In June 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the American War on Drugs in a special message to Congress. This was destined to become a controversial project (see: https://civilrights.org/blog/americas-war-on-drugs-50-years-later/).
Thirty years later, following the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, President George W Bush, very soon after initiated America’s Global War on Terrorism (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror).
And now, twenty- five years later, still, we may have clinched a trifecta of wars on abstract concepts.
According to Ben Norton, Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary for War (as he prefers to be known) recently declared A new war on Confucius Institutes. (see:
).
The problem is that these malevolent organizations are helping interested Americans who wish to learn how to speak and use the Chinese language. Worse still they are advancing a better understanding of China’s remarkable culture and history and its recent development
Who else would ever conceive of such a sinister language and cultural promotion scheme.
Well, quite a few countries, as it happens, with hundreds of offices worldwide. Consider some prominent examples:
· Britain - the British Council -founded in 1934;
· France - Alliance Francaise – founded in 1883; and
· Germany – The Goethe-Institut – founded in 1952
Meanwhile the US promotes its own values with exceptional vigour around the world using a wide variety of effective means. The US State Department puts it this way:
“One of the three primary outcomes used to measure a public diplomacy program’s impact on US interests is whether a particular PD program can increase the United States’ ability to influence a population or government’s opinion, behaviour, or action. For the purposes of this model, influence is defined as the capacity or power of the US to compel foreign audiences to either actively support US interests or at least not act against them, particularly in the case of US security” (see: https://2009-2017.state.gov/pdcommission/reports/2010report/chapter6/index.htm).
Still, imagine Americans wanting to improve their understanding of China’s extraordinary rise to become the world’s leading economic power (based on a PPP measure) according to the World Bank (see: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD). And wanting to develop a better grasp of Chinese - the most spoken first language globally (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers).
America need not worry, however: Mr Hegseth, anointed by Uncle Sam, is on the case to ensure these unhealthy interests are vigorously curbed.
