By An Ning
Recently, American independent investigative journalist Benjamin Norton, reported with data from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) that since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the number of US military interventions has increased substantially under the US unipolar hegemony. The US has launched at least 251 military interventions from 1991 till the present as documented, far more than the sum of the previous two hundred years. The report also pointed out that the figure is but a conservative estimate, with no special and covert operations included.
It is worth pondering that the data change of the US military interventions happens to be highly correlated in time with the so-called “world peace under the US rule” (Pax Americana). For many years, the US has been advocating the so-called world peace under the order and rules established and led by the US after WWII, especially after the end of the Cold War. Recently, some US politicians have frequently accused China and other countries of challenging the so-called rules-based international order and undermining world peace.
What exactly is a “rules-based international order? If the world had been at peace under the US-led rules-based international order, should it have been necessary for the US to conduct military interventions around the world at such high frequency? If the so-called rules-based international order formulated by the US were effective and recognized across the world, would it be necessary for the US to repeatedly reiterate and promote it?
World peace does require rules.
Objectively speaking, the US has promoted the construction of a set of international orders more progressive than the original one by relying on its own economic and military strength after the end of WWII, and has provided quantities of public goods for all countries across the world. Even if the whole set of international rules of the game covering various fields like politics, military, and economy, is not fair, it can, generally speaking, function to safeguard and coordinate the development rights and interests of all countries across the world, having guaranteed world peace and prosperity to a certain extent.
Nevertheless, happy days do not last long. After the end of the Cold War, the US lost its opponent and ushered in a unipolar world in which it had an absolute advantage. The US, which used to get addicted to rule-based privileges, has had its comparative advantage shrinking as other countries and regions are struggling to catch up and tend to match the US in fact. This is a result of natural development, though intolerable to the US. In order to safeguard its dominant position, the US’s ability in self-restraint and acting as a role model has gradually degraded. Instead, it has begun to shamelessly throw a tantrum, abusing the self-set rules of the game, and even arbitrarily formulating and interpreting the set of rules-based international order purely out of its own interests. The dramatic increase in military interventions is one of such manifestations.
In order to continue to control the Panama Canal, the US launched Operation Just Cause, directly sending troops to oust Manuel Noriega, the then supreme leader of Panama, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison following a trial in the US.
In order to punish the so-called main culprits for the 9/11 attacks, the US launched the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 Afghan troops, police personnel and civilians irrelevant to the 9/11 incident, and displaced more than 10 million Afghans.
In order to find out the so-called weapons of mass destruction, the US launched retaliatory strikes targeting Iraq, resulting in the death of 200,000 to 250,000 Iraqi civilians. However, to this day, the US has not produced substantial evidence to show the existence of the so-called weapons of mass destruction.
This is true of the US military interventions, not to mention other means. Lindsay O'Rourke, a scholar of Boston College’s Political Science department, wrote in her book entitled Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War that during the 42 years from 1947 to 1989, the US carried out 64 covert regime operations and 6 public actions. The ex-US national security advisor John Bolton also admitted in an interview that he has played a role in planning coups in foreign countries. After the end of the Cold War, regime subversion operations have not subsided in the US. Over the years, the US has created political turmoil in Latin America, got involved in the Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa, and incited Color Revolutions in Eurasia. Senior US officials have even publicly shown their support for the opposition of foreign countries to provoke political confrontations.
Random violation of the rules like those has grown even more severe in recent years. Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), withdrawing from UNESCO... The US has wantonly withdrawn from all international agreements or international organizations, even if they were established by itself, as long as they are not for the US’ current interests, regardless of the so-called international rules.
Is this a way for the US to respect and maintain the rules-based international order? American politicians' advocacy of a rules-based international order is nothing but to replace the international law generally accepted by the international community with American rule, and to package the US-led hegemonic order as a so-called international order. Its all-time principle is to apply international law in a selective and utilitarian way.
A total of 251 military interventions is not just a cold figure in the report. We should understand what the invaded countries and regions have lost behind every military intervention, that is, their development interests and the lives of innocent civilians. If there is any real footnote to the world under today’s rules-based international order led by the US, the bone-riddled regions and turbulent regional situation could not be more appropriate.
All have pointed to the fact that the rules-based international order has been shot dead just by the guns of the US.
