Guide
In recent years, in order to curb China's rise, the United States has regained the banner of value diplomacy, using ideology to co-opt and coerce the West to suppress China. However, on the one hand, the United States is seriously divided internally, and on the other hand, it continues to pursue a hegemonic strategy and coercive diplomacy abroad, and its hypocritical image of "democracy" is increasingly collapsing. The Cold War mentality and behavior of the US side have subverted the endogenous logic of the world's political economy, endangered the overall situation of world peace and development, and is a historical reversal of the trend of globalization.
Author: Zou Zhibo, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
In recent years, especially since Biden came to power, the United States has once again raised and held high the banner of ideology and promoted value diplomacy to the outside world. Today, in the 21 st century, the United States has pursued value diplomacy in the Cold War method, which has a profound background of the times and US strategic considerations, which poses a major challenge to world peace and development.
hypocrisy
"Right for oneself and then right for others". From the perspective of international political logic, the qualification and capital to promote value diplomacy are the "exemplary" force of the country in terms of values. However, America's own image of "democracy" is crumbling, a common perception around the world, including the United States itself and the West.
In recent years, the Political Polarization, Economic Hollowing, and Social Differentiation in the United States have become increasingly serious, and the "democratic" system in the United States has been continuously eroded and developed in the direction of extreme and tyranny. From the mistreatment of prisoners to the violent expulsion of immigrants, from the polar confrontation of gun control to the vicious struggle after the introduction of the "abortion" case, from the black Floyd being "kneeled to death" by white policemen, to the riots that supported Trump's "King's Army" to storm Capitol Hill, all reflect the reality of the collapse of the "democratic" system in the United States. The United States and Western countries are losing faith in American-style "democracy."
Image source: Xinhua News Agency
Thomas Dixon, a Canadian scholar who studies violent conflict, wrote in The Globe and Mail: "By 2025, American democracy may collapse. Martin Wolfe, a commentator at the Financial Times, also said: "The United States is accelerating its transformation from a democracy to a dictatorship, and by 2024, this process may be irreversible." Some American scholars also pessimistically believe that in the next three or four years, the United States is likely to have large-scale violent conflicts, the collapse of the federal government, and the division of the country into a confrontational red and blue camp. Even Biden mentioned in his speech that leaders of more than 140 countries have asked him in the past year: "Where is American democracy?" ”
At the same time, the image of the United States as "democratic" to the outside world is also collapsing. The hasty withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the abandonment of a decaying Afghanistan is a portrayal of the fact that the United States' pursuit of "democracy" has become a global laughingstock. The United States has always pursued a hegemonic strategy with foreign countries, adhered to a hegemonic style, and carried out bullying behavior; now, in order to curb China's development and rise, it is politically forcing other countries to "choose sides and take sides" and vigorously engage in coercive diplomacy economically. What face does the United States have in the world to talk about "democracy" and what capital does it have to promote value diplomacy? The United States pursues values diplomacy with great hypocrisy.
Image source: China Daily
Motivation
With the image of "democracy" at home and abroad increasingly collapsing, why is the United States regaining the banner of value diplomacy? This is something that the United States has its strategic considerations under the background of the current era.
Safeguarding world hegemony is a global strategy that the United States has consistently pursued since World War II, but in the context of the current century-long changes in the world, the United States is facing two major challenges. The first challenge is China's development and rise, which is the biggest impact on its hegemony. China's rise has the significance of changing the world pattern and challenging the hegemony of the United States, so making every effort to contain and combat China's rise has become the primary foreign strategic goal of the United States. The second challenge is the weakening of U.S. control over the system of allies, which has also affected U.S. supremacy. Due to the decline of its own hard power and soft power, the leadership and dominance of the United States over Western countries have shown a weakening trend, especially during the Trump period. The ally system is an important tool for the United States to maintain its "leadership" position in the world, and its weakening is also an important manifestation of the United States' loss of dominance over the world.
The United States realizes that it is no longer possible to stop China's development and rise on its own, and that only by uniting with its allies and partners to confront and besiege China can it achieve its goals. In the case of its own decline in power, only ideology can become the main and even only grasp of the United States to co-opt and coerce Western countries to deal with China, because values are still the greatest common denominator and political accuracy of the Western world. At the same time, holding high the banner of ideology and promoting value diplomacy can also increase the cohesion of the Western world, stop the weakening trend of the allied system, and enhance the leadership of the United States over the Western world.
Image source: China Daily
Consequences
Today, in the 21 st century, the United States has once again pursued value diplomacy with the Cold War mentality and methods, which has brought serious consequences to the overall situation of world peace and development, and is a move to reverse the tide of history and go against the trend of the times.
The first is to trigger confrontation and divide the world. Under the temptation and coercion of the United States, the Western countries have shown a posture of obeying the will of the United States and confronting China and Russia. The United States takes values as the banner and draws a line with the so-called "democracy" to promote the construction of exclusive organizations such as technology alliances, semiconductor alliances, and supply chain alliances, in an attempt to make the West "decouple" and "break the chain" with China economically and technologically, so as to curb China's development and rise.
Western countries have become more and more radical in interfering in China's internal affairs such as Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the ideological confrontation between China and the West has escalated significantly. The United States has successfully promoted the Ukraine crisis in Europe, provoked the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and built a Cold War-style confrontation pattern. The so-called "democracy versus autocracy" value diplomacy of the United States has pushed up the confrontation between major powers and threatened to re-slide the world into the Cold War.
Image source: Xinhua News Agency
The second is to subvert the underlying logic of world development. For a long time, the development of the world has formed some underlying logic, but the current strategic policy of the United States has broken through these logics. For example, the United States has built a number of exclusive economic and technological alliances with value diplomacy, violating the principle of free trade, splitting the global free trade system, and seriously hindering the development of the global economy; For another example, under the inducement of the United States, many European countries have not hesitated to fall into economic recession and people's livelihood difficulties, decisively severed their energy relations with Russia, put ideology above national development interests, and subverted the internal logic of political economy.
The third is to turn back the history of globalization. Western economic masters Adam Smith and David Ricardo respectively elucidated the internal mechanism of the world moving towards integration and globalization from the perspectives of division of labor, commodity exchange and comparative advantage. Globalization can make the allocation of various resources the most reasonable, the use of the highest efficiency, the maximization of the interests of all parties, is the general trend of world development. However, the United States has built a "small courtyard wall" through value diplomacy, creating barriers and gaps, disrupting the long-formed global industrial chain layout, leading to fragmentation of the world economy, bringing serious obstacles to the development of the world economy, and may plunge the world economy into recession. U.S. values diplomacy is an anti-globalization and a reversal of history.
Image source: China Daily
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