FRAUDULENT
DEBATE
This
false and tendentious presentation of the issues serves
the interests of our elites who want to suggest that the
unseemly scramble for money and the perquisites of power – the
American political process in other words – is really about
sharply distinct approaches to the art of governance. The
policies of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party
foreign policy types are of course indistinguishable. By
"peace" they mean the United States making war. By "stability"
they mean US intervention to create instability. By "multiethnic
harmony" they mean the United States sponsoring ethnic separatism
and waging war against a hated ethnic group of the hour.
By "honest broker" they mean the United States endorsing
Israel’s program and urging its acceptance on the Palestinians.
Democrats and Republicans are both committed to preserving
US global hegemony in perpetuity.
Yet
here is Robin
Wright writing breathlessly in the Los Angeles Times:
"America’s foreign policy community is increasingly anxious
about the Bush administration’s abrupt, tough-guy approach
to several of the key challenges facing the United States."
Abrupt? The Bush team comes to power following an Administration
that bombed more countries than any other. Evidently, the
members of America’s august "foreign policy community" did
not get anxious about the bombing of Bosnia, Yugoslavia,
Sudan, Afghanistan and, of course, Iraq almost every day
for ten years. Not one of these attacks had any basis in
international law or UN Resolution. Yet the "foreign policy
community" and our vaunted "internationalists" remained
untroubled. Depleted uranium in the Balkans? No problem
there. American soldiers patrolling the streets and hillsides
of ever more countries? Nothing wrong with that.
WE
LOVE THE RUSSIANS
So
what is causing the agitation? Apparently, the Bush Administration
is showing insufficient respect for Russia. "Gone are the
Clinton administration’s attempts to transform Russia into
a modern state and its ‘win-win’ view of the Washington-Moscow
relationship," laments
the New York Times. The Times takes it
self-evident that it is reasonable for the United States
to arrogate to itself the right to transform Russia into
a "modern state" – whatever "modern state" means. The
Times also takes it as self-evident that the Russians
too saw the Washington-Moscow relationship as one of "win-win."
Was the looting of Russia by a bunch of gangsters in the
name of a "privatization" policy pushed by Washington a
case of "win-win"? Were the Washington-imposed IMF nostrums
that reduced Russians to desperate poverty also "win-win"?
Such
issues are not to be raised and thus we maintain the image
of a caring, cooperative Democratic Party establishment.
According to Robin Wright, "The Clinton policy was based
on the belief that post-communist Russia needed to be welcomed
by the West and encouraged on the road to free markets and
democracy. Good relations smoothed out crises over issues
such as the Balkans, Clinton officials argued." James Hoge,
editor of Foreign Affairs the in-house journal of
the foreign policy establishment laments: "Why are they
[the Bush Administration] so interested in saying to Russia
that it’s mismanaging things, that it’s not that important
anymore, that they’ll take its views into account but not
treat them all that seriously? I’m mystified by it. What
can they possibly gain from this kind of schoolyard bellicosity
at this stage?" Former Clinton National Security Affairs
Adviser worries: "It’s extremely important that we remain
engaged with [the Russians]…It would be a mistake if we
downgraded our level of engagement with them." Parroting
Berger cliché for cliché is wee Jamie Rubin,
former flack for Madeleine Albright, who became famous for
the outrageousness of his lies during NATO’s bombing of
Yugoslavia: "The initial attempt to downgrade American relations
with Russia strikes me as verging on the petty," he lisps.
"Russia is a still a major military power and has influence
in parts of the world we care about."
Wright
quotes [Michael] McFaul, the Russia "expert" at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace who opines that one day
Russia could again turn away from the West and revive old
enmities. The Bush Administration, McFaul, "‘is showing
that it doesn’t value close relations with the Russians’."
NATO
AGAINST RUSSIA
"Welcomed
by the West"! "Good relations smoothed out crises over issues
such as the Balkans"! "Russia could again turn away from
the West and revive old enmities"! This is utter drivel.
The idea that the Clinton Administration pursued a conciliatory
policy towards Russia is laughable. It was the Clinton Administration
that pushed ahead with expansion of NATO, thereby breaking
the pledges that were made to the Russians following the
fall of the Berlin Wall that the West would not seek to
recruit the former Soviet Union’s satellites. It was the
Clinton Administration that used NATO aggressively against
Russia’s historic ally in the Balkans. It was the Clinton
Administration that time and again humiliated the Russians
by pursuing its vindictively anti-Serb policy. The Clinton
Administration repeatedly broke its pledges to the Russians
over Kosovo. The Russians were promised a zone of occupation.
They did not get it. Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo was
to be respected. The Administration set about creating an
independent state there. It was the Clinton Administration
that launched the American expansionist drive into Central
Asia turning former Soviet republics like Georgia and Azerbaijan
into NATO client states. The Clinton Administration no less
than the Bush Administration was determined to press ahead
with a missile defense system. Violation of the ABM Treaty
meant as little to the Clinton crowd as to the Bush crowd.
BUSH
WITHOUT ILLUSIONS
No
less than the out-of-power Clinton fan club the Bush toadies
are seeking to foster the illusion that a sea-change has
taken place in Washington. Hiding behind the matted hair
on their chests they snarl at the supposed "fuzzy internationalism"
that marked the Clinton years. They are no bunch of liberal
do-gooders, they tell us, full of unrealistic ideas about
changing human nature. They are not trying to build a "community
of like-minded nations." According to Bush spokesman
Ari Fleischer, the Administration’s policy towards Russia
will be "marked by realism." There will be no more
illusions about Russia. The Russians are not like we are
and therefore we will not trust them. Whether we have behaved
in a way that would induce them to trust us is of course
an issue not even worth bringing up.
Russia,
we are told, is "unreformed." In other words, it has not
been transformed into a mini-version of the United States.
According to Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, during the Clinton years "The United States certified
that reform was taking place where it was not…. The United
States should not be faulted for trying to help. But . .
. the United States should have ‘told the truth’ about what
was happening." This does not on the face of it sound unreasonable.
Except of course that Rice much like the New York Times
does not seem to think there is anything wrong about the
United States undertaking to "reform" another country. Nor
does she even consider the possibility that "what was happening"
was precisely the consequence of US-imposed policies.
WOLFOWITZ
DOCTRINE
As
far as the Bush Administration is concerned, "Russia without
illusion" means treating Russia with contempt. The Administration’s
attitude to the Russians was spelled out by Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s extraordinary attack in a recent
interview: "These people seem to be willing to sell anything
to anyone for money. It recalls Lenin’s phrase that the
capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang
them." It is hard to see why a representative of the
world’s leading champion of free markets and free trade
should disapprove of a country behaving in this thoroughly
capitalist way. Moreover, it does seem strange for the world’s
leading arms exporter to throw its hands up in horror at
the idea of the Russian seeking to make money by selling
arms.
A
few days ago a senior State Department official, John Beyrle,
met Ilyas Akhmadov, the Chechen separatist "foreign minister."
It took place right after the three car bomb attacks in
Stavropol which killed 22 people. The Russians are right
to see this as nothing short of a US endorsement of terrorism.
It also suggests that the United States does not regard
Russia’s borders as inviolable. Valdimir Putin made this
point starkly the other day. He likened the Chechen terrorists
to the Albanian terrorists attacking Macedonia. The Chechens
"were terrorists and those of them not willing to disarm…were
brought to justice…and we are witnessing absolutely the
same thing in Macedonia these days…Nothing has been done
to disarm the terrorists…And I would like to call those
who are attacking Macedonia terrorists, not rebels. Things
should be called by their own names." Putin is of course
well aware that the Albanian terrorists attacking Macedonia
were armed and trained by the United States. Thus the meeting
between Beyrle and Akhmadov will simply be further confirmation
of US complicity in the attempted breakup of Russia.
US
GRAND STRATEGY
The
United States clearly intends to sponsor all manner of ethnic
separatist movements within Russia so as to weaken and demoralize
the Russian people. The policy of promoting ethnic separatism
in the Balkans – all in the name of anti-nationalism
– created a bunch of tiny, weak, vulnerable ethnically-based
US satellites. The Russians fear that may be in store for
them. The Bush Administration does not want to downgrade
its relationship with Russia. It wants to push Russia out
of Europe altogether, lock it out of the oil and gas riches
of the Caspian and surround it with hostile NATO states.
The United States is seeking to expand NATO and to incorporate
the Baltic States within it. Doubtless, NATO membership
for Georgia, Azerbaijan and the other Central Asian Republics
is down the road.
The
proposed missile defense system is yet another threat directed
at Russia. Why would one to scrap an arms control agreement
like the 1972 ABM Treaty unless one sought a unilateral
military advantage so as to pursue an aggressive policy?
At the moment the its nuclear-tipped missile force is about
all Russia has to ward off US imperial designs. So long
as the Russians can hit New York and Washington there is
a limited amount of mischief the Americans can do. The Russians
are right to worry about the intentions of the Bush Administration.
But things would have been no better under a Gore Administration.
Gore, like Wolfowitz, never saw a US intervention he did
not like. He even boasted of his willingness to spend $100
million more on defense than Bush. But you won’t read about
that in the New York Times.
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