The emperor wears no clothes.
He parades around the empire and boasts his newest majestic robe that is supposedly blessed with a spell of invisibility made by the best tailors. Eventually, a soul that is uninfluenced by the power of the emperor makes the claim that “the emperor wears no clothes.” Soon, the whole town realizes that the emperor has not been wearing a magic robe, but nothing at all.
The U.S. operates as the world’s most powerful state, or hegemon.
This “world power” status allows the U.S. to dictate much of the world’s affairs with little global conscience and essentially allows the state to parade around the globe while donning the proverbial invisible robes.
The U.S. wears no clothes.
Recently, public intellectual and MIT professor Noam Chomsky published an article claiming that the global community is recognizing the U.S.’s reckless action and viewing it as a reason to dissent or “de-Americanize.”
In addition to being one of the leading intellectuals in the field of linguistics, Chomsky has long been one of the most active and vocal critics of U.S. foreign policy and media.
In the article, Chomsky illustrates the way the U.S. acts around the globe. The U.S. operates under its own laws rather than international law and does so with little explanation as to why its actions are acceptable when contrasted with those of other countries.
The U.S. has enjoyed hegemony for quite a while now and has lost scope of the geopolitical ecosphere.
Under structural realist theory for international relations, we know that the geopolitical atmosphere is anarchic by nature — anarchic in the sense that there is no structure in place that can curb the desires of sovereign states. According to this theory, states operate as rational actors and will always try to secure the power of their state.
With this in mind, Chomsky’s point about the global community beginning to “de-Americanize” makes complete sense.
Recently, the U.S. has been caught spying on world leaders. Countries such as Germany and China are especially peeved at this act of distrust.
While it is likely that Germany and China are spying (or attempting to spy) on U.S. leaders as well, I recognize their arguments: The U.S. is threatening their sovereign security, seemingly without regard for the international consequences.
Another example is the recent near collapse of the U.S. credit rating through debt default. The radical opposition to the nationalized health care could have sent the world into global recession.
These types of reckless, irrational acts generate an international sentiment of distrust of a hegemonic power structure that acts recklessly with little regard for the effect on the global community and the sovereign components of that community.
John Rawls, author of “Theory of Justice,” believes the root of justice is in fairness. Rawls believes that in order to make the most just society, one must examine society through a “veil of ignorance.”
The veil of ignorance calls for the individual to examine society without bias toward their socioeconomic or political standing in order to achieve the most objectively fair results.
Clearly, the U.S. has lost sight of this mentality. By acting irrationally and enforcing only certain international law in certain circumstances to blatantly benefit itself, the U.S. is threatening other nations’ welfare and ultimately burning vital international bridges.
As an American, I have no qualm with the U.S. being a powerful nation or a world leader. However, the ever-increasing abandonment of international fairness the state has undergone since the Reagan administration must be tamed. The idea that we are a “rogue state” has the potential to be detrimental to my generation.
Reach the columnist at zjenning@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @humanzane
