US Squandered Its Unipolar Moment by Sowing Destruction Over Last 25 Years

Over the years, countries have increasingly been avoiding hitching their wagons to the US imperial train, starting with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and ending with the ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Nick Davies, peace activist and author of "Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq," told Sputnik.

March 19 will mark the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq under the false pretext of Baghdad's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to threaten its neighbors and the international community. According to the Brown University Costs of War Project, US taxpayers reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the eight-year long Iraq War, which left the Middle Eastern country in tatters and created a dangerous power vacuum. Likewise, Washington has disbursed more than $100 billion over one year to the Kiev regime, throwing a monkey wrench in peace settlement efforts.

"Our [US] leaders, so-called, are trying very hard to emphasize anything that can give the impression that the whole world is united to support the US proxy war in Ukraine. And, in fact, the reality is very different. The US also presents itself to its own people as the upholder of the rules based international order. Of course, this is really just a completely counter-factual narrative because, of course, it's the US that has been invading and attacking other countries for the last 25 years under the influence of the neocons, who really were the architects of the US invasion of Iraq," said Nick Davies.

Despite the catastrophic failure of the Iraq War and the near total destruction of Iraq as a country, the US wars just kept on going in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Remarkably, the same US officials who laid the groundwork for the US invasion of Iraq are now orchestrating the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, according to Davies.

"In fact, [US President] Joe Biden and [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken are two of them," the peace activist said. "Biden as the chairman and Blinken as the staff director of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in 2002 as they debated the neocons' plan to invade Iraq. They managed hearings that completely failed to have a real debate. They failed to hear from people who opposed the neocon plans to invade Iraq. So these people continue to occupy the highest positions in our country despite supporting the neoconservative foreign policy that has utterly, utterly failed."

The Global South has become weary of Washington's perpetual conflicts: they have refused to send weapons to the Kiev neo-Nazi regime or to join the West's sweeping sanctions against Russia. Some of them resent the very idea of taking sides in the Western conflict with Moscow. Even some European players and NATO member states have expressed skepticism over the alliance's proxy war against Russia and called for negotiations. While the US and its Western European allies are continuing to fan the flames of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, China has stepped forward with a comprehensive peace plan for Ukraine. At the same time, Beijing scored a big diplomatic victory by mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia, thus proving that the Global South has emerged as a prominent geopolitical force. There's also work underway on ending the Yemen war, according to the peace activist.

"What is really encouraging about this is that this was not brokered by the United States, this was brokered by China," Davies said. "The US after the way it has conducted itself in the world since its unipolar moment of superpower in the 1990s, it has lost any credibility with so many countries around the world. It has something like 40% of the world's population under economic sanctions. I mean, how can you be a leader of the whole world or an impartial mediator to resolve conflicts and bring peace anywhere when you have made enemies of countries all over the world? And so the United States has squandered its moment in the sun, its moment of unprecedented power. And we are now seeing its comeuppance as countries around the world would rather work with China and can trust China and their neighbors in the Global South to actually work together to make the world a better place."