By Zhong Sheng
Some U.S. politicians advocating “America first” and unilateralism, who have been sparing no effort to smear and attack China, are even arrogantly trying to establish a “coalition.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday to establish “a true global coalition” to cope with the challenges brought by China. Pompeo and the likes, who are addicted to withdrawing from international organizations and tearing up treaties, have probably realized the current awkward situation in which they are responded by none. Therefore, they resorted to forming cliques for ideological confrontation. The so-called “global coalition” is nothing but bravado and a pipedream, because the evil will never prevail and justice is the final winner.
No matter how hard these U.S. politicians are trying to calculate, their efforts will be in vain. Selling the “Wuhan virus” rhetoric at the G7 meeting, they were opposed by their allies; and announcing to quit the World Health Organization, they were criticized by the international community.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said if the U.S. is not willing to shoulder its responsibilities as a major country, Europe has to reconsider its relations with the U.S. Joseph Borrell, European Union’s foreign policy chief wrote on an article published on the European Union’s (EU) website that the EU has ruled out a transatlantic alliance against China, and promised a “big, positive agenda for EU-China cooperation.” German media said the European people’s trust for the Americans has completely crumbled. According to a recent poll, at least two thirds of the respondents from Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Denmark said their view of the U.S. has worsened during the COVID-19 crisis.
A just cause gains wide support, and an unjust one enjoys none. The future of mankind and the destinies of countries have never been so closely connected before. The WHO has repeatedly warned that disunity would only create opportunities for the virus. In the global response to the pandemic, the U.S., rather than shouldering its responsibilities as a major country, is seriously disturbing and undermining the global cooperation on anti-pandemic efforts. Such irresponsibility is seen by all. President of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer said the world is facing the worst crisis of the time, and the unilateral and transactional practices of the U.S. government would only worsen the crisis.
Instead of thinking why the U.S. is becoming more and more isolated in the international society, Pompeo is again and again tarnishing China’s practices to promote global cooperation and win-win results, which will only destroy his own reputation and credit. The Guardian said Pompeo’s penchant for undermining America’s credibility is top-notch. “Not since Joe McCarthy has the State Department suffered such a devastating blow,” remarked William Burns, former Deputy Secretary of State of the U.S. Germen media commented that U.S. is ill-posed when confronting with China.
Under such criticism, Pompeo is still confronting with China. The only reasonable explain to this unbelievable practice is that he wants to consolidate his position as the “worst Secretary of State” in the U.S. history.
The world needs solidarity and cooperation, not confrontation. Facing the global challenges, countries need to offer mutual assistance. Who’s a contributor to global cooperation and who’s a destroyer? The answer is clear.
Pompeo and the likes had better stop lying and halt the blame game, and not go too far on the wrong way.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
Tag: Pompeo

Pompeo had better stop his blame game

Pompeo’s despicable buck-passing trick, lies bound to come to light
By Zhong Sheng
What on earth does a U.S. Secretary of State do? The question has been really confusing for the world since Mike Pompeo took up the post. What the man has done showed the world that he never intends to solve problems for the U.S., but only wants to stir up troubles for the world.
At present, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is approaching 2 million, and protests against racism and police brutality triggered by the death of African American man Gorge Floyd have continued to take place across the country for two weeks.
Under such circumstances, no one has seen Pompeo make efforts to put forward a plan or any idea to cope with the severe situation. All he has been doing were issuing statements or posting tweets, racking his brains to cook up rumors against and slander China shamelessly. He even falsely accused China of using George Floyd’s death for propaganda.
In the final analysis, Pompeo is just too arrogant to quit pulling the same old trick of shifting blame onto others. How absurd is that!
Making such great efforts to play the blame game that doesn’t work, Pompeo’s despicable act will end up achieving nothing but making a laughingstock of himself before the world.
The age-old systemic racism in the U.S. society exposed by Gorge Floyd’s death, which people from all walks of life in the U.S. are reflecting on, is the country’s well-known persistent malady, rather than something that can be created out of nothing.
Recently, four former presidents of the U.S. have made statements on the deeply entrenched racism in the country, expressing dissatisfaction with how relevant authorities have been handling the current crisis.
United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged in a recent press statement that U.S. authorities must address the deep-seated grievances at the heart of the protests that have erupted in hundreds of U.S. cities.
“The voices calling for an end to police violence need to be heard. And the voices calling for an end to the endemic and structural racism that blights U.S. society need to be heard,” said Bachelet.
As a matter of fact, the one who has been using the death of Gorge Floyd for misleading propaganda in an attempt to divert people’s attention is nobody else but Pompeo himself.
What people have seen was that Pompeo has continued to remain silent on the death of Gorge Floyd. Such indifferent attitude has provoked widespread criticism in the U.S.
In its recent article titled “U.S. diplomats ask ‘Where’s Pompeo?’ on Floyd death”, U.S. media Politico questioned why Pompeo has made no response to the killing of George Floyd.
Many diplomats of the U.S. voiced discontent at Pompeo’s silence on the topic. Some called his silence “deafening” while others said “Pompeo has literally decided he is not touching it,” adding that this is going to reflect on the U.S.’ image around the world.
Regarding acts of lying, cheating, and stealing as the “glory of the American experiment”, Pompeo, who is so narrow-minded, has probably seen maligning China as a life-saving straw for him.
To stigmatize China, the man has literally tried all he has to spread “political virus” around the world and arbitrarily fabricate malicious arguments against China, including the groundless claims that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, and that the virus was man-made.
At such a critical moment when solidarity and cooperation is more urgently needed in the world than ever before, Pompeo is bound up in his roles as a saboteur in international cooperation and a spoiler in global efforts to fight COVID-19.
Constant efforts in playing these roles made Pompeo “one of the worst secretaries of state” and quickly “the worst secretary of state in American history” in the eyes of U.S. media.
Such accurate evaluations went straight to the point.
Lies are bound to be exposed.
According to Politico, an analysis of more than 2.6 million tweets about the novel coronavirus published in late March and 25.5 million times of retweets of these messages within ten days found that more than 5,000 Twitter accounts retweeted relevant information about the novel coronavirus for nearly 7,000 times in a coordinated manner, and spread the conspiracy theory labeling COVID-19 a Chinese bioweapon.
The analysis conducted by Australia academics has also revealed that many of the users who tweeted these messages were actually remote controlled robots, and a lot of Twitter groups that spread these messages were related to supporters of right-wing extremists in the U.S.
The latest disclosure reminded people of the memory of how Pompeo attempted to refer to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan virus” in a joint statement on the fight against COVID-19 at G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting at the end of March.
Could it be a coincidence or well-designed conspiracy?
No matter what it is, it is for sure that however hard Pompeo tries to shift the blame onto others, such evil efforts will not help solve the internal problems of the U.S.
After seeing so many notorious acts of the man, many people wonder if Pompeo is still able to quit his addiction to lying and cheating.
A word of advice to Pompeo: As the chief diplomat of the U.S., he should know that respecting facts and the truth is the basic requirement for and moral bottom line of the profession.
He had better neither overestimate the effects of his rumormongering and slander campaign against China nor underestimate the international community’s clear understanding of fairness and justice.
After all, numerous facts have proven that any attempt to challenge justice and universally acknowledged truth ends in failure.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)

US-Iran conflict: Pompeo lands in Saudi for talks
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh Wednesday for talks with Saudi leaders focused on countering Tehran, his first visit since a top Iranian general’s killing sent regional tensions soaring.
The top US diplomat, whose visit follows his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, will hold talks with King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, State Department officials said.
“We’ll spend a lot of time talking about the security issues with the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular,” Pompeo told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa before heading to Riyadh.
Pompeo said the United States was “prepared to talk anytime” to Iran but emphasised that the Iranian regime has “got to fundamentally change their behaviour”.
“The pressure campaign continues. It’s not just an economic pressure campaign, its diplomatic pressures, isolation through diplomacy as well,” he said.
US President Donald Trump, who is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear accord with Iran and imposed sweeping sanctions aimed at reducing Tehran’s regional clout.
Pompeo’s three-day visit to close ally Saudi Arabia comes in the wake of a US-ordered drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful general, as he visited Baghdad on January 3
Regional tensions rose following the killing and Iran responded with missile strikes on US forces in Iraq.
US officials blamed Iran for a September attack on Saudi oil installations, although Riyadh has since appeared keen to engage in cautious diplomacy to ease friction.
Pompeo faces a tough balancing act in Saudi Arabia as he said he would also discuss “human rights” during his visit.
The 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which sparked global condemnation of the crown prince, has tested relations between the two allies.
After Riyadh, Pompeo will fly to Oman to meet the new sultan, Haitham bin Tariq, on Friday.
Pompeo will offer condolences over the death of his predecessor Qaboos, who was the Arab world’s longest-serving leader and served as a go-between for Iran and the United States.

