If Washington does not set the rules for the world, someone else will, the secretary of state said
FILE PHOTO. Antony Blinken during his official visit to Peru © Carlos Garcia Granthon/Fotoholica Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
The US must be the nation that sets global rules to make sure that American interests and values are supported, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.
Speaking to the press at Stanford University in California on Monday, the top US diplomat explained how technology was the key to political power, impacting the economy and the military.
Americans “have to be the ones who are at the table who are helping to shape the rules, the norms, the standards by which technology is used,” he said.
“If we’re not, if the United States isn’t there, then someone else will be, and these rules are going to get shaped in ways that don’t reflect our values and don’t reflect our interests,” Blinken explained.
The other option is that there is nobody setting the rules, and “we’re going to have chaos before we have a world that’s actually organized to try to take advantage of all of the progress that we’re making.”
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The administration of US President Joe Biden has repeatedly argued that core American interests require it to impose and defend what it terms a “rules-based order” on the world.
Critics of Washington, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, say the expression describes American hegemony, under which Washington can make or break any rules as it pleases.
The Russian leader has addressed the US-centric order on many occasions, including during a keynote speech in late September, after he signed treaties with four former Ukrainian regions, which paved the way towards integrating them with Russia.
According to Putin, Washington protects its “neocolonialist” position because it allows the US to extract a “hegemon’s rent” from the entire world, to plunder it thanks to “the domination of the dollar and technology.”
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The US government seeks to undermine any alternative centers of power, be they sovereign nations like Russia and China or international organizations like the UN, Putin added. He predicted that the fall of US hegemony would inevitably happen.
