by Zamir Awan for the Saker Blog
Currently, the biggest challenge faced by the world is Pandemic. Outbreak early this year has engulfed the whole world. Indeed, the COVID-19 is not too fatal, yet due to its highly contagious nature, it has impacted society adversely. It is a new virus, a lot of studies are going on, especially on its cure and vaccines. Yet, nothing is commercially available; all such R&D is at the laboratory level. Either it is stage one or two or any other advanced stage, yet it might take some time to make the vaccine available at a commercial scale for everybody to be benefitted.
The number of CVID-19 cases has exceeded 20 million, with a death toll of around 750,000. The economic impact is even more visible. And some of the countries are already slipped into recession, while few are almost near to collapse. Social distance has made everyday life more difficult, people are losing jobs, businesses are suffering, and some of the markets have been closed.
At this challenging moment, the whole world was looking toward the US as a global leader to rescue them. Developing countries and underdeveloped countries were more miserable and was expecting much more from the US. Even the developed nations and well-advanced countries were also expecting some kind of assistance or help from the US.
Unfortunatetely, the US was the worst-hit country in the world, with the highest number of Coronavirus cases and the death toll. It was the time when the US can prove its global leadership role. NATO allies, other friendly countries were in award position, when the US showed cold shoulders.
It is entirely right; every country should look after its own interest and must say his own country first. But for a leader, one has to take everyone else along with and protect everyone.
Acknowledging the US’s global leadership, just after World War II (WWII), by launching the Marshal Program aimed to rebuild war-torn Europe was a successful model. As a result, the US gained a leadership role. But during the last couple of decades, the US policies witnessed a deviation from Global responsibilities.
The US was leaving International organizations and treaties, one after another, ignoring its global obligations and escaping from global responsibilities gradually.
- In 1982, to maintain its maritime hegemony, the United States refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), of which it is still not a party. It has created an imbalance of power in the global maritime and vulnerability.
- In 1984, the United States formally withdrew from UNESCO, dissatisfied with the gradual erosion of its social control by developing countries. After returning to the Organization in 2003, it once again withdrew in 2017 on the so-called ground of saving funds and urging reform. UNESCO suffered a considerable loss in its routine functions. It has impacted the capabilities of the Organization adversely due to a shortage of funds.
- In 1985, the United States refused to recognize the compulsory jurisdiction of the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) after Nicaragua complained that US armed intervention violated its sovereignty. A message that the US was not sincere about global justice. As a matter of fact, the US was extensively involved in war-crimes and international terrorism and scared of convictions.
- In 1995, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and refused to pay arrears by claiming domestic budgetary constraints, damaging the global industrialization program. Yet increased its defense budget.
- The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol since 2001, saying it was not in its national interest to meet relevant environmental obligations. By withdrawing, the US denied its responsibility in protecting the global environment. It should be noted that damaging the environment is a severe collective crime with humanity.
- In 2001, the United States withdrew from the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance after failing to prevent discussion of Israeli military action against Palestinians. Today, what is happening in the US is also the result of these policies.
- In 2001, to strengthen its military advantage, the United States formally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972. However, it gave supremacy to the US but created an arms race world-wide, forcing other nations to compete in the US.
- In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, citing unfavorable terms for American soldiers, diplomats, and politicians. It was a message that the US did not feel globally obliged not to commit war crimes, espionage, the aggression of sovereign states, etc.
- In 2017, the United States announced its formal withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because it believed that multilateral trade agreements were not in its best interests and hindered its “America First” policy. Although the US is the largest economy of the world, it yet believes in unfair practices.
- In 2017, the US government announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, aimed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, believing that it could hinder economic development. An irrational approach and wrong decision again.
- In 2017, the United States withdrew from negotiations of the United Nations Global impact on Migration and cast votes against the UNGCM at the UN General Assembly.
- In 2018, even though the IAEA confirmed Iran’s fulfillment of its JCPOA commitment and that the United States had no clear evidence to show Iran conducted nuclear tests in breach of the deal, the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, a deal that has been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and re-imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran. This decision has damaged the US image adversely. Contaraily imposed irrational sanctions on Iran, making the lives of Iranian more miserable.
- In 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council, claiming it failed to protect human rights adequately. The current violence in the US may also be the outcome of this decision.
- In 2018, the United States withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes relating to the jurisdiction of the ICJ in order to avoid a Palestinian complaint filed legitimately to the ICJ. It has caused a strong wave of anti-American sentiments in the Arab world.
- In 2019, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty to develop short- and medium-range missiles without restraint. Again a wrong decision at wrong timings, pushing the world toward developing more lethal weapons.
- In 2020, under the pretext of alleged Russian violations of the Open Skies Treaty, the United States announced steps to exit the Treaty.
- In 2020, the US government, looking for scapegoats for its botched response to COVID-19, announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. It should be noted that the United States still owes more than $200 million in assessed contributions. Will the US pay this sum before going out? Exactly, when WHO needs to be strengthened, the US decision harmed the Organization’s capabilities.
Notably, the Trump-Administration has focused only on “America First,” leaving the rest of the world ignored. The Pandemic has exposed Trump-administration’s policies further. Europe was suffering from COVID-19 and expecting that the US may come up with some kind of help and rescue. But, unfortunately, this was not in the minds of the Trump-Administration.
If the United States tries to escape from its global responsibilities, it may no longer enjoy the status of global leadership. The gap created by the US may be filled-in by some other powers. Enjoy authority, but with responsibilities!
Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan.
Sure! The Outlaw US Empire is the Global Leader in lawbreaking and crimes against humanity and has violated the UN Charter and its own Constitution with impunity sine October 1945, and the rampage looks certain to continue regardless of who becomes president in November.
This article is wrong–dead wrong.
America is the still BY FAR the world’s leader in many important ways:
-COVID-19 deaths among its own people.
-Bombing other countries back to the Stone Age.
-Waging wars of aggression.
-Regime changing, destablization, or dismembering other nations … in the name of “Democracy and Freedom.”
-Economically sanctioning other nations, governments, or individuals who do not accept American leadership.
At last count, one-third of all nations on this planet are subject to American sanctions in one form or the other.
-Pushing media disinformation and demonization campaigns against any nation, group, or individuals who do not accept American leadership.
-Producing a political ruling class that is like the mutant offspring of the Nazi Third Reich, Reality TV, and the documentary Idiocracy.
For all these reasons, we can safely say that American is still Number One!
America First is alive and well!
America is a prime example of a kakistrocacy in action. Trump is a xenophobic imbecile, but in a country governed by morons this is unsurprising. America has now been parasitized by the ultimate leech, Israel, and slavishly follows every psychopathic command….to its own detriment. It’s finished as a country and is spiralling towards third-world status and embarassing oblivion
This short summary has left me a bit frustrated. Do we really have to get into the Covid1984 psyop again? As for withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol, I’m all for protecting the environment. But when the operating premise is a fiction (that man made co2 is the driving force) you have to realize there are other motives.
The professor may not have heard but Russia has already developed a vaccine for the killer virus which has a survival rate of over 99%. For most of the other agreements, well they would cramp the empire’s style as a butcher.
The numbers, the meassures taken, the narrative, the scare mongering is all ridicule.
About numbers just consider that annualy there are close to twenty million death from artheroesclerosis or annualy there are teen million deaths from cancer. Consider that many of those cases are preventable and nobody has banned known causes of those two highly mortal diseases.
Consider that yearly there are 1.3 million deaths from car related accidents.No car lock downs! Condider that during flu seasin 180 million get infected world wide with a virus which has a very similar mortality as such of covid. Consider that healthy people with a positive test are tagged as vehicles of transmision yet PCR tests according to his inventor Kary Mullis should be used as support and not as comfirmatory of an infectious disease.Now consider that economy is a fundamental activity that creates human goods and yields safer life. At the end is a producer of life.
Now how come we destroy the creator of life in order to “save” lives?
That’s quite the line of ExxonMobil talking points you got there.
Specifically, the survival rate is around 99.7%. So either the 20M or the 750,000 numbers are wrong (I suspect both are, since in the USA excess mortality is well below the numbers of covid victims in the media).
Compendium of 60+ studies follows (Infection fatality rate, or IFR, is the key number)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zC3kW1sMu0sjnT_vP1sh4zL0tF6fIHbA6fcG5RQdqSc/edit#gid=0
Note how strongly correlated IFR is with local vitamin D status. Mortality goes to zero at relatively low levels of vitamin D
https://borsche.de/res/Anschreiben_Covid-19_Vitamin_D_Merkel_EN.pdf
The letter to Angela Merkel makes some valid points, but shoots itself in the foot, by implying that Vitamin D is just a stop gap measure until the arrival of a vaccine.
Considering that a highly experimental, hardly tested vaccine, would be preferable to having good levels of Vitamin D is not too clever. This is all the more so, given that Covid-19 appears only to be lethal when its victim is about to die of something else.
Craig Mouldey
“This short summary has left me a bit frustrated. Do we really have to get into the Covid1984 psyop again?”
That was my exact reaction to.
I see the woke narrative worshippers already started the usual are you paid by “big oil” bullshit, but i guess that goes along with being a dissenter 😂 i am certainly used to it by now..
If the US embraces her true self – cold blooded genocidal pirate nation with an exceptional mindset – and does this unapologetically, the US remain no. 1
Even if China has more industry, and a bigger GDP, the Chinese still got the slave underdog mindset. They can’t and they won’t win against a determent US.
Q: Is the US a Global Leader Anymore?
A: Well, yes and no. Yes, the US is rabidly committed to parasitic misappropriation of other peoples’ natural resources and labour output by its worthless money and constant warmongering, and it can bully what passes for its ”allies” into submission fairly easily. But, no: the US is crumbling due to the stiffening resistance from without and the incurable rot of its entire fabric of society brought about by neoliberalism; further exacerbated by the pandemic, and the ”stature” of its Exceptional, Indispensable population.
How could possibly anybody put forward the proposal that people around the world would have to be paid to kill Americans?
“How could possibly anybody put forward the proposal that people around the world would have to be paid to kill Americans?”
LOL. Very true.
The United States has to bribe/pay people NOT to kill American stormtroopers.
In fact, that is one of the strategies that America has tried to deploy to pacify both the Iraqi and Afghani resistance, who have been fighting America’s imperial occupation of those two nations for decades.
Bribe them in the fervent hope that the Iraqis and Afghanis will stop planting IEDs and attacking America’s occupation forces.
The Professor states that at this challenging (pandemic) moment, the whole world was looking toward the US as a global leader to rescue them. Now I wonder how he came to know what the whole world wanted. Did the whole world mark a copy of their wish-list to the good professor?
China neither needed nor wanted the US to provide any global leadership on this matter. It managed and contained the problem as a model of efficiency and effectiveness. Neither am I aware of appeals for help from Russia. Ditto for Iran. South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia also managed well on their own. Even India, with its elites tilted towards America, is managing (albeit only with partial success) on its own. If anything, examples of success are to be found outside of the US, with Russia pioneering the development of a vaccine.
If you want to see failures in the fight against Covid, you don’t need to look far. Look at the camp-followers of the US and you will find your list of failures. Such is the fate of nations who seek leadership from outside!
Now I wonder how he came to know what the whole world wanted. Did the whole world mark a copy of their wish-list to the good professor?
The US itself claims to be the “indispensable nation”, the shining city on the hill, a light unto the world.
After hearing such pretentious boasting, other countries have a right to say, Prove it. Put up or shut up.
The US is not doing well.
”Now I wonder how he came to know what the whole world wanted. Did the whole world mark a copy of their wish-list to the good professor?”
Well, Nussiminen certainly did. And Nussiminen’s answer was this:
• Exceptional, indispensable, morbidly obese people do provide top-class leadership and must not on any grounds be considered unfit for leadership of any kind.
• ”Constitution this, amendment that” when coming from a gun-toting Exceptional and Indispensable person carries more wisdom, depth, and scientific accuracy than any other human has ever contributed — including Jesus Christ, Mahomet, Buddha, and even the sharpest of modern philosophers; to wit, BHL.
• The Exceptional and Indispensable morbidly obese people are blameless with regard to their health issues and should be compensated by hefty lawsuits against the Chinese state.
Fair enough?
Absolutely :)
” Is the US a Global Leader Anymore?”
It has been while that it was promoted to the Global Pariah.
All those withdrawals! US getting ready – perhaps unconsciously – for its upcoming USSR-style collapse, by off-loading all its commitments to civilisation.
The sooner this collapse happens the better. Covid-19, and the US ‘elites’s hopeless response to it, has accelerated the process. History suggests all empires collapse and vanish eventually. A process which will make – whatever comes next in N America – a better, more useful part of the world, just as the inheritor Russian Federation is an obvious improvement on the last days of the USSR, and a clear benefit to the world in its re-born form. Roll on the – imminent – collapse of the USA. As soon as possible!
I stopped reading when I found this word in the first sentence: “pandemic”.
The correct word is “pLandemic”; planned in the U$A. Expecting Uncle $cam to Lead the world to safety from his pLandemic is on a par with expecting Foxy Locksy to lead Chicken Licken, Goosey Loosey and friends to a safe haven.
I see an Anonymous post making the same point about the U$ being “still BY FAR the World’s Leader in COVID-19 deaths among its own people.”
The biggest problem with US is that gradually it became an entity representing the corporative and financial interest of companies registered there, but not the interests of it´s citizens. It is no more a nation state. It does not mean it is not mighty anymore. Those companies have often different objectives then it`s “subjects ” and with privatly owned media and different lobby groups it became unsustainable and is internationally loosing credibility. In PRC to the contrary the government holds control over corporations and with BRI it proves to be a better model. As a distanced observer I see US government as a puppet in hands of it´s cleptocrats.
Most emotionally balanced and perceptive comment in the thread, so far.
Privatization by traitors to the nation and humanity at large went to one extreme in the US and contrary to many vindictive folks here….has a good shot at being reversed as the startled Rip Van Winkles by the millions…awaken to the horrified realization that they have been in a TV trance……..for decades.
Yeah, I know, if they awaken sufficient to survive and actually serve a better role in the world ….y’all won’t like it one whit! BECAUSE: Your schaden-freude at their self-destruction MUST be fulfilled………..even if it destroys much of the world through nuclear exchanges…………in the process.
Meanwhile, China victimized by British ships bearing superior cannon for a Century of Humiliation…… rightly took advantage of those traitors’ offers to employ millions of Chinese and undercut oblivious middle class and blue collar Americans………………to emerge from the suffocation of Maoist Communism to industrialize in record time.
Now the question is, will they have the intelligence to avoid being cast in the new role of Empire Enforcer of Mind Control……and continue to evolve taking MORE of the positive lessons of reinvestment of surplus “Profits of the People”…....ie Chinese INDUSTRIAL CAPITAL on behalf of a Multi-Polar World of Sovereign Nations……….or submit to the role of power base for the Psychopath Tecnocrats?
I am optimistic ….and simultaneously cautious.
The US is a global leader for Poland. :)
…and the US can see the basest of their Polish jokes as being 100% corroborated.
In Poland, a math genius boasts outstanding skills in Roman numerals 😂
The U.S. is the global leader in making people worry that their family might be vaporized in the night by USA bombs.
Begs the question. Can the United States withdraw itself from planet earth? For once it may be doing the right thing.