At The 79th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA-79) US President Joe Biden revealed that he entered into the US and global politics in a period of great crises, and proceeded to show that more crises have developed under US global leadership. Biden’s call to rally the world behind the US leadership is either deceitful or a case of insanity; doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Biden’s and Washington’s 50 Years of ‘Threats’ and ‘Crises’
Washington has created viruses to cause a pandemic, created harmful vaccines, and proceeded to use both ‘threats’ to marshal the rest of the world around. From the foregoing, ‘Global Challenges’ seem to have increased over the period that Joe Biden and Americans have had unfettered power to meddle in all countries and dictate to the world. Mr. Biden proceeded to state that the US offered ‘global leadership’ to challenges but omitted how such guidance has increased than resolved them, causing the dire situation the world is in, even according to his presentation. Surprisingly, he called on countries to unite under the same leadership, as nearly all his predecessors have done at the same venue. His suggestion that the captain who has repeatedly rammed a ship into rocks continues being in the bridge sounds like the definition of insanity.
UNGA-79 and Biden’s speech seem to have been choreographed to bring a sense of despair to audiences, setting a stage for Washington to posture as the only source of hope, something it has done for decades without providing tangible results to the world. For instance, the moderators set the tone for Biden’s bleak message by informing attendees that the address comes in a period of “immense difficulties across the world” as Biden was accessing the podium. Similar depressing information flooded the Western mainstream media prior, for instance, the NBC headlining “Leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly. The Outlook is gloomy”. Joe Biden proceeded like past American presidents in the same venue, who painted a hopeless global reality before presenting the US as the only solution. However, they would show up the following year to paint a more dire reality but still present more false hopes.
Distracting Countries from Development
Never-ending ‘global challenges’ the US uses to nudge countries to join it in resolving are deliberate levers it creates to maintain influence. American representatives at the UN have appealed to other countries to stop everything and join Washington in solving the challenges of its making. The list of these has expanded in post-Soviet space. Washington’s establishment quoted nuclear threat in the 1980s, but has progressed to add global terror in the 2000s, climate change in the 2010s, and pandemics in the 2020s. These ‘threats’ are made by Washington and its developed partners. For instance, the terror threat grew from US training and incubating Islamist militants in Afghanistan. Global warming grew from the developed world using large amounts of fossil fuels and emitting excessive greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, while the COVID-19 pandemic was started by the American Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Therefore, the US and its Western European ’partners’ should address these challenges without bothering others. Consequently, efforts made by successive US presidents to nudge developing countries to suspend their immediate functions of meeting their citizens’ needs and join Washington in addressing its unending ‘threats’ are hypocritical and futile. Time and materials invested in such endeavors are wasted because the ‘threats’ will never be resolved until Washington stops generating them to advance its interests.
The US vision of leading countries to solve unending ‘global threats’ is untenable as it condemns nations and their citizens to stagnation, poverty, and suspense. It must be rejected. Readers can consider a hypothetical country that decided to suspend development in the 1970s to join the US in addressing ‘threats’ –the Vietnam War and Nuclear threat – only to hear Joe Biden calling it to join in addressing other crises such as wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, nuclear threats, climate change, and pandemics in 2024’s UNGA 79. Still, Biden calls upon such a country to dedicate more efforts to pursuing Washington’s elitist development in finance and digital infrastructure, and not in food production, healthcare, education, and manufacturing. For this country, all productive generations between 1972 and 2024 are wasted in poverty, and upcoming ones face a similar future. Sadly, Biden and the world order he represents do not even recognize the disservice they have caused to developing countries before making more demands. The imaginary country can be America’s ‘allies’ that have had to follow in the Pentagon’s endless global campaigns or one of its so-called ‘adversaries’ that have been invaded and destroyed to create the world that fits into Washington’s capricious views; none in both categories is safe. Countries must seriously review if the vision Washington was pushing at UNGA 79 through Joe Biden is all there is to the world.
Is Washington the only way? No
Countries’ choice to develop and improve citizens’ well-being is more desirable and sustainable than joining Washington in chasing the wind. While some leaders may opt to follow Biden’s bleak view and insane recommendations, any objective review of the world depicts some positive alternatives with many possibilities outside the West’s neocolonialism. One option is BRICS where partners discuss opportunities in infrastructural development, expanding trade, cultural exchange, and cooperation.
Despite Washington’s destabilizing the world by leading it from one crisis to another over the 50 years Biden narrated, Several African countries moved from least-developed status to low-income, and middle-income status, examples including Angola and Kenya. China pulled 800 million of its citizens out of poverty, and Southeast Asia, Iran, and Turkey developed. A lot can be achieved in a multipolar world, especially when Washington’s ability to destabilize and mislead the world continues to dwindle. Countries today have a choice to either embrace opportunities presented by emerging poles of power including Russia, China, and Iran, or proceed into Washington’s gloomy tunnel vision of endless wars, climate change tales, and pandemics and vaccines. Centers of the emerging multipolar world are stronger today than they ever were and offer alternative development ideas, security support, and investment options for poor and developing countries.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
