The United States never tires of declaring that the preservation of an international “rules-based order” is the cornerstone of its foreign policy. The phrase is meant to evoke fairness, stability, and cooperation—a global community where every country plays by the same set of rules. In reality, this so-called “rules-based order” has always been a smokescreen for U.S. hegemony and imperialism. The “rules” are enforced only when they benefit Washington and broken the moment they stand in its way.
Nothing demonstrates this hypocrisy more than the ongoing bloodshed in West Asia. Under the banner of defending “democracy,” the United States continues to bankroll Israel’s genocidal war machine. For nearly two years, Israel has waged an unchecked campaign of mass killing and starvation in Gaza, while accelerating its decades-long project of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. With U.S. weapons, funding, and political cover, Israel has turned Gaza into a graveyard and the West Bank into a prison camp.
Israel has also launched wider wars—with U.S. backing—against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and even Yemen, exporting destruction far beyond Palestine. Its most recent act of aggression, the illegal bombing of Qatar—a country that has served as a neutral mediator in ceasefire talks—shows that Israel’s bloodlust recognizes no boundaries, and that Washington will shield it from accountability at every turn.
Syria, already bled dry by over a decade of war, remains a testing ground for U.S. duplicity. Washington and its NATO partner Turkey prop up a new militant Sunni regime in Damascus, even as Turkey conducts deadly assaults on Kurdish communities in the north. Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed authorities have unleashed violent campaigns against Druze and Alawite minorities in the country’s west and south. Far from ending the conflict, U.S. meddling—hand in hand with Israel and Turkey—has deepened the carnage.
Washington’s hypocrisy is also on display at home. President Trump has broken the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement by denying Palestinian delegates visas to attend meetings in New York—an explicit violation of U.S. obligations as host country. Now, Trump threatens to wield the same tactic against Brazil if it refuses to bend to Washington’s demands.
Latin America, as ever, faces the brunt of U.S. intervention. In Venezuela, the U.S. Navy attacked a civilian ship off the coast, a crude attempt to intimidate the Bolivarian government and threaten escalation into all-out war. The economic blockade already squeezes Venezuela’s people; now Washington adds the threat of direct military action. Mexico, too, is under threat, with Trump’s administration openly floating U.S. troop deployments under the pretext of fighting drug cartels. Cuba continues to endure the tightening of the illegal blockade—an act of collective punishment that has inflicted untold suffering on generations of Cuban families.
And in Brazil, U.S. meddling takes a different form. Washington has sanctioned the Supreme Court judge presiding over the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced former president charged with leading a violent conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2023 elections. This is a domestic judicial process in Latin America’s largest democracy, yet Washington interferes brazenly, putting its thumb on the scales of Brazilian justice.
In Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo is once again paying the price for imperialist plunder. Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda all intervene militarily to varying degrees in the DRC’s east, each seeking control of resources and influence. Into this maelstrom steps the United States, eager to secure access to Congo’s vast mineral wealth—cobalt, coltan, and other strategic resources vital to the tech and weapons industries. The suffering of Congolese communities becomes another bargaining chip in Washington’s global game.
Across Europe, the U.S. fuels war under NATO’s banner. Washington may occasionally mumble about peace in Ukraine, but the flow of U.S. arms and billions in taxpayer dollars tells the truth. Far from seeking an end to the conflict, the U.S. treats Ukraine as a proxy battlefield against Russia—while defense corporations at home rake in record profits. Meanwhile, Washington bullies European governments into militarizing at a pace unseen since the Cold War, diverting resources away from social needs into the coffers of weapons manufacturers. Europe is now the most militarized it has been in decades, and it is the United States that holds the whip.
From West Asia to Latin America, from Africa to Europe, the so-called “rules-based order” is revealed as nothing more than the imperialist disorder of Washington and its allies, and Qatar is the latest victim. The rule is simple: what’s ours is ours, and what’s yours is negotiable—so long as U.S. interests are served.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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