Cast the first stone
In the latest legal farce, four class action lawsuits have been filed in the US court system, against the CCP for reparation for “damages” incurred during the coronavirus pandemic. These lawsuits demand trillions of US dollars in compensation from the CCP for their alleged responsibility in the spread of the virus internationally. The international community has not witnessed such delusional legal swagger, since the Nueremberg comedy, following the Second World War. Having exercised unchallenged hegemonic power, since the collapse of the USSR, the US political and cultural institutions seem to have forgotten the geopolitical realities regarding international relations.
Unlike the 1990s, the current international reality is not governed by a monopole hegemonic superpower; rather, the world has become multipolar, with competing regional powers and realigning power-bloc alliances. Obtuse policy measures against by one regional power against another, as was displayed in the recent trade war between the Trump regime and the CCP, causes reverberations across the world, resulting in traditional allies to become hostile and normally indifferent interests to align together. The class action legal suit by private citizens of a nation-state against a sovereign government of another illustrates the hubris of a regional power, ignorant of its own place in the evolving international order, with no apparent longer-term geopolitical aims, convinced of its nonexistent international political authority.
The CCP is not some third-rate narco-state, like Mexico, to be bullied in an amateur extortion scam. The CCP rules one-third of the world population in its iron fist, with the second largest economy in the world, directing a colonial empire that stretches from Madagascar to the United Kingdom. The idea that a regional superpower constructing artificial islands in the Pacific, in direct violation of international court rulings, would submit trillions of US dollars in tribute because some overly entitled US citizens’ feelings were hurt would make for a great comedy theatre, if the situation was not a tragedy born of a delusional society. That a judicial system of a nation-state would even entertain these legal insanity indicates that the society in general has lost contact with reality.
Contrary to popular US conception, China is not a member state of its union, nor is it a protectorate. China does not share US legal and juridical assumptions and principles. None of her subjects acknowledge US legal authority claiming to govern their lives. US has no ability to enforce any legal rulings, upon a single CCP subject without consent from the CCP. The CCP is an independent entity, with no obligations to abide by the US, or any other foreign, demands upon its government. Thus, by what authority do the US court system claim to adjudicate responsibility for alleged damages? Unlike the defeated Third Reich, the US does not currently stand upon the rubble of Chinese civilisation to demand anything.
Even if the CCP agrees to the ludicrous demands from the US judicial institution, what precedent have the US, then unleashed upon the world? Will the Iraqis lodge a case action law suit against the US government for the death and destruction it wrought against Iraq, during the first and second Iraq wars and the subsequent decades long occupation? When will the Libyans submit a law suit against the US regime for destroying one of the most prosperous North African nation-states using NATO bombs? President Assad of Syria would need to wait for his day in court against the US and NATO regimes, in undermining Syrian civil order. No nation-state, and no race of people, has jurisdiction of legal or moral judgement over the world. Rather than seeking scapegoats, as is the current humanist cultural norm, the US ought to look to its own sins.