US pursuing policy of global brinksmanship to maintain hegemony: American academic

The United States is pursuing a policy of global brinksmanship in an attempt to maintain its economic and political hegemony, an American researcher and political commentator says.

Dennis Etler, a professor of anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a report which says the US flew two B-52 bombers over the weekend very close to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.

The flights came two weeks after the US Navy sent its USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, within 12 nautical miles of the island, in what the Pentagon refers to as a "freedom of navigation" operation.

“From Eastern Europe to the Middle East and the South China Sea the US is pursuing a policy of brinksmanship throughout the world in order to maintain its position of military, economic and political hegemony,” Professor Etler told Press TV.

“Rather than accommodating to the new reality of a multi-polar world in which the security and national interests of emerging powers are recognized and acknowledged the US insists on having its own way by thwarting the rise of any perceived challenger,” he added.

“The rhetoric spewing out of the candidates for president in the upcoming US national election differs only in the degree of vitriol directed against both Russia and China.

“The ideology of American exceptionalism and the indispensable role of the US as the world's policeman and guarantor of ‘democracy’ and ‘economic freedom’ is accepted as the gospel truth by all contenders be they on the far-right wing of the Republican Party or the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. 

“Republican neo-conservatives and Democratic neo-liberals are merely flip sides of the same Imperialist coin.

“The overflight of two B-52 bombers very close to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea is consistent with US actions in Eastern Europe where NATO forces are probing Russia's western defenses and the Middle East where the US has brazenly intervened in Syria by openly supporting rebel terrorists in an illegal attempt to oust its legitimate government.

“The US feels that it has the right, if not duty, to intervene and interfere in the internal affairs of whatever country stands in the way of its global domination.

“The double standard it employs is clear for all the world to see, but that does not in any way deter it from acting in its own self-interest under the cloak of a barrage of false narratives and false flag operations meant to deflect attention away from its war-mongering aggression.

“Both China and Russia understand that they are confronted with a US foreign policy that is out of sync with the new emerging world order based on the 5 principles of peaceful coexistence enunciated by the non-aligned nations of the world at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia 6 decades ago.

“China has consistently applied those principles of non-interference and mutual aid as the core of its foreign policy ever since. It is also the fundamental position of the BRICS nations and their allies amongst the countries of the Global South and East.

“The US is spitting in the wind in defying the new, emerging status mundi. 

“Attempts to settle international disputes by negotiations and compromise are consistently sabotaged by the US as it insists on pushing its own selfish agenda constantly heightening tensions and escalating conflicts.

“The interests of the American people, and the people of the world however are for peace and security, development and prosperity, not war and destruction. The US can contribute to the emerging new world in which all prosper by accepting its proper role as one amongst equals not global hegemon.”

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