The power of words can never be understated. Expressions, slogans and memes can very much build our way of thinking and to an extent push us into action. Probably one of the most brilliant self-serving ideas in human history to be disseminated across the globe was Woodrow Wilson’s principle of “National Self-Determination”, which has convinced numerous generations into taking action that serves Washington’s interests unbeknownst to them. But this raises the question, could there be a counter to this logic going forward into a Multipolar or Illiberal world?

As WWI was winding down European society was ripe for change and then American President Woodrow Wilson put forth a fourteen point plan as to what should be done in the near future. It was the Great Reset of its time. One smaller bit of this big plan has had very far reaching effects. In the document Wilson said…

“National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self determination’ is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.”

The brilliance of this is that the leader of the American nation actually understood one thing about it, that actually is truly exceptional. During Wilson’s time, anyone who was remotely European looking could essentially become American simply upon arriving by boat, while the great European powers were stuck in their Westphalian ways restricted and divided up when it came to ethnic identity. Meaning that if every possible scorned population of some tiny ethnicity is deserving of its own independence, then all of America’s rivals would be doomed to being broken up, while America could expand as much as it likes for any new immigrants would be instantly American.

The United States did an absolutely fantastic job even before this of using Old Europe against itself. All the talented (and untalented) individuals who were the victims of pogroms and especially religious oppression found a way out by fleeing to America. If you were on the losing side of any European ethno-religious slobberknocker, a new American future awaited you.

To this day the narcissistic idea of “independence” for the sake of independence is an international norm. The question of what is to be gained by independence or just how real said independence would be is never considered. The question of why being independent is somehow inherently good is also not open to discussion or explanation.

All we know in our subconscious mind is that we live in Liberal individualist societies which makes “independence” tickle us deep inside. The idea of being independent is sort of like the Liberal state of Nirvana with nothing higher than it. It means we have achieved the glorious state of “not needing anyone”. This is something like attaining enlightenment via the principles of the Enlightenment. In fact, we are so in love with this self-aggrandizement that even pathetically weak vassal states like the Ukraine are nearly orgiastic over their independence while they exist only as an “anti-Russia” controlled completely by Washington. The irony that American troops march at their independence parades is lost on them.

Again, this obsession with independence even in its most fake form also has a narcissistic component to it. It allows the Catalonians and Scottish feel some sort of baseless pride as they try to break away from their respective masters only to remain fully entrenched in NATO or the EU in Catalonia’s case.

This mechanism of eternally breaking up larger nations/civilizations for the independence of some often unheard-of minority has served to create the Monopolar world we live in today, one in which America has had ever decreasing potential competition. The great empires that spanned over massive territory containing many religions and ethnicities have in contrast been demonized. Not to say this was done on purpose, but “The Empire” in any video game, movie, or fantasy novel is always the totalitarian bad guys. It isn’t that the “tiny helpless country = win” structure that Wilson proposed is the best idea, but the counter to it is actively trounced upon for every generation. The masses see Luke Skywalker achieve his whitehat goals, but forget to ponder what would happen to the masses if a galactic empire did fall apart. Then again you could probably ask the Russians, they lived through it all. Long story short one of the dirtiest political words we have around today is “empire”.

The answer to this proposition probably lies in breaking the narcissistic glee of tiny independent nations, that are neither independent nor particularly nations. Scotland has a lot more value as part of a British Empire than it does as an independent nation with no economic or military force so to speak of, thus no relevance besides that Mel Gibson movie. The Former Soviet Republics were convinced that the Russians were holding them back. Now after two generations, independence has earned them the right to sell watermelons off the MKAD highway in Moscow or to scrub glorious Polish toilets for a pittance. On a global scale the cultures of those former bits of the USSR have had zero resonance unlike the Soviet period where they played a major role and had some relevance on one sixth of the Earth’s land surface.

Being a small fish in a big pond is pointless, being a smaller wolf in a big pack is a much better offer especially since lone wolves tend to not make it through the winter. Perhaps the counter to Wilson’s independence is an offer for the right to greatness. For the right to “come home”. For the right to reap the benefits of an empire while maintaining one’s identity.

In the same way that America offered an exceptional vision to the world that worked in its best interests the Multipolar World, especially Russia needs to do the same. Russia and the Former Soviet Republics are living proof that “independence” does not always work and that numerous parts of the Russian Empire actually asked to join up for protection against extermination.

Russia’s unique structure presents an offer of decreased independence in exchange for guaranteed cultural survival, which is generally what all these tiny break-away nations always say that they want. Autonomy sounds nice but it is often false and leads to one being globalized into nothingness, whereas semi-autonomy under an empire may be the next sweet offer to the world from Moscow.

Historians and psychiatrists – including Dr. Sigmund Freud himself who co-authored a book on Wilson – have endlessly debated whether Wilson was sane and just deluded or raving mad. Freud clearly inclined to the latter view. And he had ample evidence to support him. What is most alarming is that, as Henry Kissinger – significantly not born an American at all – points out, all US presidents either share Wilson’s ridiculous messianic fantasies or feel they must pretend to.

During the supposed dark age of the Cold War from 1945 to 1989, the recognition that the Soviet Union was at least as militarily powerful as the United States imposed the disciplines of realism and restraint on US policymakers. But since the Berlin Wall came down, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved and the Soviet Union peacefully disassembled, that restraint has vanished.

Every US president since then really believes that the United States is unique in history and fated to remake the entire world in its own image. History is over, American triumph over the whole world is ensured. And since that globalist vision is inevitable, flawless, perfect and virtuous, it follows that every bombing campaign, every war, every imposition of economic sanctions, the toppling of every government and the destruction of every society that dares to disagree is divinely approved.

Half a century ago, I thought as an impressionable teenager back in my native Ireland that the fiasco of the Vietnam War was smashing forever that extraordinary American combination of innocence, arrogance and ignorance of trying to remake Southeast Asia in the image of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s fantasies of Texas.

I was of course wrong: The tale of the 21st century has been a descent of successive, equally manic, ignorant and crazed US presidents into one needless, wretched, nation-smashing bungle after another.

The unimaginably ignorant and stupid George W. Bush – also from Texas – went charging into Iraq and Afghanistan, unleashing a new cycle of endless wars.

In late 2008, I attended a diplomatic dinner at the State Department to launch then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s pride and joy – yet another Israeli-Palestinian “peace initiative” that everyone knew had not the slightest chance of getting anywhere.

Every veteran US, Arab, European and Israeli diplomat who attended the dinner recognized this. Yet all of them politely pretended to be impressed and enthusiastic while Rice, who clearly believed every absurd word she uttered, gave her presentation. In her childish enthusiasm she seemed to be more like a teenage cheerleader at American college football games. She had not the slightest doubt that she would succeed in a few weeks where generations and even centuries of diplomats and leaders from all over the world had failed. How American!

Barack Obama was cut from the same mold. He was farcically offered – and typically accepted – the Nobel Peace Prize after only one year in office and just compounded the damage.

Obama casually approved the destabilization and destruction of Ukraine, the collapse of US-Russia superpower relations to levels unimagined since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the destruction of Libya, Syria and Yemen. He even blithely approved an unprecedented $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion program guaranteeing a ruinous arms race for decades to come. Yet he really believed he was a great force for peace. The bubble of his vanity and complacent self-regard was as impenetrable as Woodrow Wilson’s.

Many outstanding studies have been published about Wilson’s absurd vanities, ignorance and madness at Versailles in 1919 from the writings of British diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson (Peacemaking 1919) and the great Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace to Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan’s magisterial Paris 1919 and Gene Smith’s short and haunting masterpiece When the Cheering Stopped.

The bottom line is clear: Wilson did what he did not just because he was vain, ignorant and raving mad (He was also an ugly anti-black racist who re-segregated as much of the US federal government as he could): He did so because he was American.

Wilson created an independent Polish state in the heart of Europe and then gave it a free hand to conquer every neighboring nationality in sight: Just as George W. Bush embraced the Kurds and set off decades of unresolved wars across the Middle East ever since.

Yet successive generations of Americans never learn. And nor do the endless parade of their would be “friends” and “partners” like the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Georgians and now Ukrainian neo-Nazis who eagerly embrace mantras of “liberty!” and free markets!” mindless of how soon their American protectors will tire of their new toys and throw them aside.

After World War II, another US president who admired Wilson launched the United States on its path of endless wars and global confrontations. Yet Harry S. Truman also recognized the awful absurdities and dangers of Wilson’s madness.

So it was Truman, a humble Midwesterner who plowed fields behind a stinking mule until he was almost 30 and who never enjoyed the “blessings” of American higher education who said, “There is nothing new in the world except for the history you don’t already know.”

Amid the bi-partisan mania over the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, fevered, anti-Russian rhetoric in the United States makes conceivable what until recently seemed inconcievable: that dangerous tensions between Russia and the U.S. could lead to military conflict. It has happened before.

In September 1959, during a brief thaw in the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev made his famous visit to the United States. In Los Angeles, the Soviet leader was invited to a luncheon at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios in Hollywood and during a long and rambling exchange he had this to say:

“Your armed intervention in Russia was the most unpleasant thing that ever occurred in the relations between our two countries, for we had never waged war against America until then; our troops have never set foot on American soil, while your troops have set foot on Soviet soil.”

These remarks by Khrushchev were little noted in the U.S. press at the time – especially compared to his widely-reported complaint about not being allowed to visit Disneyland.  But even if Americans read about Khrushchev’s comments it is likely that few of them would have had any idea what the Soviet Premier was talking about.

But Soviet – and now Russian — memory is much more persistent.  The wounds of foreign invasions, from Napoleon to the Nazis, were still fresh in Russian public consciousness in 1959 — and even in Russia today — in a way most Americans could not imagine.  Among other things, that is why the Russians reacted with so much outrage to the expansion of NATO to its borders in the 1990’s, despite U.S. promises not to do so during the negotiations for the unification of Germany.

The U.S. invasion Khrushchev referred to took place a century ago, after the October Revolution and during the civil war that followed between Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik forces, the Red Army against White Russians.  While the Germans and Austrians were occupying parts of Western and Southern Russia, the Allies launched their own armed interventions in the Russian North and the Far East in 1918. 

The Allied nations, including Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S., cited various justifications for sending their troops into Russia: to “rescue” the Czech Legion that had been recruited to fight against the Central Powers; to protect allied military stores and keep them out of the hands of the Germans; to preserve communications via the Trans-Siberian Railway; and possibly to re-open an Eastern Front in the war.  But the real goal – rarely admitted publicly at first—was to reverse the events of October and install a more “acceptable” Russian government. As Winston Churchill later put it, the aim was to “strangle the Bolshevik infant in its cradle.”

In addition to Siberia, the U.S. joined British and French troops to invade at Archangel, in the north of Russia, on September 4, 1918.

In July 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had personally typed the “Aide Memoire” on American military action in Russia that was hand-delivered by the Secretary of War at the beginning of August to General William Graves, the designated commander of the U.S. troops en route to Siberia. Wilson’s document was curiously ambivalent and contradictory. It began by asserting that foreign interference in Russia’s internal affairs was “impermissible,” and eventually concluded that the dispatch of U.S. troops to Siberia was not to be considered a “military intervention.”

The Non-Intervention Intervention

But the American intervention began when U.S. soldiers disembarked at Vladivostok on August 16, 1918.  These were the 27th and 31st infantry regiments, regular army units that had been involved in pacification of U.S.-occupied Philippines.  Eventually there were to be about 8,000 U.S. troops in Siberia.

Judging from his memoires, General Graves was puzzled by how different things looked on the ground in Siberia than his vague instructions seemed to suggest.  For one thing, the Czechs hardly needed rescuing.  By the Summer of 1918 they had easily taken control of Vladivostok and a thousand miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

For the next year and a half, General Graves, by all appearances an honest and non-political professional soldier, struggled to understand and carry out his mandate in Siberia.  He seems to have driven the U.S. State Department and his fellow allied commanders to distraction by clinging stubbornly to a literal interpretation of Wilson’s Aide Memoire as mandating strict non-intervention in Russian affairs. The general seemed incapable of noticing the broad “wink” with which everyone else understood these instructions.

Graves strove to maintain “neutrality” among the various Russian factions battling for control of Siberia and to focus on his mission to guard the railroad and protect Allied military supplies.  But he was also indiscrete enough to report “White” atrocities as well as “Red” ones, to express his distaste for the various Japanese-supported warlords in Eastern Siberia and, later, to have a skeptical (and correct) assessment of the low popular support, incompetence and poor prospects of the anti-Bolshevik forces.

For his troubles, it was hinted, absurdly, that the General may have been a Bolshevik sympathizer, a charge that in part motivated the publication of his memoirs. 

In the face of hectoring by State Department officials and other Allied commanders to be more active in support of the “right” people in Russia, Graves repeatedly inquired of his superiors in Washington whether his original instructions of political non-intervention were to be modified. No one, of course, was willing to put any different policy in writing and the general struggled to maintain his “neutrality.”

By the Spring and Summer of 1919, however, the U.S. had joined the other Allies in providing overt military support to “Supreme Leader,” Admiral Alexander Kolchak’s White regime, based in the Western Siberian city of Omsk.  At first this was carried out discretely through the Red Cross, but later it took the form of direct shipments of military supplies, including boxcars of rifles whose safe delivery Graves was directed to oversee.

Domestic Intervention 

But the prospects for a victory by Kolchak soon faded and the Whites in Siberia revealed themselves to be a lost cause.  The decision to remove the US troops was made late in 1919 and General Graves, with the last of his staff, departed from Vladivostok on 1 April 1920.

In all, 174 American soldiers were killed during the invasion of Russia. (The Soviet Union was formed on Dec. 28, 1922.)

Interestingly, pressure to withdraw the U.S. troops from Siberia came from fed-up soldiers and home-front opinion opposing the continued deployment of military units abroad long after the conclusion of the war in Europe. It is notable that during a Congressional debate on the Russian intervention one Senator read excerpts from the letters of American soldiers to support the case for bringing them home.

Then, as in later U.S. foreign interventions, the soldiers had a low opinion of the people they were supposed to be liberating.  One of them wrote home on July 28, 1919 from his base in Verkhne-Udinsk, now Ulan Ude, on the southern shore of Lake Baikal:

“Life in Siberia may sound exciting but it isn’t. It’s all right for a few months but I’m ready to go home now…  You want to know how I like the people? Well I’ll tell you, one couldn’t hardly call them people but they are some kind of animal. They are the most ignorant things I ever saw. Oh, I can get a word of their lingo if they aren’t sore when they talk. They sure do rattle off their lingo when they get  sore. These people have only one ambition and that is to drink more vodka than the next person.”

Outside of the State Department and some elite opinion, U.S. intervention had never been very popular.  By now it was widely understood, as one historian noted, that there may have been “many reasons why the doughboys came to Russia, but there was only one reason why they stayed: to intervene in a civil war to see who would govern the country.”

After 1920, the memory of “America’s Siberian Adventure,” as General Graves termed it, soon faded into obscurity.  The American public is notorious for its historic amnesia, even as similar military adventures were repeated again and again over the years since then.

It seems that we may need to be reminded every generation or so of the perils of foreign military intervention and the simple truth asserted by General Graves: 

“…there isn’t a nation on earth that would not resent foreigners sending troops into their country, for the purpose of putting this or that faction in charge.  The result is not only an injury to the prestige of the foreigner intervening, but is a great handicap to the faction the foreigner is trying to assist.”

General Graves was writing about Siberia in 1918, but it could just as well have been Vietnam in the 1960s or Afghanistan and Syria now. Or a warning today about 30,000 NATO troops on Russia’s borders.

consortiumnews.com

Many have been critical of President Donald J. Trump's desire to cooperate with Russia. Yet, more than half a century ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt behaved in a similar manner towards Moscow and experienced similar forces.

The criticism towards both American presidents has been a natural response from the establishment in Washington, considering that since 1917, the behavior of the United States has been influenced by Woodrow Wilson’s idealism. Even Richard Nixon, the Cold War president who came closest to focusing on strategic interests, would recur to idealism from time to time, a seemingly inescapable part of “American nature.”

Another concrete example is the participation of Washington, DC in the diverse conflicts of the twentieth century. The justification for U.S. involvement was based not on strategic measures, but on a moral obligation to oppose injustice and oppression. As a result, the United States has intervened in wars where the value extracted from fighting in them has been minimal.

1917 was a crucial date in the relationship between the United States and Russia. In that year, the Bolsheviks would inaugurate a new type of government and society, seeking to displace the capitalist, liberal and bourgeois model that predominated in the world. Capitalist powers like the United States feared this possibility and did not recognize the new government in Russia, while aiding anti-Bolshevik forces.

The following year, Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points, which sought to create a world based on international cooperation, collective security, open markets and self-determination. The last concept was the most significant, as it implied that democracy would accompany this global transformation.

Both events caused a “clash of civilizations,” making it impossible for Russia to fit in, until 1933, when FDR decided to deviate from Wilson’s foreign policy. By the time of the Second World War, Roosevelt was one of the few American officials who understood that the Soviet Army could contain both Germany and Japan.

When Roosevelt became president in 1933, it was obvious that American policy towards Russia had been a failure. Not only did it not change its internal structure, but it was not able to dissuade the Soviets from carrying out anticapitalist activities abroad. Yet, perhaps more importantly, the United States was unable to take advantage of the expansion of the Soviet economic market.

The Soviets also appreciated the strategic potential of the United States. Soon after FDR became president, they started a correction course to abandon their isolationist policies. They sought to create a system of collective security that would contain both Japan and Germany. In 1934, the Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, and the following year it formed alliances with France.

But officials in the State and War Departments were suspicious of the Soviets, and sought to resist FDR’s policies with Russia. Many officials opposed the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, as well as military aid, but most importantly the plan to include them as a partner in the postwar world. These officials believed that the United States should obtain concessions from Moscow in return for aid. Roosevelt believed instead that the only condition for military aid should be that the Soviet Union continue fighting against Nazi Germany.

Fortunately, FDR was not persuaded or outmaneuvered by the officials who disagreed with him. Research from Albert Weeks has shown that the Lend-Lease program allowed the Red Army achieve victory against Nazi Germany, and therefore prevented the prolongation of the war and Germany’s development of weapons of mass destruction.

Some of these officials also waged dirty “wars” against FDR’s supporters, like when military attaché Joseph Michela had authorities investigate Col. Philip Faymonville for a “morals charge,” back then code for homosexuality.

While the New Deal needs to be taken into account when considering the criticism, FDR faced considerable opposition from Congress for his Russia policies, and in 1940, he told Rep. Martin Dies, “I do not regard the Communists as any present or future threat to our country. In fact, I look upon Russia as our strongest ally in the years to come. As I told you when you began your investigation, you should confine yourself to Nazis and Fascists.”

In July of 1935, Rep. Robert Rich of Pennsylvania declared, “Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat.”

Similarly, Trump has faced considerable opposition from the Democratic Party and certain GOP members, who have implored him not to break with Washington's policy towards Moscow. Some of these political entrepreneurs funded the collection of a dossier with largely uncorroborated allegations, which gives the impression that they feel Trump is at best a compromised fool and an agent of Russian influence or at worst a Russian agent and a traitor.

Trump has been attacked by certain commentators in the press, for praising Putin (as FDR had praised Stalin as a “great leader”). He has been chastised by those pundits for his desire to cooperate with what they perceive to be an authoritarian leader and a country whose values clash with the United States, undeserving of the trust or the help of this country.

And yet all those opponents claim to have the moral high ground while they ironically call for stronger relations with Saudi Arabia, or lack the courage to criticize it—a country that is the epitome of oppression and spreads extremist ideology throughout the world.

FDR also faced considerable opposition from civil society. Organizations like the American Liberty League were created to show that communism was a larger threat than Nazi Germany. They were supported by important figures and celebrities like New York governor Al Smith and aviator Charles Lindbergh.

But Roosevelt's desire for cooperation with Russia did not originate in ignorance or naïveté, but rather in the benefits he believed it would yield for both countries. Indeed, Walter Lippmann has said that Roosevelt was too cynical to believe he would be able to somehow charm Stalin.

On the other hand, Mary E. Glantz argues that those officials who opposed FDR allowed their ideological bias to affect their judgment. In fact, as Glantz has proved, military intelligence was distorted by American officials to predict that the Soviets would not be able to confront the German invasion of 1941 and that therefore giving them military aid would be a waste of resources.

Interestingly enough, political scientist Graham T. Allison has written that the main obstacle presidents must overcome is bureaucratic politics. An intelligent man, Roosevelt tried to maneuver around his critics and, instead of dealing with Joseph Stalin through the American ambassador in Moscow, he engaged him through personal diplomacy or through trusted advisers like Harry Hopkins. Then in 1937, due to anti-Russian bias, the Eastern European Affairs division at the State Department was merged with the Western European Affairs division, becoming the Division of European Affairs. The longtime Soviet specialist Robert Kelley was ordered away to Ankara.

In a similar turn of events, State Department veteran Patrick Kennedy, along with other bureaucratic high officials, were forced to resign in the early days of the Trump administration. It is no secret that many officials of the higher echelons of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency strongly disagree with Russia’s actions in Syria and the prospect of an alliance with Moscow.

FDR waged foreign policy in a manner unique for American political history. While he was influenced by Henry Stimson or Harry Hopkins, he was usually quite secretive with his plans. Similarly, Trump prefers to rely on a small council of trusted advisors, including Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and perhaps Mike Flynn. Trump decided to restructure his National Security Council, and sidelined two intelligence officials in favor of Bannon. Whether Trump’s secretive approach will work like it did for FDR remains to be seen, but what is sure is that Bannon is no “true leader of men,” as Winston Churchill called Harry Hopkins, chief diplomatic advisor to FDR.

Trump, like Roosevelt, understands that alienating a country as the Obama administration tried to do with Russia simply does not yield positive results. All the sanctions imposed against Russia have not stopped it from engaging in Syria, Crimea or eastern Ukraine.

Like Roosevelt, Trump also understands that Russia can be a great military partner against grave threats that disturb world peace. While Nazi Germany does not exist anymore, the most conventional threat is North Korea, and Moscow can help there through its influence on the Chinese; the most important unconventional threat is terrorism, primarily stemming from both Iraq and Syria, where Russia actively engages against radical groups.

Since 2011, Syria has seen a military strategy known as the “operation room” (ghurfat amaliyat). In most cases, when these battlefield alliances are formed, the most radical groups are the strongest (Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, etc.) and therefore able to pressure the weaker, more “secular” ones. Thus, Russia has targeted groups that are considered part of the U.S.-backed “moderate opposition,” because many of these weaker groups have been highly influenced by Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the most powerful force in the opposition after ISIS. Right now, the third-strongest force is led by Ahrar al-Sham, the other Salafist group in Syria, whose former leader had recently defected to Nusra (otherwise known as the Jabhat Fatah al-Sham). While Trump may not know the name of every single group in Syria, he understands the context that gave rise to the Russian strategy, and has often questioned the nature of the rebels backed by the United States.

For nearly two years, I have argued for the United States and Russia to exchange intelligence because of the grave dangers that these militant groups pose to the national security of the West. The Russians, through Assad, have people on the ground, an essential ingredient for intelligence gathering. For FDR and Stalin, intelligence sharing was crucial: indeed, the United Kingdom and United States shared their ULTRA and MAGIC information with the Soviets—of course without revealing the sources—starting in 1941. Stalin reciprocated with various gestures, such as allowing the Americans to use bases in Ukraine for bombing operations. Chuck Schumer recently said that if you give someone like Putin an inch he will take ten miles. This is wise advice—but if you give him the right strategic inch, he might give you ten miles in return.

While the relationship between FDR's America and Stalin's Russia was not perfect, with plenty of room for criticism and praise, it is without a doubt that Franklin D. Roosevelt showed a great interest in an alliance with Russia—yet his death, the heavy influence of U.S. diplomatic and bureaucratic officials on Harry S. Truman, and the fact that Moscow was at the height of its powers by the end of World War II marked the end of those ambitions. We will have to wait and see what happens with President Trump and Russia.

nationalinterest.org

«Our cause has been the cause of all mankind», Lyndon Johnson declared during the 1964 presidential election campaign. To reinforce his argument Johnson cited President Woodrow Wilson, who had similar things to say about American virtue. Nothing has changed: listen to Barack Obama talk about the altruism of the United States. ‘We are the «exceptional nation»,’ he often says.

These western and especially US virtues are mobilised to justify policies, wars, covert activities which are not virtuous at all. Let’s start with Wilson. He is best known for the «Fourteen Points», national self-determination, «democracy», open agreements, and so on. «Do as I say, not as I do,» Wilson might have cautioned in the backroom. He did not, for example, anticipate «self-determination» for the Philippines, a US colony, or closer to home, for American «Negros».

You see, Wilson was a segregationist and supporter of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. We need the KKK, Wilson believed, to keep «colored folks» in line, especially those who came back from France having served in the US armed forces. They might think they were entitled to the same rights as white people. As American blacks were to be subject to Jim Crow, so Bolsheviks in Russia were to be subjected to Entente military intervention to put an end to their socialist revolution.

Then of course there was World War II. It is during this war that the United States and Great Britain got into the habit of destroying cities and civilian infrastructure, and killing large numbers of civilians. It is true that Nazi Germany set the precedent for targeting civilians, and few people questioned the destruction of German cities and the mass killing of civilians in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin and other places.

The «krauts» had it coming. So did the Japanese, most of their cities were burned to the ground. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed with the first atomic bombs. «Military targets,» said accidental President Harry Truman, «we had to do it to save the lives of American soldiers». He lied. The American government knew very well that Japan was beaten and ready to surrender. The United States wanted to intimidate Iosif Stalin, with atomic bombs the USSR did not yet have. Did the Americans truly believe they could intimidate Marshal Stalin?

The end of World War II led to the resumption of the Cold War, Act II (Act I having started in 1917). With Great Britain reduced to the status of a vassal state, the United States took the lead in defending «free» peoples against the menace of communism. Unfortunately, there was a chasm between the image and the reality. The US government unleashed the CIA to buy politicians and elections and overthrow governments it did not like. Iran, Guatemala, Cuba were early examples. That was the fate reserved for Vietnam too, except there, Washington bit off more than it could chew.

The United States sabotaged Vietnamese elections in 1956 because, according to US president Dwight Eisenhower, the communist leader Ho Chi Minh would have won 80% of the vote. Not much respect for democracy there: it turns out that the United States was only comfortable with «democracy» when their clients won. When they couldn’t win, elections were rigged, bought with CIA money, or sabotaged. «Leftists, communists, eccentrics, not wanted here,» was a sign America might have hung out on the doors of its embassies worldwide.

In Vietnam the United States hijacked the south and ran it through puppets. A terrible war ensued: the World War II pattern of targeting cities and civilians was repeated. The US government declared that it was not bombing North Vietnamese cities, but Toronto Star correspondent Michael Maclear drove up from the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone to Hanoi and found just about every city and town along the way had been flattened or badly damaged by American bombing. Civilians were fair game, US claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Estimates range from 2 to 6 civilians killed for every Vietnamese combatant. These figures are certainly on the low side given US carpet bombing and use of napalm and chemical defoliants.

It is true that most of the Vietnamese people were united with their armed forces in resisting US aggression. So the distinction between civilian and soldier was necessarily blurred, much to the frustration of US authorities. Then there was the My Lai massacre in March 1968 when nearly five hundred men, women and children were gunned down by American soldiers. The massacre made the pages of Life magazine, not good publicity for the American war of aggression in Southeast Asia.

The United States lost that war because of the remarkable resistance of the Vietnamese people, though they paid a high price for driving out the American invader. Defeat however did not long chasten US authorities. In 1973 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende. A neo-fascist took his place, which was fine with Washington. In the 1980s the United States backed Islamist fundamentalists in Afghanistan against the USSR. «They’re sons of bitches», Americans might have agreed in a rare moment of candour, but «they are our sons of bitches».

The point is that the American claims of altruism and promotion of democracy were bogus. As long as the USSR existed, the United States could not run completely amuck although the US rampage in Southeast Asia was bad enough. After the collapse and dismemberment of the USSR, the United States felt the last restraints on its power fall away. NATO was expanded up to Russia’s western frontiers. Yugoslavia was destroyed and dismembered without any reference to international law. The United States and its NATO vassals backed Islamist terrorists and gangsters in Bosnia and Kosovo, following the Afghan pattern. «They’re our terrorists and gangsters,» the Americans might have said, «and therefore we’re alright». Serbia was bombed, its infrastructure destroyed, civilians were killed. Not even crocodile tears were shed in the west over the dead Serbian civilians.

Since the destruction of Yugoslavia, the list of US and western covert or overt wars of aggression is long. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen have all been destroyed or are being destroyed by the United States and its NATO or regional vassals in the name of «responsibility to protect» (R2P) and «democracy» proselytization. The west’s allies are Wahhabi terrorists (again), Daesh, Nusra, Al-Qaeda and various iterations of them, as well as fascists in the Ukraine. It is an extraordinary American rogues’ gallery, like a long police line-up of felons. But «not to worry», the Americans would no doubt repeat, «they’re our Islamists and our fascists, and working for us, which makes everything alright».

Everywhere the United States leaves its footprints, along with those of the British and French depending on location, you will find ruins and victims. Iraq and Libya are in chaos and infested with Al-Qaeda terrorists. War drags on in Afghanistan after fifteen years. In the Ukraine the US-backed fascist coup d’état has only partially succeeded and a crisis there could irrupt at any time. In Yemen a Saudi invasion has butted into formidable resistance.

In Syria the US and Anglo-French-led attempt to overthrow the Syrian government has failed. Not only did the United States run up against a formidable Syrian resistance inspired by Syrian president Bashar el-Assad, but it has run up against the Russian Federation, Iran, and Hezbollah. They are allied with the Syrian government against the invasion of US and western supported Islamist mercenaries, armed, financed, trained, and sheltered by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel.

Russia has played the principal role in checking the US-led war of aggression against Syria. Of course, President Vladimir Putin has tried to finesse the United States into abandoning its terrorist allies and joining a coalition to destroy the Wahhabi invaders. As I write these lines, the Russian effort has failed; as well it might, since the United States is addicted to subversion and wars of aggression as a drug user is addicted to narcotics. But Russia had to try, and I suppose, will continue to try, to persuade the United States to go cold turkey.

In the meantime its French and British vassals accuse Russia and Syria of war crimes, fulminate about the surrounded, victimized Wahhabi terrorists in Aleppo. The very same who have made films showing their decapitation of Syrian POWs and officials, Christians and any others who don’t embrace their practice of Islam. Further forms of cruelty include execution by drowning or being burned alive in cages, or crushed by tanks. Women are raped, and stoned if they don’t submit; refugees seeking to escape Al-Qaeda authority are flogged, crucified, decapitated, buried alive, or shot (the latter form of execution being for the Wahhabis a rather banal, merciful way of killing victims).

It is these terrorists who the United States and its vassals support in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. They have abandoned the argument about the Wahhabis being «our terrorists» for another to the effect that they are «our moderates». This line is just as preposterous and bogus as all the other US justifications for war, though President Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have played along trying to persuade the United States to see reason. The Russian strategy has failed, as its other peace strategies have failed, because, inter alia, there are no Islamist «moderates» to separate from the so-called genuine terrorists. «Our moderates» is a fiction and a US cover for its support of Al-Qaeda and its various allies, largely foreign mercenaries fighting against the secular, legitimate government of Syria.

The only result, so far, of Russian efforts is that US generals threaten «to beat» Russia as never before. The French president threatens Russia and Syria with war crimes indictments, and various British politicians, including the Foreign Secretary, fulminate about Nazi-like bombardments of poor, innocent «moderates» who in fact use Aleppo civilians in their diminishing zone of occupation as human shields, summarily executing those who attempt to escape. In the much larger part of Aleppo which the «moderates» do not control, they deliberately target civilians.

Will there ever be an end to the hypocrisy and double standards? From Wilson to Johnson, to Obama, we have been subjected to a pack of lies. The US and western narrative about Syria, as elsewhere, is false to the last syllable. The «shining house upon the hill» is a myth. A dark charnel house filled to the ceiling with victims of US and European neo-colonialism would better represent the reality. But don’t expect any western governments to look inside that house. «Collateral damage,» the Americans would say, «and a price worth paying». Myths and lies conceal the real foreign conduct of the United States and its vassals, but that unfortunately is nothing new. The question now is whether Americans, Europeans and Canadians are willing to risk a gratuitous war with Russia for a pack of lies, in defence of the US-led Al-Qaeda invasion of Syria. We, all of us, need to decide quickly, before it is too late.