by Eze Eluchie
In the wake of
the United States seeming preparedness to embark on unilateral military actions
against the Al-Assad regime in Syria over the chemical weapon attack in some suburbs
of Damascus, when U.S. President Barack Obama had cited 'America’s exceptionalism'
as constituting sufficient mandate for such military response, there had been
an outcry of sorts from diverse quarters questioning such self-ascribed
'exceptionalism'. Some had argued that under the concept of equality of
nations, it was dangerous for any one state to ascribe to itself the toga of
'exceptional', as such may give rise to quite negative and dire consequences for
entire humanity.
Russian President,
Vladimir Putin, who was then basking in the euphoria of having proffered a temporary
solution to the Syrian chemical weapon attack crisis, a solution which offered the Syrian
regime a face-saving exit route from imminent disaster and at the same time
portrayed the American regime as uncharacteristically ambivalent, sounded the
most potent rebuke to the American claim at 'exceptionalism' by cautioning in
an op-ed letter to the American people published in the New York Times, that:
"it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation."
Quite truly, there
could be negative consequences from any people perceiving themselves as
exceptional, as illustrated by Adolf Hitler’s portrayal of Aryans as a
super-breed of mankind which said categorization served to found efforts at
extermination of the Jews and other races deemed to be against the interest of
the purported ‘supreme breed’, during the Holocaust. Care must thus be taken in
defining 'exceptionalism' to avoid imparting in any population, a negative feeling of superiority over others, which
could be latched upon by warped minds to unleash hurtful acts against the rest
of mankind.
When one
however adopts the liberal interpretation of 'exceptional' as connoting
'extraordinary', 'uncommon', 'out of the ordinary', 'rare', 'unprecedented',
'unexpected', 'surprising' and 'peculiar', it becomes pertinent, in assessing
Barack Obama's claim to 'exceptionalism' of the United States and its peoples,
to compare that countries response, conduct and role in contemporary global
situations with that of other countries.
In the
course of the past decade, the spate and scale of natural disasters, across the
globe has been increasing, with mind numbing consequences on the populations
where such catastrophes occur. Mankind seems to be under attack from nature. Disasters
such as Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Typhoons, Droughts and a
plethora of other natural calamities, have left millions dead in their wake and
caused unquantifiable damages and destruction to property and livelihoods. From Indonesia to Chile, Iran to the United
States, Ethiopia to Haiti, Turkey to China and now the Philippines, landscape
altering disasters have served to remind man of how susceptible he is to the
awesome forces of nature.
In all
these disasters, irrespective of the ethnicity, race, religious inclination,
official ideological leanings or other peculiarities of the victim-countries,
one country has always taken leadership in terms of rendering assistance,
providing much needed emergency medical services and supplies and leading in
rescue and recovery efforts. At great costs to itself, this same country,
though it has its own domestic economic and poverty problems, and while other
equally endowed countries tend to ‘look after their own’, goes the extra mile
to render a timely helping hand to cushion the devastating effects of natural
disasters on the people so affected. That sounds like exceptional to me.
The ongoing
massive deployment of United States resources and expertise, inclusive of the
Air-craft carrier USS George Washington with its entire fleet of support ships and personnel,
hundreds of thousands of relief supplies with accompanying expert volunteers,
to assist victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, during a period when countries
which are geographically more contiguous to the disaster area either pretend
not to be aware of the scale of the disaster, or take into consideration ideological/ongoing
disagreements with the victim-State, or secretly look forward to large scale American
intervention again seems indicative of exceptionalism.
Whilst well
endowed neighboring countries to the Philippines, particularly China on the one hand, which has
notoriously refused to deploy its 14,000 ton, state-of-the-art hospital ship (‘Peace
Ark’- which is one of the biggest of its kind in the world) in assistance, and unnecessarily
and perhaps childishly appearing to base its miserly, and probably insulting, financial assistance to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan on a preexisting territorial dispute
with the Philippines, and good old Russia on the other, slyly looks in the other
direction away from the Philippines; a country from across the ocean takes leadership.
This again is indicative of exceptionalism.
Some may
advance arguments that such ‘exeptionalism’ is undertaken with the thought of
long term gain – well, tell that to the people whose lives and being has been saved by the timely
arrival of much needed assistance. Of course there should be reward for good
deeds. If international relations between States were predicated on doing good
with the intention of getting rewards in future, the world would be a far
better place than what it is today.
As we
commiserate with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan and the entire population of the
Philippines, one can only hope that more countries will try to be as exceptional
as the United States.
Picture: Devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan
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