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Since its inception, the United States has prided itself on its liberty, prosperity and security. Following its rise to global dominance, its self-legitimising claim is that it has been spreading and realising all three ideals around the world.

That’s why it calls itself “the shining city upon a hill” – its exceptionalism. It denies being an empire. But even if it were one, it’s been exceptional because no great empire in the past, not even the British version, had ever offered such public goods for the enrichment and betterment of the world.

The veracity of such claims, I think, very much depended on where you were born, raised and spent your adulthood in the last century.

It was mostly true after the second world war if you had lived in western Europe, the so-called Anglo-American sphere Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand – and pockets of Asia and the Middle East such as Japan and Israel.

For such allies, there were generous post-war reconstruction, technology transfers, an open American market and the anchoring almighty dollar to stabilise global trade and the economy.

But outside of such places, America could make no such claims, rather the opposite. During the Cold War and then “the war on terror”, it was more in the business of spreading dictatorships and far-right governments, suppressing democratic movements, exploiting poor nations for their resources and obstructing their development. That was true across Africa, and much of Latin America and the Middle East.

Unlike the core of the geographical and ideological West which must be protected, the rest of the world became contested places to be freely turned into battlegrounds and conflict zones. There was the zone of creation and prosperity in the West, and the zone of destruction and poverty for the rest.

Original article: South China Morning Post