US international law fails due to deeply ingrained hypocrisy on a range of issues

It is simply astonishing that in approaching a new course of relations with Russia, President Biden should have called Vladimir Putin “a killer” and lacking “a soul.”

It is similarly astonishing to have chosen an important opening moment in our delicate relationship with China to employ derogatory language. Did Blinken believe that flashing testosterone at the first high-level meeting of Beijing’s foreign policy leadership would help achieve the diplomatic goals Washington seeks? One wonders who the secretary of state was trying to impress — Beijing or a U.S. domestic audience?

The United States undoubtedly has its own grievances towards China, and China likewise possesses many grievances towards the United States. But surely this name-calling and accusatory language are immature and counterproductive in terms of future U.S.-China or, for that matter, China-Russian relations.

And what message do these events send to other world leaders? It raises serious questions about the professionalism and vision of the new administration’s leadership as to whether Washington is any longer responsible or capable of the “global leadership” about which it talks so incessantly.

When both the U.S. president and his secretary of state seem to have chosen such ill-considered approaches to Russia and China, it certainly will make many other countries quite hesitant to sign on to an American vision and style of global leadership.

The degree of hypocrisy about “killing” or “foreign interference” is likewise disturbing if not myopic. U.S. policies over the past 20 years or more have shown a great willingness to kill in great quantity in a failing effort to achieve political goals that have stunningly failed in nearly every case. Consider the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Syrian, Somali, Libyan, Iranian, Afghan, and Pakistani civilians who are perceived as little more than “collateral damage” in endless U.S. military interventions. Not to mention American assassinations of high-level foreign officials such as Iranian General Qassem Soleimani who also happened to be perhaps the most revered public official in Iran.

Antony Blinken, seemingly without embarrassment, speaks of the United States as upholding “the rule of law globally” in the self-deception or the belief that such is the case. In fact, Washington has always expected other countries to support the international rule of law — although exempting good friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia. The United States invariably defends its own “exceptionalism” in pointedly not signing onto International law when it suits its interests. That includes foreign assassinations and the launching of several wars without authorization at the international level, provoking “Color Revolutions,” and refusing to ratify UN Conventions on the Law of the Sea or the Rights of the Child, or honor adverse judgments by the International Court of Justice. And It is difficult to understand how Blinken feels comfortable at lecturing China on its domestic failings at a time when U.S. democracy and social policy have never presented a more damaging face to the world.