yugoslavia was once a target to be courted by the US-led West in the early years of the Cold War.

Given Yugoslavia’s geopolitical conflict with the Soviet Union and personal discord between Josip Broz (commonly known as Tito) and Joseph Stalin, the US saw an opportunity. As a result, the US gave Yugoslavia a large amount of economic aid, and some other Western countries opened the door to trade with Yugoslavia.
Yet America’s “gift” had a hefty price tag. As the prowess of Soviet Union waned in the 1980s, so too did Yugoslavia’s importance in America’s global strategy. Washington’s attitude toward a country that could no longer serve as a “strategic buffer” rapidly changed. What’s more, Yugoslavia’s socialist national policy and its location on the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean made it even more of a thorn in the eyes of the US.

Under a series of American actions including economic containment, internal ethnic conflicts incitement, and an ideological war, Yugoslavia fell into a state of division and civil war in the early 1990s. In the name of “human rights,” the US advocated for separatism of the republics, which made the situation worse.

In 1999, US-led NATO launched bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. During the 78-day military attack, 2,500 civilians were killed, among whom 79 were children, according to the Serbian government. The Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia was bombed and three Chinese journalists were killed, which has become an unremitting pain for Chinese people to this day.

Latin America – ‘Too close to the US, too far away from God’

The US has not only stirred up wars in East Asia, Middle East, and Europe, but has also done so in Latin America, which is viewed as its back yard. In fact, Washington has a history of always trying to take “absolute advantage” in Latin America. It would instigate a military coup or directly launch a military invasion in a Latin American country if anti-US sentiments develop there.

In 1983, a civil unrest broken out on the island of Grenada. Former deputy prime minister and pro-Soviet Union politician Bernard Coard became the country’s new leader. The US certainly could not put up with this.

US troops landed in Grenada in October 1983 and captured the airport in the capital St. George’s. In less than 10 days the US seized total control of Grenada, a country with a population of 110,000. They did not withdraw until a new pro-US government was established with Washington’s “assistance”.

Analysts deemed the US’ invasion of Grenada was in fact meant to be a show of strength to the Soviets and deter Cuba and Nicaragua where anti-US sentiment was growing.

Give peace a chance

During the Serbian football club Red Star’s game halftime at the Rajko Mitic stadium on March 18, 2022 Serbian fans raised huge banners listing US-led NATO military interventions in past decades.

One of the banners displayed the Beatles songwriter John Lennon’s anti-war song: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
Five other banners listed in smaller characters the countries that the US and NATO have directly or indirectly been involved in with regards to invasions. For more than 60 years, behind every war and turmoil in the world, one can almost always be assured to find the star spangled banner.

Although the US always tried to defend its invasions with flimsy excuses, the history has proven its bellicosity. A warfare-addicted US has become the biggest threat to global peace and stability.

One of the characteristics of the US launching a war is to weave a set of discourse, such as democracy and to create a public opinion atmosphere. “We have seen too many of these. This high hat and moralistic gaslighting cannot hide the nature of the US’ foreign aggression, belligerence, crisis creation, and chaos,” Li said.

Next Up:

In the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, arms dealers made a fortune in war and financial predators took the opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Moreover, in the US, there is a group of “politicians, experts, or think tanks” who live by creating imaginary enemies and attacking Russia or China. These warmongers are “vampires” feeding on the bloody turbulence in other countries. In our next story, we will reveal the nature of the US’ national military-industrial complex.

NATO held an emergency summit on Thursday to discuss the Ukraine situation and other issues. Just one day earlier, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Western leaders will “spend a significant amount of time talking about China.” He framed China as providing Russia with political support “by spreading blatant lies and disinformation,” and “allies are concerned that China could provide material support for the Russian invasion.” These announcements are basically consistent with the summit statement on Thursday. When peddling the lies which have confused black and white, Stoltenberg’s face skin might be thicker than the Berlin Wall. Is NATO, the biggest promoter of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in any way qualified to point a finger at China, which has been facilitating dialogue for peace from the very beginning?China’s stance on the Ukraine crisis is very clear – starting from the merits of the matter itself, making independent judgment, upholding international laws and the universally recognized basic norms of international relations, insisting on acting in accordance with the UN Charter, and advocating a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable concept of security. Compared with the US and NATO, which have been constantly handing knives to the conflict zone, China’s attitude is truly responsible. Stoltenberg has kept saying that he hoped to “find a peaceful way to end this war as soon as possible,” yet revealed at the same press conference that there would be “major increases to NATO’s forces in the eastern part of the Alliance.” After the summit, NATO announced that it will provide more military support to Ukraine and that member countries will invest more in defense. Is that NATO’s understanding of “a peaceful way?” The fact is that NATO needs the war more than anyone else. After the Cold War, the dawn of peace that once appeared in Europe turned into an existential crisis for it. NATO, which should have ended long ago, is relying on the fear on the European continent and deliberately creating crises to prolong its life. 

In the face of the Ukraine crisis, most major countries, including India, Brazil, as well as most countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and other regions, have taken an objective and fair position. These countries have almost two-thirds of the world’s population. Their attitude is the mainstream posture of the international community.

But why did Stoltenberg mention only China? Simple as it is: NATO, which has long been considered “brain dead,” needs to find a life-saving ventilator, as relying on the oxygen brought about by creating a “Russophobia” is increasingly insufficient. It fears it will expire at any time without being “intubated.”

This is not the first time that NATO intended to exploit China. Stoltenberg declared last year that NATO would expand its focus to counter a rising China. As a product of the Cold War, NATO pursued exclusive collective security, engaged in bloc politics and camp rivalry, and now it even reduced to a tool for the US to maintain hegemony. NATO repeatedly mentioned China recently, proving that it is nothing more than a machine for the implementation of the US’ global will, which disparages Europe as a whole and runs counter to its pursuit of independence and autonomy, as well as kidnaps Europe’s common security. 

Serbian football fans at a recent UEFA Europa League match in Belgrade held up banners listing US/NATO interventions in recent decades to countries including Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Congo, Nicaragua, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. It needs to be emphasized here that the Chinese will never forget May 9, 1999, when the US-led NATO brazenly attacked the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia with missiles, resulting in the death of three Chinese journalists and many injuries. NATO still owes a blood debt to the Chinese people!

As long as NATO exists, there will be no day of peace in Europe and in the world. Former CIA director David Petraeus proudly said that the Russia-Ukraine conflict “is to make NATO great again.” However, French President Emmanuel Macron said the conflict gave NATO an electric shock. But he refused to withdraw his “brain dead” comment. Granted, an emergency aid may boost NATO’s heartbeat for a while, but it will never cure the bloc’s severe illness. It would be only daydreaming to seek an elixir of life by manipulating China-related issues.

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GT Voice: China will respond firmly, if US hurts Chinese firms over Russia as threatened

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Illustration: Liu Rui/GT