“American exceptionalism” is the belief that the United States is distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations. Proponents argue that the U.S.’s values, political system, and historical development are unique in human history, often with the implication that it is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.
From the Second World War role to the Vietnam fall of Saigon, American global interests have drawn her into violent engagements with many nations. In the Second World War, there was reluctance to dip her immaculate fingers in what was essentially a European affair. Still, as the war raged on, inch by inch, the U.S. supplied Russia with the military planes that fast-tracked the defeat of Hitler and his highly mechanized army.
America joined the party when it was considerably safe and trumpeted a victory parade after the war, albeit the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor may have pushed her to the cliffhanger. Japanese onslaught was more an expression of frustration than any attempt to overcome America following America’s imposition of sanctions against Japan for kissing Hitler’s global ambitions.
Together with France and the U.K., the U.S. deU.K.ed parU.S. of Western Germany, and with Russians already marching in Berlin, Germany officially threw a tower and surrendered.
Global Power Struggles: The Legacy of the Marshall Plan
After the Second World War, the Soviets challenged global leadership, prompting America to funnel massive funding to Western Europe named the “Marshall Plan“, honouring the plan originator. Part of the Marshall Plan’s reason was to counter the Soviet Union’s growing orbit in Europe and the rest of the World; aiding Europe to become a prosperous nation was essentially in those designations.
Together with that, the U.S. undermined any poor nations attempting to experiment with some form of socialism. Cuba, for instance, was sanctioned till today; the then Zaire, now the DRC, saw her first elected Premier by Parliament, one Patrice Lumumba, captured and killed before his remains were dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid to cover his assailants’ horrific spoors. Other nations suffered similar subjugation prevailing upon them to embrace satellite capitalism and be exploited by America and her sworn allies.
Much later, the U.S. Congress disintegrated itself in the strongest terms over the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, claiming it was an African affair that was internally resolved without American interference!
The prosperity of Western Europe and wedging China and the Soviet Union conspired to hurl pinpricks at the Soviet Union as an internal catharsis and redemption led to a reformer Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power where, albeit reluctantly, set into irreversible motion the dissolution of the Soviet Empire that climaxed with the fall of the East Berlin Wall.
After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. decided to use soft power to dismantle Chinese communism. American companies were encouraged to invest in China because of access to cheap labour and a more pristine technological base. With super profits in mind, American corporations’ greed was their undoing.
Time proved them partially right and partially wrong; socialism and capitalism are like blending water and oil; one has to give in for the other. Western capitalism has virtually extinguished Chinese socialism without one bullet being exchanged, but little did the U.S. know what the U.S.monstrous rival with global ambitions had unleashed!
Back home, American well-paying jobs were being shifted overseas, and over time, absolute poverty encroached on and eviscerated American families. On her part, the federal government has been using stimulus packages to attenuate the economic pain, deferring seismic rifts within her borders.
America’s Rising Debt and China’s Growing Power
American stimulus packages run into trillions of dollars that have joined hands with runaway defence budgets and the unabated maintenance of a welfare society that is greying at alarming rates to blow up the debt. American debt now stands at over 33 Trillion dollars, accounting for 126% of her GDP. The staggering level of debt is unsustainable, raising fears of whether the U.S. can still project power abroad. If not, then “American exceptionalism” is in an ICU or on her coffin for burial.
With the trend of having fewer babies to strengthen family economic levers, America began experiencing negative population growth relative to the baby boomer generation. Without boosting the population numbers, the domestic market was numbed and desiccated. Ominously, domestic productivity was also at loggerheads without generating sufficient local demand.
As if those internal contradictions were insufficient, China prospered, and through espionage and funding of the U.S. think tank, the U.S. could acquire American technologies and replicate them at home. Over time, China became an irredentist empire too, eager to flex her muscles and the U.S., with a wiU.S.ingness never witnessed before, learnt the hard lesson of mistrusting her people and placing her eggs in the basket of foreign legions whose language she did not fully comprehend.
China quickly started an expansionist policy that claimed a chunk of lands that, internationally, are recognized as belonging to her neighbours. From indomitable Russia to the former Chinese rulers of Japan, to the Philippines, and as far as Australia, China developed and released their map only recognized by themselves, which warned neighbours they were occupation forces in Chinese towns!
Each of those countries has forked out her map, reinforcing her perpetual ownership of those disputed lands. Few peek at armed conflict in those lands, at least for now, despite plenty of muscle flexing to stage frivolous psychological warfare.
However, another serious conflict is brewing between China and the Taiwanese Islands that the U.S. has vowed to defend with all means, including lethal power. China has been at the forefront of building an army festooned with highly mechanized military contraptions whose effectiveness in actual combat remains anybody’s guess.
China’s numbers descended and defeated Vietnam, which was recuperating from the rigours of two wars for her independence against France and later the U.S. So, China—subdued Vietnam, which was still in the ICU and apportioned parts of Vietnam to herself. China – India border disputes remain very much unresolved, despite irregular bludgeoning of the soldiers of each side with gavels pierced with long nails, leading to deaths and injuries. China, for now, has chased Indians from disputed territories but is still in talking terms to our collective bated breath.
Of all the conflicts, the U.S. demise is U.S.unted by economic and military threats posed by the axis of the will of Russia and China. The Ukrainian conflict, probably more than anything else, has exposed the limits of “American exceptionalism”. In East Ukraine, the U.S. has profouU.S.ly recognized she cannot pummel Russia to her liking. It is the Russian Roulette that is pulling the strings of power in Ukraine to Uncle Sam’s utter shock, disgust and contempt.
American sanctions against Russia have deindustrialized Europe and rendered current European regimes vulnerable to be toppled by angry voters who see their livelihoods going to smoke before their own disbelieving eyes. American warfare technology has been routed in East Ukraine, as the capture of Western military gadgets being displayed in Moscow and Leningrad amply demonstrates.
It looks more and more like Uncle Sam has bitten and swallowed a superbug in Ukraine, and deprived of a clear exit strategy, the U.S. may be in this conflagration until a new president is sworn in, most likely Messr Donald Trump, an intriguing proposition to forage into, next time, sadly beyond the scope of this discourse.
America cannot delink her economy with China without bleeding her economy to death. For now, both desperately need each other in a symbiotic association survival mode as they acknowledge each side will have to chart her course without the other over a long time. This is an ugly divorce despite voluntary cohabitation to cater for mutual yet parochial interests.
Both are rifling for new markets and cheap labour since labour costs in both nations have grown astronomically untenable. No wonder poor countries have seen a resurgence of economic suitors eager to engage us following global economic dislocations decimating the durability of past economic linkages.
As America is accosted with dwindling population growth, lawlessness and waning global power, she has opened wide the illegal immigration sluice gates to permit millions to cross the Mexican border. She is racing to arm them with legal papers and guns. Behind the curtains of the absorption of unprecedented millions of illegal immigrants is to plug a massive abyss in “America exceptionalism” visceral conceptualization that has steadfastly resisted drawing lessons from history. We shall now elaborate.
Empires rise to serve particular purposes and fall after those objectives have been fulfilled. The American Empire was needed during the Industrial Revolution. Still, as we slowly settle into the information age, a global bully like the U.S. is gradually becoming eradicated into a dinosaur statue.
The information age is shouting to all of us: whatever America can do, others can do, too, with a sheen of flamboyance. Espionage and freely available technologies on the Internet are game changers.
The U.S. deluded that she could starve both Russia and China of “state-of-the-art technologies” needed to manufacture top-notch arsenals. Still, now we know gratitude to the information age, which is a distressing chimaera. The Russians and the Chinese have everything they need to build whatever war machines they plan to advance their military aims.
Of more damning to the U.S. is the new global entity called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is an economic amalgamation of many nations whose ambitions are to terminate, once and for all, the so much celebrated “American exceptionalism” that has killed, maimed, subdued and vastly exploited many a nation without an iota of restitution. Even the slave trade is outlawed for atonement to her victims in the U.S. Constitution!
BRICS and the Shift Away from the U.S. Dollar
What BRICS is plotting to do is wriggle her way out of the dominance of the U.S. dollar, the backbone of American pride and leverage. With the help of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. persuaded the whole World to adopt the dollar as a global currency, and the U.S. was obligated not to weaponize the dollar as a cudgel of war.
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That position was dramatically changed after Russia declared “special operations” in East Ukraine aimed to puncture what the Russians categorized as “genocide” against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. With Saudi Arabia joining BRICS and allowing China to use her currency, the Yuan Renminbi, to buy black gold, the writing is on the wall: Uncle Sam, you are on your own. Uncle Sam is besieged in all directions without a slowdown.
The U.S. has been giving by printing its currencies and spreading the cost of inflation to the whole World through petrodollar, where every nation buys fossil oils with that denomination, greenbacks. BRICKS is conspiring to severe that catheter the U.S. has become accustomed to sustaining herself.
The U.S. has also been buying goods and services worldwide for a token. Nations export their wealth to the U.S. and are paU.S. with paper money, infamously known as the U.S. dollars, through the counselling of Anglo-American banks. Those countries do not see much to import from the U.S. save for U.S. human killing machines, and a few devices are duped into buying American debt through government bonds and treasuries at almost zero interest income.
When they need money, these countries find themselves in a fix. They bought American debt tied to long-term agreements, which they cannot revoke without incurring the hefty penalties and loss of projected interest income. The remaining option is to sink in debts with grave consequences to sovereignty and economic well-being despite African politicians applauding with a standing ovation to the contrary.
The same Bretton Woods institutions tie them to debt burden at excessive interest rates. These countries become satellites to serve American interests as export policies are lauded for mirage poverty-ending strategic approaches, leaving those countries borrowing even more to service foreign debts, basically relinquishing their fixed deposits stored in American soils!
With BRICS disabling the American dollar from those exploitative appetites, it has far-reaching socioeconomic consequences for America, global peace and security. It is incomprehensible to imagine the U.S. as a bananU.S.Republic with nukes. Without the U.S. dollar being an international fiat of exchange, printing the U.S. dollar to her domestic woes will lead to hyperinflation, making Zimbabwe look like an Angel we did not appreciate and empathize with.
American dollar will be like toilet paper, as one governor of the Uganda Central Bank divulged to the bemused president of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada, with catastrophic fatality to the governor.
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With Uncle Sam siding with Israel against Hamas, many Arab regimes are finding it almost impossible to “pay to play” in “pro quid quo” without being at odds with their people back home. Doors the U.S. flung open after the Second World War are slowly being shut down, leaving Uncle Sam with few cards to flaunt. President Joe Biden once foreshadowed that both Russia and Saudi Arabia leaders would be pariahs; BRICS is whispering at him: “Hold your breath, for you have seen nothing yet.”
Will American exceptionalism disappear without a fight? That is a jigsaw these illegal immigrants will have to solve in honesty, appreciating Uncle Sam rarely doles out a free lunch.
He is assembling immigrant recruits that he will need to militarily confront both Russia and China at the same time, with the Ukrainian conflict a precursor of the sinister things to come. After crushing military training on American soil, some of these recruits will be taken to Ukraine to try to win an unwinnable war of attrition, with the majority of them securing an appointment with their Maker in a strange land. All the sacrifice and the prior planning to better their lives and their loved ones were terminally ruined by Uncle Sam’s frantic efforts to save what had already been lost.
The chief drawback is dreadful caution; however, most of these illegal immigrants may be of military age, but waging foreign wars is the least in their minds. They went to America to earn a living and support their loved ones back home. And placing themselves in harm’s way is not what they envisaged as an “American dream”.
Little do they know that the American dream is not what it used to be. This is now a horror movie. They will soon wish never to have assumed main characters at pittance balkanizing their dreams. The American dream is now being inked in blood, a language few illegal immigrants are familiar with or may learn with enthusiasm.
At the end of this vortex, Uncle Sam will learn that “American exceptionalism” was a utopia that should have been abandoned on the day the Berlin Wall fell. There were no winners after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but a bunch of losers seeking face-saving opportunities and a fresher reason to soldier on in a twisted global landscape.
Henceforth, American hubris, arrogance and chest-thumping after the Cold War, which promulgated a new dawn to the American unipolar World, were all gaslighting just like Weapons of Mass Destruction outrageous lies justifying an invasion and destruction of a peaceful Iraq.
