The absurd narrative behind the relentless fire
——And look at how the United States "plays cards" with lies in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
Author: Guan Guoping
Today, February 24, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that has profoundly affected the world has lasted for a whole year.
The war continues, and the peace talks have no end. Tanks, combat vehicles, missiles and other higher-end weapons from the United States and NATO countries continue to pour into the battlefield, and Russia mobilizes more personnel to participate in the "special military operation"... There is no end in sight to this conflict, in which "Europe pays, Ukraine lives, the United States gets rich, and the world suffers."
Behind the ongoing war on both sides of the Dnieper River, not only the insoluble contradictions and differences between Russia and Ukraine, but also the interests of the hegemonic country of the United States. On February 20, US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev and promised about $500 million in military aid to Ukraine. "The United States has built a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific to help defend Ukraine with unprecedented military, economic and humanitarian support — and that support will continue," he said later on social media. ”
"From the Atlantic to the Pacific" is rhetoric. "Help defend Ukraine" is a big lie. In order to achieve the strategic goals of completely weakening Russia, deeply controlling Europe, stepping up the containment of China, and ultimately safeguarding the interests of hegemony, the United States needs lies.
(i)
There is no doubt that the real wrestlers in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are Russia and the United States.
In addition to the rumbling war, the narrative war in the public opinion field is also "gunsmoke". Relying on its superpower status, the United States has made full use of its information technology hegemony and international discourse advantages to launch a powerful public opinion encirclement and suppression of Russia. By muddying the waters and blurring history and truth, the United States will be more comfortable in reaping geopolitical and economic interests.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is regarded by the United States as an important opportunity to control Europe and contain Russia, safeguard hegemony and selfish interests, and do everything to influence public opinion and create a "sense of chaos" to confuse opponents by grabbing "narrative power".
In response to Russia, the United States launched a comprehensive public opinion cognitive war to try to shape Russia's image as a "global pariah". Unlike traditional media monopolizing battlefield information in the past, social media plays an important role this time. American columnist Thomas Friedman even described the Russia-Ukraine conflict as the first war to be reported by "individuals who only have smartphones but are super-empowered." A number of social media platforms in the United States have taken concerted measures to disseminate so-called "true and reliable" information about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict officially recognized by the United States. In March 2022, the White House conveyed the message that the US government wanted to convey to 30 US Internet celebrities online, that is, how to "correctly" understand the situation in Russia and Ukraine and US policy towards Russia.
On February 19, in Washington, D.C., an anti-war activist held a sign in front of the Lincoln Memorial to attend a rally. Xinhua News Agency
"Words are power". The French philosopher Michel Foucault proposed that discourse is created to serve specific political goals. The right to speak has always occupied an important position in the design of US foreign strategy, and policymakers firmly believe that "propaganda is also a strategic asset, just like diplomacy and deterrence." In order to seize the right to speak, occupy the moral high ground, and seek legitimacy for their own policies, even if they lie.
American international relations scholar Mearsheimer subdivided international political lies in the name of national interests into interstate lies, peddling fear, strategic cover-ups, nationalist lies and liberal lies. In fact, lies have long become a useful policy tool in the US hegemonic system, used to cover up the history and reality of "war + plunder", maintain hegemony, and seize personal interests. It is no wonder that the United States uses "Thanksgiving is a pleasant feast between indigenous peoples and colonizers" to downplay the original sin and evil deeds of genocide, uses "Wuhan laboratory leak theory" and "China responsibility theory" to cover up its own failure to fight the epidemic, calls their own small circle "international community", the game they lead is called "rules", the expected coup is called "spring", wanton aggression is called "liberation", ingenuity is called "safeguarding fairness", and rushing people's lives is called "protecting human rights"...
In order to achieve this conceptual transformation, the United States does not hesitate to use the whole-of-government and whole-of-society model to construct a narrative and influence public opinion. Politicians, news media, interest groups cooperate with each other, emotional rendering, repeated mention, smear and rumor-mongering and other means skillfully, bombarding the public's mind, constructing people's cognition, instilling ideological positions and political prejudices in the audience, allowing the audience to subtly ignore the deviations and loopholes in the logic of the event itself, forming stubborn stereotypes and information cocoons. As the German writer Lüders revealed in his book "Pseudo-Saint America", the US government and interest groups are very good at confusing right and wrong and swaying public judgment by selecting and distorting facts, deliberately narrowing news sources, and polarizing people's judgments.
From the revelation of Musk, CEO of the US Twitter company at the end of last year, we can glimpse this mature set of operating procedures. At that time, Musk had just acquired Twitter. He said every U.S. social media company is heavily censoring its content under the auspices of the U.S. government. The U.S. government also sometimes gives explicit instructions to these companies, for example, Google often removes specific links at its request. No wonder Eric Sperling, executive director of the American anti-war group Just Foreign Policy, said that Congress and social media companies should investigate and take action to let American citizens know that their taxes are being used to "positively promote" America's endless war.
The manipulation of public opinion and discourse is so deliberate, why did the United States come?
- Covering up the truth. Recently, Seymour Hersh, a well-known American journalist, published an investigative report that the United States was behind the explosion of the "Nord Stream" natural gas pipeline, and the details disclosed in it made people chill. At the beginning of the "Nord Stream" explosion last year, the United States made a high-profile claim that it would investigate and hold accountable. In the face of this resurgence of doubts about "Nord Stream", the "collective silence" of the Western media cannot quench the concern, the White House's response that "this is fiction" cannot dispel doubts, and the world's search for the truth will not stop.
- inciting a "storm of disinformation". On the basis of the image of "war empire" and "sanctions empire", the world has once again seen the true face of the "lying empire" of the United States. Researchers at the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia found that after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on February 24 last year, "as if someone had flicked a switch", Twitter accounts promoting anti-Russian positions "suddenly erupted", and in the following week, a total of about 3.5 million tweets exhorting Russophobic sentiment continued to spread, of which as many as eighty percent came from bot accounts. According to the US "Monthly Review" website, Paul Nakasone, director of the US National Security Agency and commander of the Cyber Command, disclosed in May last year that the Cyber Command has been conducting a number of information operations in support of Ukraine.
- Silence competitors. The United States has gathered allies and major technology giants without mercy, and has used account bans, algorithm restrictions, content censorship and other means on social media and application platforms to contain and contain Russia's voice as never before, making Russia almost speechless in the international public opinion field, resulting in serious information asymmetry in the international public opinion field.
-- Manipulating the process of war and negotiation. Out of the need to maximize its own interests, the United States has manipulated the situation between Russia and Ukraine into a long-term and complex development under the slogan of "achieving peace" or "defeating Russia". In March 2022, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia on a ceasefire and even a peace agreement had actually made considerable progress, according to an article titled "The West's War Objectives" published on the German foreign policy website on February 15. However, due to the opposition of the United States and the West, the Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire agreement that was almost negotiated failed. Benjamin Pogo, director of the Armenian Center for Strategic Political Economy (GEOS), said that the U.S. position is clear: let the conflict continue until Russia is defeated militarily, or Russia is significantly weakened, so that it becomes a middle power unable to influence global development.
(ii)
Fire can hurt in the coming years.
In the year since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Ukrainian and European people have suffered terribly, but the rising ceasefire and cessation of the war have not affected the United States to insist on "fighting to the last Ukrainian". The cruel reality of the past year has made the world more soberly aware of the hegemonic narrative of the United States.
The Cold War mentality that has not subsided after the Cold War and the hegemonism that is not willing to leave the world in the development of multipolarization in the world have allowed NATO, which should have ended its mission, to continue to expand, which runs counter to the direction of human society. Over the past 30 years, amid the hegemonic agitation and discourse manipulation of the United States, absurd and strange phenomena of hijacking global security with lies and prolonging Cold War-style confrontation have emerged one after another!
One of the absurdities: kidnapping war with stories
Over the past year, the United States has defined the Russian-Ukrainian conflict with the "battle between democracy and autocracy", an illusory narrative framework that has dominated the public opinion field in the United States and the West. Steeped in carefully choreographed war narratives, many Western citizens do not know that it is the US-led NATO that has gradually lured Russia into conflict with Ukraine over the past few decades. After planning this "proxy war", the United States and its NATO allies continued to agitate public opinion, "arching the fire" and "passing the knife" with huge military aid, and promoting NATO's "resurrection" and the continuation of hegemony with the continuation of the war.
American war analysts have long believed that the outcome of modern warfare depends not only on whose army wins, but also on "whose story wins." In the words of former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, "we cheat." From the "nursery box incident" concocted before the use of force against Iraq in 1990 to the video posed by the "White Helmets" before the air strikes in Syria in 2014, the operation of kidnapping public opinion with lies abounds, and every time the United States has followed its foreign strategic actions.
Now, the same drama is playing out again in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The United States and the West have compiled many impactful and inflammatory "stories of damaging Russia." For example, videos of Turkish drone attacks on Syrian troops are portrayed as Russian tanks destroyed on the battlefield in Ukraine, videos of Russian military exercises in April 2021 are concocted into Russian shelling of Ukrainian cities, photos of children injured in 2018 Syrian air strikes are transferred to Ukrainian "painful children", and so on.
Of course, the most classic operation is the Iraqi "chemical weapons story" evidenced by a tube of white powder by then-US Secretary of State Powell 20 years ago. The United States used this to provoke the eight-year war in Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 civilians. In order to cover up the atrocities of war, the US military has invented a set of "American-style techniques": "civilian casualties" are described as "collateral damage", "murder" is described as "key actions", "torture" is described as "strengthening means of interrogation", and "killing civilians" is described as "consuming the enemy".
On February 24, 2022, vehicles pass by next to Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine. Xinhua News Agency
"Text is the creation of history" - this is the classic cognition of historiography;
"War is the plaything of the story" - this is an absurd interpretation of the "hegemonic rhetoric".
Absurd 2: Using the "theory of hegemonic stability" to create world turmoil
For decades, the Western international political discourse system has created many concepts such as "security dilemma", "Thucydides trap" and "Kindleberger trap", all of which serve the same demand - the continuous stability of hegemony. The "theory of hegemonic stability" holds that the maintenance of the international order and the stability of the world economy require the continued existence of hegemonic countries.
However, there is a huge gap between concept and reality. "Peace" and "development" have never been absent in US statements and statements, but they have become illusions in the US pursuit of hegemony, and even become tools for promoting hegemony. Looking back at the 30 years since the end of the cold war, the world could have ushered in a promising "long period of peace", but mankind has not enjoyed true peace and tranquillity and is still experiencing constant conflicts and crises.
In the final analysis, public goods have been reduced to private weapons, how can there be peace and stability under the "rule of hegemony"!
After the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the United States and Europe provided military assistance to Ukraine on the one hand, and used their financial hegemony to impose the most severe economic and financial sanctions on Russia in history, including freezing hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian foreign exchange reserves, and even using "financial nuclear bombs" such as kicking Russia out of SWIFT. This did not bring Russia to its knees, but it caused sharp fluctuations in the international energy and financial markets.
The US dollar has long occupied a dominant position in the international reserve currency, but the United States has long abused this position and constantly seized the wealth of other countries by "releasing water" and "pumping water". In just one and a half years after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the United States has printed nearly half of all dollars in more than 200 years, and the world has suffered inflationary pressures, turbulent pressures, and bubble pressures that they should not have endured.
Even more so, more than the issuance of dollars and the "wool" of the world, the United States has privatized and weaponized the global financial system as a public good in geopolitical conflicts to deal with hostile countries and subnational actors. This is worse than the inability of Britain, the "hegemonic power" between the two world wars, to provide international public goods.
The main characteristics of global public goods are non-competition in consumption and non-exclusivity in benefits. However, in all areas that urgently need the stable output of public goods today, the swelling selfish desires of the United States can be seen: through various means such as synergizing allies, it tries to dominate the supply chain of chips, a global strategic resource, and completely abandons the so-called free market principles; stockpiling large quantities of vaccines, pursuing vaccine diplomacy abroad, and gaining geopolitical benefits by controlling vaccine distribution; On the issue of climate change, the United States has so far failed to fulfill its commitments such as emission reduction targets, financial support, and technical assistance, but has turned gas into a bargaining chip, erected green trade barriers, and continuously squeezed the development space of developing countries...
In this case, even from the perspective of the hegemonic stability theory spread by the United States itself, it has fallen into the so-called "Kindleberger trap": the "leading countries that maintain the stability of the world system" are unwilling to contribute to the provision of global public goods, causing the global system to fall into recession and even break out into conflict.
Absurd 3: "International Order" to Beauty "Family Law Helps Rules"
The post-World War II international order is often described as a product of American power. The victorious United States and its allies impose their will on the rest of the world to develop institutions and norms that serve their interests and ensure their supremacy. As the American scholar Joseph Nye said, hegemony refers not only to a certain military gunboat policy, but also to the monopoly in the formulation and interpretation of international rules and institutions.
The United States and the West regard themselves as "spokespersons of the international community" and are accustomed to labeling some countries as "evil empires," "axis of evil," "rogue states," and "failed states" in order to distinguish between the so-called "civilized self" and the "barbaric other." while demonizing other countries while seeing themselves as the moral arbiter of the world; In front of the stage is "liberal democratic values", behind the scenes is the ambition of perpetuating hegemony.
American political scientist Samuel Huntington once said: "For the United States, an ideal enemy is ideologically hostile to the United States, racially and culturally different from the United States, and militarily capable enough to pose a real threat to the security of the United States." ”
As a result, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which broke out under the long-term containment pressure of the United States and NATO, has been described by some Western politicians as an "epic" of "democracy vs. autocracy". Not only that, NATO also included the relevant expression "China challenge" for the first time, falsely claiming that China challenges NATO's interests, security and values, and joins hands with Russia to "undermine the rules-based international order."
In this regard, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tactfully advised: We must understand that there are differences in the ideology and interpretation of facts between "autocratic systems" and "democracies". We can assess the importance of emerging issues in terms of ideological differences, but we cannot make them the focus of conflict.
In fact, the real relationship between American hegemony and ideology has long been understood by American academic circles: the rhetoric of political elites is full of liberalism and moralism. Yet, behind closed doors, the elites who formulate national security policy are full of power language "from a position of strength," and "in essence, there is a clear gulf between their public statements and the specific operations of U.S. foreign policy."
To put it bluntly, important members of the US government have stated many times that the United States respects China's system, does not seek to change China's system, does not seek a "new cold war", does not seek to oppose China by strengthening its alliance relationship, has no intention of clashing with China, has no intention of seeking "decoupling" from China, has no intention of obstructing China's economic development, and has no intention of containing China.
The reality is that from convening the "Democracy Summit" and the "Global Anti-Epidemic Summit", to launching the "Blue Pacific Partnership Program" and the "Democratic Ten" concept, to forming a "chip alliance" and reconstructing the global supply chain, all of them are drawn by ideology. The aim is to unite allies and "like-minded countries" to counter China's influence, which is also the core of the Biden administration's foreign policy.
As early as 1939, the British scholar of international relations Karl said that continental European countries regarded English-speaking peoples as "masters of concealing their selfish national interests under the cloak of goodness" and that "this hypocrisy is a peculiar quirk in Anglo-Saxon thinking."
Absurd No. 4: Selling "fear" to quell "hegemonic anxiety"
From James Monroe, who proposed "America as Americas for Americans" in 1823, Theodore Roosevelt, who claimed in the early 20th century that "every expansion contributes to peace", to Joe Biden, who today must call "democracy and freedom", generations of American elites have spared no effort to peddle "beacons of democracy" in the process of expanding territory and competing for hegemony, and even more deliberately selling all kinds of "fears" -
From the "barbarian fear" during the massacre of Indians to the "Islamic fear" during the war on terror, from the "communist fear" during the Cold War, to the "fear" of "China challenging the rules and order" today, in order to profit from fear and chaos and maintain hegemony.
Rendering "fear" itself reflects the anxiety of hegemony. In the strategic culture of "seeking enemies", the law of the jungle, the Cold War mentality, and the zero-sum game are always in the minds of American politicians, and their insecurity about the replacement and threat of US hegemony has always lingered.
Recently, Chinese civilian airships mistakenly entered US airspace due to force majeure. Although many US officials also said that Chinese balloons do not pose a threat to US personnel and safety, this ordinary accident and accidental incident is still complicated, and the United States dispatched advanced fighters to abuse force and overreact, and even took this opportunity to carry out political manipulation, smear and attack China, incite an atmosphere of fear of China, and stage a hysterical "balloon political show."
Whether it is Biden's call for Sino-US relations "a competition in the 21st century", a "competition between democracy and authoritarianism", or the new US national security strategy to establish China as the so-called "number one competitor" and clamoring for a race to win against China, or US Treasury Secretary Yearner Yellen recently accused China of being "the root cause of the debt crisis in some African countries", it shows that the Biden administration's perception of China is "inflated", and selling fear and smearing China have become an important means for it to calm domestic anxiety and intimidate and win over allies.
We have seen that in order to create a negative narrative related to China, the United States has weaponized lies and rumors, attempted to concoct concepts to "preempt people", and labeled China as a "predatory economy", "international order revisionist" and "wolf warrior diplomacy"; accusing China of using the BRI to create a "debt trap" and even throwing out the despised cliché of "clash of civilizations"; hyping sensational topics, linking the Xinjiang issue with genocide, and constantly hyping up the "Wuhan virus" and "China's responsibility" in order to shake off the ineffective fight against the epidemic; Describe China's market-based technology transfer as "forced transfer" and the atrocities of anti-China and destabilizing elements as "beautiful landscapes", and so on. Many "problems" created out of thin air have been included in the alliance cooperation agenda by the United States, striving to build them into bargaining chips for competition with China, in a vain attempt to realize the attempt to isolate China in terms of economy, technology and rules.
What is good at the top will be worse at the bottom. Selling fear can also become a way for some businesses in the United States to make money. According to the US technology media "Agreement Website", former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once made personal profits by playing up the so-called "Chinese intelligence threat". Schmidt himself is one of the most famous investors in artificial intelligence, with venture capital companies known as innovation ventures. After a "threat" hype, Innovation Ventures participated in several rounds of funding for military AI software provider Rebel Defense in 2019 and 2021, raising a total of $150 million.
On the "China threat," Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University, hit the nail on the head by arguing that there are good reasons to believe that a self-confident America—trapped by self-imposed macroeconomic imbalances and worried about the consequences of its exit from global leadership—has embraced a false narrative about China. Sadly, it's obviously easier to focus on scapegoating than looking at yourself.
(iii)
"The world has entered a new era in which insecurity is everywhere." So says the safety report released by the Munich Security Conference not long ago.
In recent years, "black swans" such as Brexit and Trump's election as US president have continued to appear, and the new crown epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have unexpectedly followed, making the world drift in anxiety. Before this great world change that has already begun, the narrative about the current situation of the international situation and the prospects of the international order shows the pattern and vision of a big country, tests the conscience and responsibility of politicians, and tests the psychology and judgment of the people.
In the face of facts and truth, the narrative of US hegemony has long been full of flaws.
In recent years, the ongoing anger of the Floyd case, the momentary chaos on Capitol Hill, the panic in Kabul, and the inability to respond to the new crown epidemic have exposed the profound crisis and democratic dilemma facing American society in the global spotlight. In the eyes of the world, the "fortress of human rights" depicted by "American exceptionalism" has broken itself, the "model of equality" has been rotten, and the "beacon of freedom" has long been extinguished. Richard Haas, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "The greatest threat to America's security and prosperity comes not from abroad, but from home itself." ”
How can the world be a "show" for the United States to cover up its hegemonic behavior with a narrative of lies?
When "WikiLeaks" exposed the surveillance of US intelligence services against people at home and abroad in broad daylight, when the "Guantánamo" scandal constantly tested people's moral standards, when the actions of the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries continued to devour lives, when the evacuated US troops fired wildly at the people at Kabul airport... The American phrase "destruction for salvation and oppression for freedom" has long been riddled with holes. In May 2022, Senator Rand Paul bluntly stated at a hearing in the US Congress: "Do you know who the world's largest disinformation spreader is? It's the U.S. government. ”
The reality of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict over the past year has proved that no country, including the United States and the West, which firmly occupies a dominant position in international communication, can shape or even manipulate international public opinion at will. Facts and truth are there, and lies and intimidation cannot change the direction of history.
– Abandoning hegemony and bullying, calling for a more just and rational international order, and creating possibilities for lasting peace and universal prosperity.
The security of the world cannot be decided by individual countries. In the past year of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, in the face of war and displacement, the world has become more alert to the hegemonic narrative of the United States and full of hope for peace and development. India's former national security adviser Menon recently wrote on the website of "Foreign Affairs" that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the confrontation between major powers have weakened the world order, distracted from solving urgent global problems, increased systemic risks, and made small and medium-sized countries more vulnerable. The Munich Security Report notes that the "Western-dominated order" is considered by many southern countries to have "post-colonial" characteristics, which has led to their identification with the "post-Western" world order. Mahbub, a well-known scholar in Singapore, bluntly said that the era of Western domination of world history has come to an end.
What is the blueprint for the "post-Western" world order? With the hope for a better future, the international community is looking forward to a narrative of universal security and shared prosperity, and a narrative of shared destiny and common support. This strongly explains why, in just two years, more than 100 countries and many international organizations, including the United Nations, have supported China's global development initiatives and global security initiatives, and nearly 70 countries have joined the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative. UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that the global development initiative is timely, and the United Nations clearly supports it and is willing to cooperate with China in this regard and work with other countries to promote implementation.
– Resisting aesthetic superiority and looking forward to jointly building a new type of international relations, so that mutual respect, fairness and justice, and win-win cooperation will become the trend.
In the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, although the United States and the West have greatly shaped Russia's image of a "global pariah" and set off a wave of politically correct public opinion to sanction Russia, more than 140 countries of the more than 190 member states of the United Nations have not participated in sanctions against Russia, with a total population of more than 6 billion. The Munich Security Report 2023 acknowledges that the West must ultimately face the fact that there are still no African and Latin American countries – and almost no Asian countries – that support Western sanctions against Russia.
Standing on the side of peaceful dialogue, human society must not return to the old path of camp confrontation, division and confrontation, and must not fall into the trap of zero-sum game and war and conflict. This is the strong aspiration of the people of all countries, the common responsibility of all countries in the world, and the correct direction for the progress and development of the times.
Great powers can compete with each other, but "there is a way to compete", and they cannot "stumble" on competitors like the United States. German Chancellor Scholz stressed that the core problem facing European countries and the EU in this era is how to maintain independence in a more multipolar world, not to isolate or reduce cooperation with China because of its rise, and the world is not destined to be divided into competing blocs.
– Oppose protectionism and promote economic globalization to benefit the world in a more open, inclusive, inclusive, balanced and win-win manner.
In recent years, under the influence of factors such as economic and trade frictions provoked by the United States, the new crown epidemic, the Ukraine crisis and sanctions against Russia launched by Europe and the United States, the world economy has faltered and its vulnerability has become more prominent. On January 10, the World Bank's Global Economic Prospects noted that global growth is in the midst of a sharp and protracted slowdown, with the forecast for world economic growth in 2023 being significantly lowered to 1.7% from 3.0% six months ago.
At a time when human development is facing major challenges, the protectionist narrative is doomed to be unpopular. Although the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the United States last year is cloaked in addressing climate change, discriminatory subsidy policies cannot hide its evil intention to harm others and self-interest. To this end, the heads of the economic departments of Germany and France recently visited the United States to "discuss explanations." French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire made it clear that the United States must not build a strong industry at the expense of Europe.
At an important juncture in the evolution of history, the voice of promoting common development and win-win cooperation is obviously more popular. Namibian Prime Minister Sarah Kugungaeluwa-Amatilla said that countries in the Global South, despite their resources, find it difficult or impossible to benefit from their own resources, and what developing countries really need is "sustainable and mutually beneficial cooperation".
This year coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. In Togo, which strives to become the fulcrum of the "Belt and Road" West Africa, Foreign Minister Robert Diesse told the media that he thanked China for its help to Togo and Africa in economic development and transportation. Africa has no intention of conflict with any party and should cooperate with all countries to contribute to the promotion of global peace. Africa is currently focusing on the development of the continent and hopes to follow China's example and strive to improve the well-being of the African people.
Time and situation, righteousness and reason, where is the heart of the people? On the evening of February 21, hundreds of Greeks marched in front of the U.S. Embassy in Greece to protest U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit. People shouted "leave NATO, do not base and do not participate in interventions" to oppose what the United States and NATO did in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The world has long seen through that on issues such as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the United States concocts alarmist rumors to "harvest other countries" and fabricates false narratives to "play cards", there is no legal morality, only fly camp dogs.
But if you say well, you don't know that God is faint.
The "faintness" of the United States is based on clinging to Western-centric and hegemonic thinking. With its faintness, why make the world faint?!
In the face of great changes in history, all countries in the world are facing tests. Only by adhering to the righteous narrative of keeping pace with history and sharing the destiny of the times, and rising up and acting, can we win a bright future.
Guang Ming Daily(Version 12, February 24, 2023)