Source: Chaoyang Shaoxia
In 2001, the United States entered Kabul and was greeted by the Taliban. In 2021, the United States fled Kabul in a daze, and it was the Taliban that "bid farewell" to the United States, but the difference is that the Taliban replaced it with captured high-tech American equipment.
The Kabul Moment is far more dramatic and magically realistic than the 1975 Saigon Moment. 20 years ago, when the United States launched the war in Afghanistan, its national strength was at its peak of solitude and defeat. The United States has become another "graveyard of empire" after the Soviet Union, and, as Putin put it, is "walking on the old path of the Soviet Union with firm and confident steps."
What the United States is most worried about today is probably that the "Kabul moment" is only the first domino that has fallen, the first hole in the "broken window effect". History never ends, history begins.
The world is in a major change unprecedented in a century, and this change is in the stage of quantitative accumulation, which is getting closer and closer to a qualitative leap, and local qualitative changes are taking place. However, the imperialists and hegemonists will never be willing to admit their defeats, will never be willing to withdraw from the stage of history, and will never honestly admit the "end of the American myth." They have tried their best to project the aura of the peak era onto the shadow of the United States today, creating the "ten illusions."
Today we will list them one by one and puncture them one by one.
If you compare the strength of the United States with the Taliban, one is a large water tank and the other is a small stone. The War in Afghanistan launched by the United States is a kind of high-tech "show off" of wealth. Relying on advanced weapons and equipment, the "video game" generally ended the lives of living Afghans.
However, small stones shattered the large water tank, reminiscent of Mao Zedong's famous saying that "weapons are an important factor in war, but not a decisive factor, and the decisive factor is that people are not things." The strength of the United States is not a mathematical problem comparing the size of GDP, but a problem of political economy.
In 2021, "they have nothing, but they are free": Thousands of Afghans poured into the runway of Kabul Karzai International Airport to try to chase and board the US C-17 transport plane that was about to take off.
The economic "star" may be a "black hole" politically. For example, the financial predators on Wall Street have made a lot of money on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are also a powder keg that has triggered the polarization of the rich and the poor and the turmoil of the country. America's power is shiny, but it is by no means invulnerable, much less invincible.
The United States always likes to boast of its land and sea strategy, constantly playing with concepts, completely ignoring the gap between ability and desire.
The famous American scholar John Cadiz pointed out in his book "On Grand Strategy" that if geostrategy is to succeed, it is necessary to recognize what kind of restrictions and constraints exist. The "Art of War of Sun Tzu" also says, "Plan and then move, know what to do and get." Napoleon, who rushed to Russia and eventually defeated Napoleon, and whose blind pursuit of hegemony eventually led to the defeat of Athens at Sparta, Were unwilling to be bound by the conditions of reality and stubbornly pursued goals beyond their capabilities.
Today, the balance of US hegemony is woefully inadequate. Even the British "Economist" bluntly said that the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has become a "big rout" for Biden. Under such circumstances, the United States is even addicted to playing with geopolitical grand strategy, seeking to make up for the "Kabul moment" in every way, arguing that the withdrawal of Afghan troops is a "big turn" in the UNITED States' layout of the "Indo-Pacific" grand strategy.
Even if the United States intends to turn to the "Indo-Pacific", I am afraid that regional countries will have to weigh it up: Will the United States "run away" like in Afghanistan? The United States is highly unreliable, turning the pie once every four years, in the end who is the true friend and true partner who can be relied on at a critical moment?
American democracy is dead in Afghanistan, and it's in intensive care at home. The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan is not the end of the catastrophe of the past 20 years, but the beginning of the political civil war in the United States in the next 20 years.
Fukuyama recently said that the Afghan crisis marks the end of US hegemony, and the real crisis in the United States lies in internal polarization, and there is no consensus on almost all issues. American democracy not only shows no signs of self-healing, but has become an accelerator of political division and a centrifuge of social confrontation.
On January 6, 2021, riots broke out in Washington, D.C., and a large number of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol.
Biden came to power amid election controversies and congressional unrest, vaccines, infrastructure plans, and Afghanistan hit Biden's support hard, and the United States has entered a political battle before the midterm elections.
In the post-Biden era, the political divisions in the United States are not the worst, only worse.
People with real strength will never always put their strength on their lips. And "power position" has become the mantra of US diplomacy and the big gold teeth that open their mouths.
The United States used the so-called "position of strength" to carry out unilateral sanctions and "maximum pressure", but all the expected goals were disappointed. Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Anti-sanctions, anti-pressure, anti-bullying, from the spark of stars to the momentum of the fire, more and more countries and people have entered the era of awakening.
At the High-level Sino-US Strategic Dialogue in Anchorage in March 2021, China's diplomatic corps responded to the rude behavior and groundless attacks of the United States.
Americans often say not to "gamble on the United States to lose", like a gambler who is anxious and wants to win too much, but the result is more and more loss. The international community is not a casino, and no normal country places its future and destiny on the gambling game.
The world wants peace, the people want development, the nation wants independence, and hegemony wants to collapse; this is an objective law that does not depend on the will of man. More peace-loving and justice-loving countries are saying "no" to the United States, not to gamble on the United States to lose, but to uphold the justice, morality, conscience and justice of the international community.
Biden made a high-profile announcement at the Munich Security Conference in early 2021 that "America is back" and tried to create the impression that the United States has returned to the world and expanded again, but the "Kabul moment" hit the face with facts, and "America is back" seconds changed to "America is home". The Republicans said more sarcastically: "The Taliban are back, not america." ”
From the frenzied "withdrawal" of the Trump era, to the failure of the fight against the epidemic, to the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, as Czech President Zeman said, "Americans have lost their global leadership."
The United States, which has unlimited expansion and indulgence, needs to go home, need to rest, and then do medical examinations and treatment. At the same time, the United States should return to genuine multilateralism, have something to say and discuss, learn to speak and handle personnel affairs, and use political dialogue to solve problems that cannot be solved by aircraft and artillery.
The Biden administration wants to create a "Greater West" scene through a trip to Europe, the G7, the Quadrilateral Mechanism, the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and the Global Democracy Summit. But the United States changed its policy toward Afghanistan 180 degrees, failed to communicate and coordinate with its allies before the hasty withdrawal, and stabbed NATO in the back. Many European netizens even lamented that the United States has simply gone from using allies to ignoring and humiliating.
The United States also used the trade deficit as an excuse to force its allies to revise bilateral free trade agreements; ignoring the needs of its allies and hoarding scarce anti-epidemic materials such as vaccines. The United States plays the "art of control" with its allies, turning its face like a book. The United States has irreversibly moved toward "America First", the landlords have no surplus food, and the fate of the alliance system has been predestined to benefit each other and disperse.
On August 16, 2021, the British Ministry of Defence said it would send an additional 200 troops to Kabul Airport to ensure the safe withdrawal of personnel from Afghanistan.
Recently, Britain, the "hardcore" of the same language and language in the United States, has repeatedly vented its dissatisfaction with the United States. A ruling British lawmaker lamented on television: "This is a total humiliation for the West. Britain's defense minister said that "the United States is no longer a superpower." During the Suez Canal War in 1956, the United States betrayed Britain and gave the "Empire of the Sun Never Setting" the last knife. Will history repeat itself? See.
"Rich have distant relatives in the mountains, poor in the downtown no one asks", hard power determines soft power. When the hard power of the United States declined significantly, such as the 1970s in the "Saigon Moment", the United States moved toward obscurity and dormancy, shifting from ideological diplomacy to realist diplomacy, represented by Kissinger.
But this time is different, the Biden administration has violently pushed "universal values" like chicken blood, and even wanted to mourn, and after the "Kabul Moment" to list the "Global Democracy Summit", this policy has attracted criticism from many parties.
"Universal values" are "luxuries" that the United States gives to the "third world." When the national strength is seriously overdrawn, the United States is unable to cash the check it has written for the "leading party", and can only humiliate itself.
Afghans who believed in America's promise of democracy were either abandoned or reduced to refugees. Will December's Global Democracy Summit be a highlight of "universal values"?
The dollar hegemony has forcibly bound the economies of various countries to the United States, and the United States has abused its economic dependence and frequently carried out strategic suppression with tariffs, sanctions, and decoupling.
However, the epidemic has caused continuous blows to the US economy, and the crazy financial release has triggered soaring prices and inflation; the trade war with China has exposed the shortcomings of the hollowness of the US industry and financial flooding, and the deficit with China has not fallen but has risen.
More and more countries have begun to increase their autonomy in economic and financial terms, and a "de-dollarization" movement has begun, and countries have begun to significantly reduce their holdings of US debt, abandon anchoring the US dollar, increase non-US dollar currencies to trade commodities, increase non-US dollar currency reserves, and gold reserves.
The hegemony of the US dollar is not guaranteed by the real economy and the gold standard, and it is all endorsed by national credit. When the United States abuses its credit to the point of being unrestrained, a mudslide of dollar collapse is not far off.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought tens of millions of infections to the American people, with far more deaths than world war I, world war II, and Vietnam war combined, followed by more serious social conflicts and crises.
Recently, the average number of confirmed cases in the United States for several consecutive days has exceeded 150,000, and the daily new deaths have exceeded 1,000, and even allies are inevitably disgusted. The European Council decided to remove the United States from the EU Safe Travel List and recommended that member states reintroduce anti-epidemic restrictions on U.S. arrivals. If there were still "natural disasters" in the early days of the epidemic, today the United States has hoarded a large number of vaccines and still dies and breaks the table, which can only be said to be a complete "man-made disaster".
However, the United States did not reflect on it, but instead hit a rake, smeared China's anti-epidemic achievements, declared that "China's fight against the epidemic is an authoritarian victory over human rights", and advocated that China's "zero clearance" policy has huge economic costs and will become an "island in the world".
Political Virus (Comics | Roger)
However, the reality is that countries that imitate the American anti-epidemic have suffered one after another, the epidemic in Europe with the unsealing of the epidemic has been repeated, India, which has passively fought the epidemic, has fallen in an all-round way, and Vietnam, which has relaxed its vigilance, has tasted bitter fruit. The United States tries to stigmatize China on the traceability of the virus, but the truth cannot be tampered with, and justice will not be absent.
The United States may have such a big dream, vaccine might, economic prosperity, traceability to the pot, three axes to rewrite the world history of the new crown epidemic, laugh to the end.
Wake up, history has concluded: the failure of the American anti-epidemic has harmed the American people and affected all countries in the world.
30 years ago, the collapse of the Soviet Union once plunged the United States into a victory carnival, and the "final conclusion of history" made the United States have an illusion that the United States can influence the course of historical development.
However, 30 years have passed, history has not gone straight according to the design of the "final conclusion", and it has turned a corner, and the golden body of the "American myth" has been shattered little by little by the financial crisis, Trump, the failure to fight the epidemic, the Capitol Hill riots, the collapse of Afghanistan, etc., revealing rust and rust, more and more unbearable to see.
Video loading...
Recently, a video taken and uploaded by American netizens showed that the streets of Philadelphia in the United States were full of homeless people and garbage, chaotic and shocking.
"When the heavens and the earth are all working together, the heroes are not free." The rise and fall of history has its own internal laws, and the rise and fall of national fortunes depends on whether it conforms to the trend of historical development. Today's United States is on the wrong and even extreme side of history and is moving toward a mirage of hegemonism, neoliberalism, and ideology.
After all, the American view of history is only 250 years old, and it has seen the sunrise and never seen the sunset. Rolling water in the east of the Yangtze River, the waves exhaust the heroes, and the success or failure turns to the air. There has always been only the United States of the times, and there has been no American era. Why go against the current, but not go with the flow?