The world ought to frown on and disregard US’ exceptionalism claim
Issue:
October 2013, Vol. 10
Tags:
Obama
For decades, it has been seen and accepted as a form of sectarian religious dogma that the United States is different from the other countries. A sort of a special nation in a class of its own, in line with the so-called American exceptionalism doctrine that started gaining popularity in the 1920s. But exceptionalism, as a term, applies to any independent nation, state or country, as exclusivity is a part of what differentiates one country from another. A notable exception is the State of Israel, which according to Christianity’s Biblical doctrine, is a God chosen nation. But that is total different story for religious scholars.
Personally, I do agree that the US is unique, but only in the sense that it the only former colony in modern world history that has become a superpower, superseding its former colonial master, the Great Britain, and all countries that had existed before its emergency in all spheres of human endeavors. It is also the only nation, where immigrants have prospered beyond their imaginations, rising as much as the US-born citizens, to the pinnacles of politics, business and arts.
Despite its gaping shortcomings, the US is still seen across the world as the only country, where millions can seek and get freedom and refuge from their hostile governments, a nation that is still seen as a citadel of rule of law, democracy and unconditional respect for human values. All these achievements did not come via some divine interventions, but through US’ consistent and persistent thriving and yearning to be the best in everything.
But it is not these noble and distinctive features US leaders have in mind when they talk about their country’s exceptionalism. They are making a vocal political statement with all the associated geopolitical repercussions. It is these implications that need be condemned in all its manifestations and ramifications as the doctrine gives Washington “a carte blanche” to unceremoniously dabble into other nations’ issues with absolute impunity.
Indeed, the US has used this doctrine to do whatever it wants on the geopolitical arena, with little or no regard at all, to the other members of the wider global community. It has exempted itself from signing onto a raft of international conventions, claiming that its soldiers carrying on the “duty of exporting democracy to foreign countries” that have no idea what such values are, cannot be held responsible for the atrocities committed in such processes.
US-led NATO generals have wiped out whole families and even villages in Afghanistan and Iraq and have committed other atrocities more cynical than those of ex-Yugoslavian army generals during the country’s implosion in the 1990s.
However, while the latter are either on the run, on trials or already jailed, the US generals are scot-free. This is one of the results of such exceptionalism doctrine. Others include spying on the whole world with blatant impunity, force-landing a plane carrying a foreign head of state and other numerous nefarious deeds. Instigation of socio-political instability to remove foreign leaders that fail to bow to Washington’s self-interests, and if such civil forces fail to achieve stated missions, even use murder to destroy foreign opponents are all extensions of this doctrine.
Others include funding and arming foreign opponents of unfriendly foreign governments, like in Syria today, kidnapping heads of sovereign countries and trying them in US courts, snatching foreigners, including Russian citizens, from friendly ally countries on the pretexts that their actions represent “hypothetical harm” to US citizens and interests. Flying drones across independent countries’ sky, killing their citizens in a unilaterally declared global antiterrorism crusade. The humiliating and blackmailing slogan, “if you are not with us, you are against us,” frequently used to even force unwilling allies into questionable military coalitions is the epitome of the US exceptionalism doctrine in practice.
The recent questioning of this doctrine by Russian President Vladimir Putin should be supported as the beginning of growing efforts to dismantle the myth of US exceptionalism and its global implications.
US President Barack Obama completely missed the message and warnings contained in Putin’s words and the new geopolitical realities as he chose to reiterate the claim to exceptionalism before the UN General Assembly delegates. It is diplomatically wrong, ethically bankrupt and fully lacking of etiquettes for one to say among supposedly equal peers that he/she is exceptional, no matter what the audience thinks about it. This was what Obama did at the UN, when he reiterated his country’s claim to exceptionalism in a speech seen as an attempt to attack Putin’s questioning of the premises of such exclusivity.
The attempt completely backfired on Obama, as no heads of state in the UN audience subscribed to such doctrine, evident in their “dead silence” to the speech. However, unlike Putin, known for high signature blunt talk, most world leaders do not have the temerity to vocally express their opposition to and full rejection of US exceptionalism. It will be gross myopic thinking if Washington sees their “vocally loud golden silence” as their illicit support of its exceptionalism claim.
As one EU diplomat once put it, Russia is lucky that it can say whatever it wants and in what diplomatic wordings it chooses to express its intentions when dealing with the US. Most EU heads of states and their diplomats don’t have such “sovereign privileges” to so bluntly express their discords with Washington on issues that run counter to their interests, as Putin and his diplomats can.
What is most important, the diplomat continued, is that at times, the Kremlin’s vocal position truly reflects EU’s yearning as it often aptly some critical issues that Brussels is often afraid to broker with its key senior trans-Atlantic partner.
It is high time the US recognized that every country is unique and exceptional on its own. This could either be in their extreme collective poverty, such as the so-called developing countries, or in their affluence, such as some EU states, or in their sheer overwhelming sizes, such as the populous China and India, geographically, such as Russia, which occupies one-seventh of the Earth’s surface.
But it is clear that it is not these types of exceptionalism that Washington has in mind. It is the exceptionalism that gives it a carte blanche to whatever it wants on the global arena with utter disregard for the larger global community’s common interests. This is why it is utterly necessary today to strongly challenge the US on this exceptionalism claim.
The rest of the world, led by the likes of defiant Putin, should see it as a priority task to bring the US to the axiomatic reality that says “a part can never be bigger than a whole.” That irrespective of its economic size and resources, which are by the way dwindling with the speed of light, the US is just like any member state of the UN, at least, of its Security Council peer, with no more/less roles and responsibilities to humankind.
Any claim to the contrary should be seen and treated as arrogance, hypocrisy and utter disregard to other nations, and hence, should be challenged and discarded in all its entirety.
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