Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam, National Freedom Party MP

The fall of the Berlin Wall had major repercussions for the developing world. A bipolar world order was replaced by unipolarity, with power residing in one dominant entity – the US and its alliance partners.

The US could push for implementation of its values around the world, with no real challenge. A country that needed financial assistance could get it from the IMF and the World Bank. But it came with conditions. This was imperialism in a new form.

The US has worked to remake the world in its image. It has pushed for Nato to expand to include Eastern European nations. There is a concerted effort to isolate Russia from its former allies by ensuring Western values take root in Ukraine and other nations.

In April 2008, a Nato summit in Bucharest indicated Ukraine and Georgia would become part of the organisation. Russia viewed this as an existential threat.

When there was a close relationship between Russia and Cuba, the US saw that as an existential threat.

According to US political scientist John Mearsheimer, “the US and its European allies share most of the responsibility” for Russia annexing Crimea in 2014. He says had the US not pushed so hard for Ukraine’s inclusion in Nato, and had Ukraine adopted a liberal democracy, without the US’s strategy to make it a beachhead of the West, there would be no war in Ukraine.

The US has the same strategy with regard to China. There is fear of China’s rising dominance and the fact that the US can no longer use the “Washington Consensus” to force implementation of its values through “aid with conditions”. This is causing them to treat China with the same level of hostility as Russia. This is because China’s financial aid, trade and investment does not have structural reform conditions.

Via institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US has tried to institute regime change across the world generally, and in China specifically via Hong Kong and Taiwan.

It is evident the NED funded protesting groups. According to NED founder Allen

Weinstein, the body is like a second CIA.

Via the NED and others, the US has an agenda to establish Western beachheads in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Ukraine.

The visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan was the first step in normalising relations with Taiwan, as an independent state apart from China.

It is easy to assume the Biden administration does not have a clear China strategy, but Pelosi’s visit and NED’s presence in Taiwan and Hong Kong is part of a strategy.

We need to condemn this. The South African government must not serve as a “proxy” for the US as its tries to solidify hegemony.