Ménage à Trois – United States, China and Russia in a Dispute for World Supremacy

21 July 2019  (Wall Street International)*  – The rivalry between the great powers is best appreciated by examining them based on their respective power and in relation to how their political or moral actions are evaluated at the international level.

The practice and exercise of power by the major players show us that the national interest remains the sole principle on which States act.

Actions considered “moral” can strengthen or weaken the presence of a country on the world stage, as we have seen in the case of Venezuela, where various actors – some motivated by supposed moral principles, others by international law – have sought to attack or defend what happens there.

Upon reviewing history, we can examine different periods and see the paradigm changes in the acceptable concepts on what is ethical or moral. Slavery can serve as an example. For thousands of years, it was accepted and considered normal to have slaves and/or enslave the defeated after a war.

Until very recently it was legitimate for the European powers to hunt, commercialize and export human beings from Africa, duly regulated by laws and market prices, just because they were black, which allowed the birth of fortunes that continue to exist until today in countries like the UK.

Anti-Semitism was state policy in almost all of Europe, and communities of Jews were often forced to live in ghettos, with a ban on certain jobs, frequently murdered or expelled from civilized Christian countries, up until the extermination caused by Nazi Germany.

That the Palestinians have been stripped of their territories, live in refugee camps in third countries, or that Israel continues to extend its settlements in contravention of international legality, is assumed as part of reality and considered almost normal.

No one punishes Israel with an economic, financial or commercial boycott. The same thing happened when the Jews did not have a country of their own and few claimed for one, as is the case today with the Kurds. The racial segregation in South Africa was maintained for centuries and legally formalized in 1948 until its abolition in 1992.

It included the prohibition of sexual relations between races. Only a few countries broke diplomatic relations with Pretoria and instead, Israel established a close friendship with the racist regime after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

In Guantánamo, more than 40 prisoners – some without being tried or accused – have been waiting 15 years to be processed and to determine if they are guilty. Russia formally annexed Crimea in 2014, without asking anyone, just as the United States decided to invade Iraq in 2003 and start a war with false evidence and without consulting the Security Council.

The same has been done in Syria, bombing Damascus in 2018. It was never known how many Chinese students were killed in Tiananmen in 1989, nor what happened to the student who confronted the tanks.

The NATO bombed civilians in Belgrade in 1999, leaving around 5,000 dead, including 88 children and three Chinese diplomats. Nobody sanctioned them. When it comes to talking about human rights and democracy, many countries immediately tend to condemn Cuba, but they keep silent and protect Saudi Arabia, where neither one nor the other is respected.

The powers accepted the kidnapping and murder of a Saudi journalist who walked into his consulate in Istanbul and was tortured, dismembered and made disappear.

Nobody criticizes the Egyptian regime, where in 2013 a general overthrew a democratically elected president. This type of actions that for the public opinion can be morally blameworthy, are judged by the governments depending on the glass with which one looks, that is, they are judged based on the national interest.