Leader

NST Leader: Bilateral bellicosity

THE world faces serious problems. Most are transnational. Trans-institutional even. Chief among them are pandemics, conflicts, poverty, climate change and racism.

And this isn't an exhaustive list by any measure. The acrimony in Anchorage, Alaska, between the United States and China tells us these global problems will not get the attention they deserve.

Instead, the world will spend much of the close to eight decades remaining in the 21st century aligning with the US or China in what appears to be a contest for global hegemony.

The Quad, a security alliance of sorts between the US, Australia, Japan and India, is one such early coming together.

This may be a willing alliance. But there will be unwilling ones, too. Be it willing or unwilling, much energy and money will be expended when they should be spent on the critical problems facing the world.

All it takes is one slip by either the US or China and the world will be engulfed in yet a third unnecessary war. Neither the US nor China should take the world to such a dismal destination.

An optimistic alternative path is there for the taking. This requires magnanimity. Take human rights abuses, complaints that the US and China have hurled against each other.

The US accuses China of persecuting the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in Xinjiang. China denies this. Be that as it may, the accusation continues not only in Washington but also in other Western capitals.

Dismissing this as a Western plot against China isn't much of a help. The best way to end such allegations is to go beyond mere denials. Showing as opposed to mere telling is one path beyond mere denials.

The US is no saint when it comes to human rights abuses. China has made this clear in Alaska. The rest of the world has known this for long. Iraq and Afghanistan offer two blatant examples.

In the two countries, US presidents and senior government officials have been alleged to have committed not only human rights abuses but also war crimes.

None has been brought to justice. Instead, the US has put in place laws and treaties that prevent US citizens from being tried for such human rights abuses and war crimes. Yet a succession of US presidents and their senior officials continue to strut the world, urging nations to be a part of a rule-based world order while breaking every rule in international law.

Which law-abiding country will impose sanctions on an international court that seeks to investigate its citizens? The US, of course. Which law-abiding country in the world will dictate to an international court which country not to investigate?

Again, the US. The US human rights abuses aren't just confined to territories outside the country. Abuses are home-made, too. Cornel West, an African-American professor at Harvard University, posed a question that said it all in an August interview with The Washington Post: "Is America even capable of treating the masses of black people with decency and dignity?"

Do not get us wrong. One US wrong doesn't make a China right. Neither does a China wrong make a US right. Every wrong, wherever it happens, must be made right. Better still, let the wrong not happen at all.

This is the only way to a rule-based world order. The US must surely want this. So must China. And so must the rest of the 198 countries, aligned or not with one or the other.

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