Narcissism is the open-and-shut condition of the elites who fashion and execute American foreign policy. And they are utterly incapable of seeing their country as it is.
Reception held in Tianjin, China, in honor of heads of state and government and their spouses attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Aug. 31, 2025. (Press Service of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan/CC BY 4.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
All those malign authoritarians, more than 20 of them, who gathered in Tianjin at the end of August for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: This was a festival of anti–Americanism, you need to know.
No other way to understand it. Making it all worse, Xi Jinping then invited more than two dozen heads of state to Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the 1945 victory.
How dare the Chinese president organize an elaborate military parade to celebrate China’s role in the historical defeat of the Imperial Japanese Army. How dare he stir pride in the People’s Republic’s determination to defend its sovereignty while refuting the revisionism — nonsensical but prevalent — that airbrushes the Chinese Communist Party out of the Second World War’s history.
The temerity of this man to suggest it was other than the Americans and their corrupt clients, the Chinese Nationalists, who did the fighting and won the war. Let us not, for heaven’s sake, make any mention of the 12 million to 20 million Chinese — there is no precise figure — who died in consequence of Imperial Japan’s aggressions.
No, nothing to honor in any of this. Between the S.C.O. and the festivities in Beijing it was all faintly demonic, a thinly veiled challenge to what the United States and the rest of the West insists is a “rules-based order.”
I keep a file labeled “Sentences to love in The New York Times.” From it: “It shows how Mr. Xi is trying to turn history, diplomacy and military might into tools for reshaping a global order that has been dominated by the United States.”
The mainstream reporting on the S.C.O. and the subsequent gathering in Beijing went on obsessively for days. You would think the Chinese were on the brink of starting another Pacific War and “invading” Taiwan—“invading” in quotation marks because a nation cannot invade territory that historically belongs to it.
As I read through the coverage I marveled at the wall-to-wall West-centricity of it. The Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, various others, even the North Koreans: They think of nothing and do nothing that does not arise from their all-consuming animosity toward the United States and altogether the West. So you read in the reporting of these events.
Then along came Donald Trump, who addressed Xi on his Truth Social platform with this, referencing the Russian and North Korean leaders as he watched the proceedings live: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as you conspire against the United States of America.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang on June 18, 2024. (President of Russia)
There is no beating the Trumpster when it comes to stating the case forthrightly. The mainstream press can strike the pose of objectivity all it likes, but Trump, the id of the late-phase imperium, comes right out and says it: The non–West is against us. Anti–American animosity is its sole motivation, its very raison d’être.
I write here not of our dissolute press, whose mission these past two dozen years — I take the events of September 11, 2001, as the point of departure — has been to prevent Americans from seeing and understanding the 21st century’s realities. Neither is the blunt instrument now lodged in the White House my topic.
No, the press and the president are merely exhibits, symptoms of a national failing that transcends either of these. This is the problem of America’s self-absorption, the pervasive narcissism that, it now becomes evident, is a primary cause of our troubled republic’s increasingly hostile relations with others and, so, its swift descent into isolation.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Narcissus is a youth of transcendent beauty who spurns Echo, the nymph who loves him, and becomes infatuated with his own reflection in a pool of water. He thereafter takes to rejecting all admirers.
Narcissus is thus blind, but not only to others: He is also blind to himself. This fulfills the prophecy Tiresias made on his, Narcissus’s, birth: He will live long, the mythical seer said, “so long as he never knows himself.”
The Newest Narcissus; or, The Hero of our days, a cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne, Punch, or the London Charivari, April, 1892. (Project Gutenburg, Public Domain)
Narcissism is the open-and-shut condition of the elites who fashion and execute American foreign policy. They see only themselves when they look abroad at others. And they are utterly incapable of seeing themselves as they are or their country as it is.
It is dangerous to be America’s enemy, Henry Kissinger once remarked in an often-quoted comment, but it is fatal to be America’s friend. This is the United States as run by the narcissistic cliques who set the imperium’s course. Nothing and no one matters beyond their own power.
I think too much of Americans to assign this condition to them out of hand. No, it is the media’s task to impose this condition on Americans. Consider again how the press covered Tianjin and Beijing: We are encouraged in every sentence to see our reflections in those events, for they were all about us.
Read a few of these pieces carefully, I urge. You find correspondents in this or that bureau abroad who rarely quote Chinese or Russian or even European sources in support of the reporting. No, they call reliably conformist scholars or think tank denizens back in the States to tell them how to think about what is going on in China or Russia or wherever it may be.
See what I mean? Journalism this flaccid is a new one on me. If it is not American narcissism as it is in practice I do not know what else to call it.
Did you read anything in the American press about Xi’s proposal for a “Global Governance Initiative” to assist in the pursuit of a more just and equitable world order?
What about the Chinese leader’s announcement in Tianjin of a new S.C.O. development bank, grants of 2 billion renminbi, $280 million, to S.C.O. members, and an additional 10 billion renminbi, $1.4 billion, in loans?
Or his speech calling for the historical record of the Pacific War — corrupted precisely as the West cravenly erases the Soviet Union’s decisive role in defeating the Reich — to be corrected?
Let me help you out. No, no, and no. The policy cliques are indifferent to these things and you are meant not to see them, blindness to our world the preferred condition. The policy people in Washington have been captivated by their own reflections ever since they set out to achieve global dominance almost immediately after the 1945 victories.
And so long as American power was hegemonic this did not matter. Diplomacy, as Boutros Boutros–Ghali memorably remarked after the United States forced him as out as the U.N.’s sec-gen, is for the weaker nations; the strong have no need of it.
There is need of it now, to state the obvious. And we find America to be self-blinded, stumbling, uncomprehending, and altogether incapable in this, a century of swift and momentous change.
Washington’s prevalent narcissism renders proper statecraft more or less impossible, as there has been, just as Boutros–Ghali astutely observed, no need of it for most of the past eight decades. And we cannot put this down to Donald Trump alone: This has been less obviously but just as true of the administrations that preceded his.
“[W]e find America to be self-blinded, stumbling, uncomprehending, and altogether incapable in this, a century of swift and momentous change.”
At this point the late-phase imperium is more or less entirely dependent on force as its mode of expression in the community of nations.
Parenthetically, this is how I read the Trump regime’s stunning decision to rename the Defense Department the War Department, just as it was called until 1949, when it was judged necessary to veil the arriving era of America’s imperial aggressions.
Military force, increasingly vicious varieties of coercion, sanctions that amount to collective punishment, in the case of Palestinians the refusal of visas: It is all Washington can think of doing as it responds so defensibly to the 21st century. It will, of course, lead nowhere but to further isolation and decline.
At a press conference in Beijing last Tuesday, as the days of diplomacy and celebration drew to a close, a correspondent asked Vladimir Putin what he thought of Trump’s “Say hello as they conspire against us” remark on Truth Social. The Russian president’s reply was a model of statesmanship and clear thinking:
“The president of the United States is not devoid of humor — everything is clear, everyone knows it well….
I can tell you, and I hope he will hear it as well: It may seem strange, but during these four days of negotiations, both informal and formal, no one has ever expressed any negative opinions about the current American administration….
The activities of the SCO and those of our partners, including our strategic partners, are not aimed at fighting anyone, but rather at finding the best ways to develop ourselves, our countries, our peoples, and our economies.”
It is a point that cannot be made too often, so commonly is it missed. The emergence of the non–West as a bloc of nations has not a shred of anti–Americanism in it. These nations would indeed welcome the United States, with its capital, its technologies, and so on, to participate fulsomely in building the new world order to which they are dedicated.
Only hegemons are unwelcome in this decidedly ecumenical undertaking. Only narcissists. Whether or not America can at last stop staring at its own reflection to see the world around it will determine its fate in our evolving century.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.
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Pat, about that narcissist thing. Great call. It is pretty obvious isn’t i!
Great stuff here Patrick.
I have a question for you,. I’m curious are you familiar with Jane Mayer’s 2016 Dark Money. – The Hidden Story of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Best seller doubleday.
380 pages of text, large print double spaced, 46 pages of notes. And she has not been sued as far as it know. The book is so stuffed with info / data it should weigh a ton.
The narcissism began with our revolution to justify rebellion and pretend our principles is why we used help from all the other enemies of the British empire to recoup losses by invading European and Russian monarchies to solve wasteful opulent spending.
As for principles we put them off for later and are still suffering from using Civil War as part of our solution. We only tried solving segregation due to communist criticism of our rights. We have yet ti install an equal rights for women amendment and still has a system designed to please plantation owners and creating endless culture war over religious ambiguity.versus secular rights.
Not really a sign of superior government run by massive money.
As always – PL – illuminating on the character of the those rubbishing our world – and with classical references to feed our souls – thirsty for writing not cliché-ridden prose. I note you have a lot of appreciative readers, too.
We started out that way believing we are the new inheritors of of the old world empires but leaving slavery out for later to continue plaguing us yet today or the fear of women voting or being President. Knowingly ignoring our own principles that required criticism from communism to end segregation and flip the parties leading to our current new civil culture warfare.
We weaponize countries like Afghanistan but miss WWII.
A two theater war against communism using weaponized countries to then defeat at the end. Now we say we need a military capable of a two theater war which would exactly be WWII all over again since it actually set us back a bit.We may have dreamed of saving the USSR using our new bomb that came too late to be useful for anything but testing and calibration. Dreams of full spectrum dominance still dancing in nuclear clouded thinking.
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Eloquent, erudite and wise. A wonderful start to my day. Thank you Patrick.
Bravo, again to Patrick Lawrence whose insightful essays allow his readers to reflect on our country and the rest of the world for which it shares.
There is an expression when used, as it has too often, makes me crimge when uttered, it is “American Exceptionalism.” This was first coined by a 19th century French political scientist, Alexis de Tocqueville. A praise of our founding principles for democracy.
Three hundred years later, I find it in bad taste when spoken by an American or Americans leadership. How dare us-have we no modesty?
Lawrence Patrick is spot-on dubbing our attitude as “narcissism.” Too many still believe it is our American exceptionalism entitlement to control the world.
Great bit of writing,well worth the read,thank you
Whenever I read an article like this it leaves me wondering. How is it that when I meet Americans I find generous intelligent and thoughtful people but their ‘so-called’ democracy always produces a government that is so opposed to all that.
Is that what the 3rd Reich was, Patrick? Narcissistic?
Yes, trying to access information relying on American mainstream media is to be consistently obscured by barriers. This is true of reports dealing with our own country as well as the rest of the world. How some of us get around what you call narcissism has to do with the willingness to search outside such as individual journalists from other countries, ex-pats and larger groups of writers such as the Consortium News and RT-English. RT-English used to broadcast from the USA until around 2017. I would post articles from many of these sources on facebook so that others could get “news of the world” from the world. Unfortunately some of this posting was and is being censored. Facebook has more than once warned me about “community standards” being violated and at times have cut me off. Never once had they told me what those community standards were. I read constantly, fiction and non-fiction and even American novelists when writing mysteries, as an example, with an international theme often treat Russia and/or some other countries negatively using the worst of stereotypes or crimes. Our schools must be complicit in this. It is als true of the so-called “woke” as any other sub-group.
Another masterpiece by Patrick Lawrence. You have those psychologically stunted fake leaders pegged.
What is the cause of the USA’s “governing and business elite” narcissistic disorder? For surely, it is not the regular people pushing more war and destructive conditions on the greatest number of the population(themselves). Google the causes and you come up with basically nothing. Genetics, abuse, overindulgence in childhood. Take your pick. Intuition says: when you are loved for yourself, for simply being, the miracle of this particular embodied life you evolve less burdened by having to please or having to avoid being seen. You understand yourself not as an object. You are part of the whole breathing life of Gaia. The creatures are your family as are the stars, the flora, and loam. You are so inside you are outside, a synergy. This so called elite must have had childhoods that seeded an insatiable craving where in physical adulthood grasping and hoarding for the thing that’ll quench that driveness is all consuming. Like all addictions. Where there is only power, there is no love. There is no truth.
A masterpiece.
hxxps://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/08/as-brics-meet-to-fight-trump-tariffs-is-it-time-for-multi-polar-or-anti-polar-politics/
A good take on too much hopium around BRICS
For the time being having to develop themselves to defend against the West is a necessity.
But . . . Industrial civilization in whatever form is ecologically unsustainable . . . period.
The same military aggressions by one party calling the military: The Defense Department and the other party calling it: The War Department says everything you need to know about our “two party” democracy.
The War Department is more honest.
That’s why Ajamu Baraka considers the “lesser evil” the worse evil
” Industrial civilization in whatever form is ecologically unsustainable . . . period.”
Alas, this essential truth is lost in all the blather about how the economies of the future are going to manifest themselves. With temperatures at 50+ Cel. in parts of west Asia, unforgiving droughts, vicious ‘1000 year’ storms, etc, we’ll be fortunate just to survive. But the odds get slimmer by the day.
Thank you for summarizing the declining facilities of both the current resident of the White House, and the collective that calls itself the “West,” or “freedom-loving” nations.
And also for the reminder of Boutros Boutros–Ghali. I recall reading his book many years ago. The contents were thoughtful and as impressive as the title. “UNvanquished.”
I agree with Patrick completely, and with the comment appreciating this piece.
I’ll only go a little further: America is like a self-spoiling child, awarding ourselves all the trophies and gold stars no matter how badly we fare, riding our manifest destiny into worldwide perfection. Granting ourselves this superiority, it remains for its faithful media ony to fulsomely praise our excellence, no point in being perfect if we ever pause patting ourselves on the back. That’s why, e.g., Dems have no intention of changing themselves, they love themselves as they are.
About the Dems: If you ever listen to them in committee, many cannot handle differences of opinion, become upset and in the manner of barking dogs, shut down those they disagree with. Obedience is required by them as they demand yes or no answers and otherwise behave as if the peer being interviewed or trying to report is treated like a criminal and they are the prosecuting attorney. Narcissism is an understatement in these cases.
This piece is so beautifully written I read it twice.
The sound of it, the rhythm, its accuracy; an absolute pleasure to read.
So good with the morning coffee. Ambrosia, clearing the mind, lifting the spirit.
Great comment. I agree.
I read it out loud. There are a few infelicitous phrases for speech, but not many. Great article, although the sarcasm of the opening sentences might go over the heads of the narcissists.
I strongly endorse Bill Appledorf’s comment. I also suggest to those who have not already done so , the interviews and books of Col. Jacques Baud,whose knowledge and understanding of diplomacy and militarism give us hope.
Bill Appledorf,
I agree. Other journalists may grasp what America is in relation to the rest of the world, as Mr. Lawrence does, but no other writes it more beautifully.