Xi Weijian is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Marxism, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen).
Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken quoted a famous proverb from the U.S. investment community at the 60th Munich Security Conference to describe international relations in his eyes - "In the international system, if you're not at the table, you're probably on the menu."
As soon as these words came out, the international community was in an uproar. The main reason for the surprise is that this binary logic of black and white, the same party and the same party, is itself the root cause of the international community turmoil and repeated human rights crises - the former ** Trump of the United States once admitted that there is no word "win-win" in the dictionary of Americans. From arguing about who believes in the best god to arguing about who should survive on earth, this kind of exclusive values, which are indiscriminately rooted in the Western "monotheistic" belief and spread to the whole world with the expansion of colonialism and imperialism, have long since come when they must be clearly opposed and refuted.
Combined with the realistic context of Blinken's remarks at the Munich meeting, no matter how the mainstream of the United States and the West interprets it, its true meaning is nothing more than two: one is to say it to China, which is regarded by the United States as its biggest strategic competitor, which means that if China "insists on going its own way" to undermine the "rules-based international order", then the "broken chain" and "decoupling" of the high-tech product chain between the two countries are inevitable, and the United States will endlessly carry out all-round suppression of China, and repeatedly launch scientific and technological wars, first-class wars, financial wars, The possibility of triggering conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, including the war of ideology and values, and thus the two countries falling into the "Thucydides trap" cannot even be ruled out. The second is for those small countries and organizations that vacillate in geopolitical strategy, and this situation can also be divided into two categories: one is for the anti-US sovereign nation-states and political forces represented by North Korea, Iran, and the Houthis in Yemen, etc., that is, they should be put on the table by inducing local hot wars, because the "gold-absorbing potential" of the Ukraine crisis is no longer sufficient, and Wall Street needs a new "war ATM" to cash out; Second, for small European countries in a strategically important position in the "inner crescent periphery", Blinken's remarks are a warning that echoes the current situation, whether it is Serbia, which was once on the verge of another civil war, and Hungary, which has repeatedly disacted according to the will of the United States, they have been told that if they cannot stand firmly on the side of the United States, they will soon be pushed to the table of "color revolution" to be dismembered and eaten. In other words, it is a rallying cry for the United States to purge the ranks of potential allies and force small countries to take sides.
In short, the subtext of this sentence is nothing more than that all countries in the world will become the target of wanton suppression and harvesting if they do not listen to the arrangements of the United States and do not act according to the rules of the United States, which fully exposes the jungle nature of the US-led international relations system. Looking back at the world history of the past century or so, the geopolitical business of the United States has always been in a state of steady profit and loss, which is also the source of the pride of its politicians' wild rhetoric -- from strategically abandoning the isolationist tradition by judging the situation and making a lot of money by intervening in the two world wars, to assisting the revival of Europe through the "Marshall Plan", while infiltrating its intelligence network into major European countries and fighting ideological warfare, and finally triggering the "great changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe" and bringing down the opponents of the Cold War. All are manifestations of the peak of U.S. global control and influence.
However, with the in-depth evolution of the multipolarization of the world pattern, especially the rise of emerging market countries represented by China, the strategic imbalance of the United States has become more and more obvious: on the one hand, industrial capital is deeply dependent on the ** chain, service chain, science and technology chain, and financial chain shaped by globalization, and on the other hand, its financial capital and its political ** are the law of the jungle and the hegemonic thinking of "winner takes all", and they are unwilling to see the peaceful rise of emerging market countries and the adjustment and reorganization of the international order brought about by it.
If we compare the United States today with its culturally home country, the United Kingdom, which is also the last hegemonic power, we can see that the atavism of political traditions caused by the speculation of politicians is becoming more and more obvious. Victorian Britain was at least able to follow the tradition of "managing the domain" accumulated for hundreds of years since the Age of Discovery, and play a clever game of political leverage, as evidenced by the existence of the Commonwealth's global influence today. The national ethics of the United States is completely different from that of the Old Continent, from the "Monroe Doctrine" proposed 200 years ago to the end of the 19th century for the poor and weak China proposed "open door, equal interests", its politicians have inherited the modern Western Enlightenment political concept on the surface, showing people the ideal of democracy, but in fact they have done everything they can, repeatedly obtaining a legitimate basis for geopolitical and strategic changes through manipulation and populism, and gradually moving from the edge of the world stage to **, and eventually replaced British hegemony.
Combined with the secrets revealed in the "Prism Gate", since the beginning of this century, whether it is eavesdropping on the political leaders of the allied countries or using assassination to achieve political goals at every turn, the US intelligence system represented by the ** Intelligence Bureau is degenerating into an underworld force comparable to fascism, and forcibly tying all countries, including allies, to the chariot of their hegemonic interests by all kinds of means that cannot see the light of day. This kind of institutionalized and systematic violence, which is vividly manifested, is gradually tearing off the last "fig leaf" of "American exceptionalism".
Editor: Tang Hua, Jiang Xinyu, Zhang Yanling.