· The full text is 3300 words long and about 5 minutes long
· Source of this article: Liu Shengjun's overall view (produced by Liu Shengjun Micro Finance)
Text: Liu Shengjun
In February 2024, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said something that swiped the screen while attending the MUAN meeting:
• In the international system, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
If this sentence is expressed in Chinese, it means "not for the knife is for the fish". This routine is not new, and the following account is in "Historical Records: Xiang Yu's Records":
• Pei Gong said: "Today's person is out, and he has not resigned, what can he do about it?" Fan Xu said: "The big line does not care about the details, and the big gift does not give up the small ones." Now people are swordsmen, and I am fish and meat, so what can I say!", so he went, and asked Zhang Liang to leave thanks.
Today, in the 21st century, Blinken, as the chief diplomat of a superpower, so nakedly expresses the worldview of the jungle that the jungle eats the jungle.
China has long understood the essence of US diplomacy. At the 2020 China-US talks in Alaska, the Chinese representative said:
• We think of you too well.
International politics is essentially the law of the jungle. Thank you, Blinken, for speaking from the heart. What politicians really think is often more blatant than what they say at a press conference. During the G20 summit in Cannes in November 2011, a private conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama was also overheard by reporters because the microphones were not turned off:
• Sarkozy said Netanyahu could no longer be tolerated, calling him "a liar."
• Obama chimed in: "You annoy him, and I have to deal with him every day." ”
In 2018, when French President Emmanuel Macron was asked in an interview about his "bad" phone call with Trump, Macron borrowed a quote from Bismarck:
• As Bismarck once said, if we explain to people how sausages are made, people are unlikely to continue to eat them.
Many people were surprised by Blinken's words because of a lack of deep understanding of the "duplicity" of U.S. diplomacy. Smart observers should note: the United States says one thing and does another. The political scientist Karl said in 1939:
• The countries of continental Europe view English-speaking peoples as "masters of the art of concealing their selfish national interests under the cloak of goodness". This hypocritical quirk peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon mind.
On the one hand, the United States exalts the "Taoism" (ideology) of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, but on the other hand, it has always firmly believed in the law of the jungle, which is the "political unity" (the essence of power) of the United States.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, U.S. diplomacy tended toward isolationism. The United States regards the security brought about by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as God's will. Founding father Washington cautioned the United States not to enter into a permanent alliance for any reason:
• The United States' remoteness from Europe and its non-interventionist approach have allowed us to go in a different direction.
From the very beginning of its founding, the United States had a strong ideological and missionary spirit. The missionary spirit of the United States has its roots in President Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. He said:
• The United States is engaged in a new political experiment for all of humanity, and it is incumbent upon us to demonstrate the extent to which a society can allow its members to enjoy freedom and self-government.
Americans tend to believe that morality should play an important role in politics. Americans like this view:
• The United States is a philanthropic force in world politics. America's actual or potential enemies are misguided or malicious troublemakers.
The "manifest destiny" theory is a typical representative of this idea. Expansion in North America and the creation of the most powerful state in the Western Hemisphere was seen as "destiny" – settlers in the Americas were "doomed" to own most of the continent.
Liberals in the United States believe that the United States is a unique nation, God's chosen people, a nation on a hill, and a beacon to others. Americans feel obligated to promote their values to the world. Americans believe that history can be transcended, and that if the world is serious about peace, it should accept America's moral prescription.
As a result, the rhetoric of the American political elite is heavily overshadowed by optimism and moralism. The United States has always intervened in other countries under the banner of "freedom, democracy, and human rights."
As the United States grew in power, the missionary spirit of the United States became more prominent. The emergence of President Wilson was a turning point in American history and a rare example of a leader who radically changed the course of his country's history. Wilson was the quintessential moralist, a prophet of religious zeal. In 1913, Wilson proposed the so-called "Wilsonian Doctrine" in his first State of the Union address:
• There is only one criterion for judging America's disputes with other countries: our own honor and our obligation to world peace.
In Wilson's view, the United States is playing an international role on messianic grounds, and the obligation of the United States is not to maintain the balance of power, but to disseminate American principles to the world. In his World War I speech calling for a declaration of war, Wilson said:
• Rights are more important than peace. We should be most concerned about what we have always cared about, for democracy, for the freedom and rights of small nations...... Fight for the freedom of the world.
The Messiah
The so-called "World Summit for Democracy" convened after Biden took office is a modern version of the missionary spirit.
But you would be naïve if you really believe that "Taoism" is what American politics is all about.
In fact, behind the veil of democracy, freedom, and human rights, what American politicians really pursue is naked realism.
The "Monroe Doctrine" has profoundly affected US diplomacy. In 1823 President Monroe said:
• In the future, the European Powers must not regard the independent countries of the American continent as objects of future colonization...... Any European power oppresses or controls their fate in any way, we can only consider it an unfriendly attitude towards the United States.
The United States is the only regional hegemon in modern history. The Napoleonic Empire, the Second German Reich, the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union all tried to dominate their respective regions, but all failed. The United States' hegemony in the Western Hemisphere is not the result of a mistake, but the result of the far-sighted and deliberate pursuit of hegemony by the founding fathers of the United States and their successors. At the end of the day, they practiced the principles of offensive realism.
President Pock, who took office in 1845, went so far as to interpret the annexation of Texas by the United States as a necessity to prevent an independent state from becoming an ally or subject of a more powerful nation and thus threatening the security of the United States.
In 1895 U.S. Secretary of State Olney sent a note to Lord Salisbury of Great Britain:
• Today, the United States is the de facto sovereign State on the continent, its orders are the law, and foreign intervention is part of that law. Its infinite resources and isolated location allow it to dominate the situation.
• The United States has learned that relations between nations are based on neither feelings nor principles, but on selfish interests.
President Roosevelt Sr. was a naked realist who declared: "Only the United States, however reluctantly, is compelled to exercise international police power." He rejects the moral argument, insisting that international activity is a struggle, and that Darwin's survival of the fittest is more suitable:
• I am deeply disgusted by the practice of talking on paper without the backing up of effective force...... Iron and blood policies will not only benefit the United States, but ultimately the whole world.
Subsequently, the United States instigated a rebellion in Panama in 1903, made Dominica a U.S. protectorate in 1905, and occupied Cuba in 1906.
Roosevelt Sr. had a deep understanding of the balance of power, and only Nixon's vision came close to his level. Roosevelt Sr. believed that confronting Russia against Japan was in line with the principle of balance of power. So he invited representatives of Russia and Japan to his mansion for peace talks, and Roosevelt Sr. eventually became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Ironically, the old Roosevelt left the world with the following words:
• Warm words in the mouth, big stick in the hand.
The best proof of American realism is that during World War II, the United States continued to practice "isolationism" until August 1941: a bill extending the one-year service of military conscripts in 1940 passed the House of Representatives by only one vote. Four months later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
In the late '30s, Americans saw the Soviet Union as a devil's state, and when the United States and the Soviet Union joined forces against Germany in 1941, the U.S. government launched a massive public relations campaign, at which point the Soviet Union was portrayed as the most democratic country, and Stalin became "Uncle Joe." U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said:
• In order to defeat Hitler, I am willing to join hands with the devil.
US President Harry S. Truman said coldly:
• If Germany is stronger than the Soviet Union, we should help the Soviet Union, and if it is the Soviet Union that has the upper hand, we will help Germany. Try to get them to kill each other as much as possible.
As for Trump, not to mention. Trump is the ultimate in realism.
The tragedy of Gorbachev is precisely the failure to understand the "duality" of the United States. Goeth was stupid and naïve to believe that the United States was genuinely helping the Soviet Union to democratize and reform. In fact, the United States kept saying that it would help the Soviet Union democratize, but what it was thinking about was how to bring down the Soviet Union. As a result, American-style democracy has become a "weapon of mass destruction" to destroy its opponents.
On March 17, 2022, Serbian fans unfurled six huge banners in the stands, detailing by year more than 20 countries in which the United States and NATO have directly (or indirectly) participated in the invasion in the past. Another banner read, "What we want to say is, give peace a chance!" Serbian President Vučić punctured the "emperor's new clothes" of the United States:
• We condemn the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity, which is the clear position of Serbia. But how came you, the EU and the West, who brainwashed us today, did not think of this (the principle of territorial integrity) in 1999 (when NATO bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)? Then why don't they show our (Yugoslav) empty strollers?
From a realist point of view, the United States supports Ukraine not for freedom, but to weaken Russia as a strategic adversary, as expressed in that sentence:
• The United States is determined to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
Ukraine, your name is cannon fodder.
Kissinger, a realist master of diplomacy, candidly noted:
• 20 The most contradictory country of the century is none other than the United States: it does not allow foreign interference in the internal affairs of the United States, and at the same time wishfully believes that American values are universal; there is no more pragmatic country than the United States in daily diplomacy, but there is no more idealistic country than the United States in pursuing traditional moral convictions; isolationism and missionary spirit, two ostensibly conflicting propositions, reflect the basic belief of the Americans: The United States has the best political system in the world, and other countries can achieve peace and prosperity as long as they follow the United States in embracing democracy and the rule of law; and no country has ever been caught in a tug-of-war between morality and reality。 On the one hand, the United States opposes the expansion of other countries, but it calls its own expansion "manifest destiny."
Liu Shengjun @ Yunnan Pu'er Lancang
Economists who insist on telling the truth
Political Economy + Big Historical View
In 2014, he participated in the Prime Minister's Economic Symposium
Liu Shengjun is the founder of Micro Finance
Member of the Shanghai Economic Committee of the Zhi Gong Party
Chief expert of Shandong Provincial Human Resources Development Promotion Association
Author of "The Next Decade"
Shandong Heze Dingtao people