The Face of Western
Civilization
By Francis Lee
March 09, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Saker Blog"
-- It is interesting to note how the
collective west has reacted to the present and
ongoing events in Eastern Europe – namely, in
Russia and Ukraine. As I understand it Russia
has concerns about its own security and NATO’s
inexorable push toward the Russian frontier.
Moreover, there has been a positioning of
missile systems, nuclear and otherwise, right
smack on the borders of Romania and Poland. How
did this situation arise, to the extent which it
has?
Back in 1990 but not wishing to alarm the
Russians the American Secretary of State, James
Baker, proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the
Berlin Wall: if you give up your part of
Germany, NATO will “not shift one inch
eastward.” (Famous Words).
Controversy erupted almost immediately over
this 1990 exchange—but more important was the
decade to come, when the words took on a new
meaning. Gorbachev let his East Germany (DDR)
go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not
least after the Soviet Union’s own collapse in
December 1991. Russia was initially assured that
NATO forces and hardware would not move one inch
further to the Western borders of Russia.
Washington realized, however, that it could not
just win big but win bigger. The new approach
completely reversed the original pact: Not one
inch of territory need be off limits to NATO.
The Russians had not done their paperwork and
had not signed up to the original written
agreement. A silly oversight perhaps, but a
costly, legal, and enforceable one.
Well, we all know how this worked out. Just
to rub salt in the wound NATO Chief, Jens
Stoltenberg, has made it clear that there is
more to come. Apparently, anyone can join NATO
and have its own missile system installed and
pointing at Russia with a 3-to-5-minute flight
time to St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Well, and who could possibly object to this!
(Sarcasm). Sooner or later, however, Russia was
going to alter facts on the ground starting with
Ukraine. No state worth its salt, viz., a
sovereign state, could possibly allow itself to
be surrounded with a view to war, invasion, and
total obliteration. The Cuba crisis of 1962 was
a prototype of this face-off. At that time both
the US and USSR adhered to a Westphalian
posture, to wit, non-interference in each
other’s sphere of influence, security
imperatives and recognition of each other’s
sovereignty. But it would appear things had
changed since the US Anglo-Zionist empire came
into being by NATO’s incremental expansion and
push to Russia’s western frontiers. It would
appear things had changed in terms of the West’s
foreign policy which had become belligerent and
expansionist. If Russia didn’t like the new
‘Rules-Based’ Policy of the western hegemon in
tow with its Western allies, well, too bad!
Russia’s initial inertia in 2014 allowed the
NATO backed Ukrainian army to push up to the
eastern republics in the Donbass, Lugansk and
Donetsk. But the stout resistance of these two
republics halted the advance of the Ukie army
and inflicted two heavy defeats at Ilovaisk and
Debaltsevo in 2014/15. At that time Russia did
not allow the incorporation for the two
republics into the Russian Federation. (It
should be understood, however, that the two
republics were in fact receiving aid, both in
war materiel and ‘volunteers’ from Russia,
although this was never openly admitted by the
Russian government.) Be that as it may, Crimea,
was a different matter; it was the home base of
the Russian navy and a permanent military
presence for Russia. Russia also held the
freehold for its base in Sevastopol until 2045
and paid an annual rental for this to the
Ukrainian government. This being the case there
was a referendum which overwhelmingly endorsed
the outcome: Crimea, whose population was
dominantly Russian, and Russian speaking, became
Russian again after the temporary period of
Ukrainian stewardship which had lasted since
1954.
This much is history.
The West. God’s own creation. Where to start!
The United States.
The United States is – unlike western
central and eastern Europe – a sovereign state.
Since its inception the US has pursued wars just
about everywhere around the globe but started at
its home base. After the anti-British
revolution, the US started to play the
imperialist game. First there were the wars
against Mexico. From 1846 to 1848, the United
States of America and Mexico fought the Mexican
American War. There were many causes
of the war, but the biggest reasons were
Mexico’s lingering resentment over the loss
of Texas and the Americans’ desire and
acquisition of Mexico’s western lands, such as
Arizona, Nevada, California and New Mexico. The
Americans believed their nation should extend to
the Pacific: this belief was called “Manifest
Destiny.” This was a quasi-religious
doctrine, which if anything has actually grown
stronger as the centuries pass.
Additions to the US empire came in the form
of Cuba, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines –
pretty run of the mill stuff, as imperialism
goes. The US did not have a hinterland beyond
the Americas but got global after the first and
more importantly the second world war. The
United States was to become a full-blown
imperialist power, particularly in Western
Europe, and Japan which had become a patchwork
of non-sovereign states under US hegemony. This
is still the case today. Now even Eastern
European non-sovereign states became part of the
US-NATO bloc.
But the US war machine ran into trouble in
Southeast Asia, first with the Korean and then
Indo-China wars. The carnage and general
fall-out of these wars was unparalleled. See the
bombing of Laos, Vietnam and particularly North
Korea. These were outright defeats for the
American war machine, though the Americans were
loath to admit it.
Then of course there has been the US
involvement in the middle east which has
included, ongoing wars against Iraq, Libya,
Syria, and Yemen. More to come to be sure. But
It seems ominous to conclude that the US is
trapped in unwinnable wars in the middle-east
but in fact leaves much of the heavy lifting to
its Zionist Rottweiler, not only in the
middle-east, but crucially in the US itself
where the Anti-Deformation League (ADL) American
Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA);
in terms of international relations and foreign
policy I suppose you could call this the tail
wagging the dog. The British had the common
sense to remove themselves from the Zionist
entity in 1948. The American-Israel lobby have,
however, have been loath to part with this
geopolitical entity which has been a liability
ever since.
The United Kingdom
When Britain was a sovereign state its Empire
covered a vast patchwork of subaltern states –
most importantly India, which also included
modern Pakistan, Burma, Malaya, Singapore – and
various states in Africa: from Capetown to
Cairo. There were many wars fought in Southern
Africa, for example the Boers vs the Zulus, the
Boers vs the English known as the Boer Wars, and
the Zimbabwean (at that time Rhodesia) bush war.
These wars were also bloody affairs but
particularly brutal in India – during the
so-called Indian Mutiny 1857-58. This was an
uprising of the – Sepoys – Native Indian
soldiers against their British masters. The
violence with which the British put down the
rebellion has only been approached in the
history of the empire by the repression of the
Irish rebellion in the 1790’s and of the native
Mau Mau rebellion in East Africa in the 1950s.
Karl Marx wrote in 1853 ‘’the British had a
double mission in India, one destructive the
other regenerating … they had accomplished in a
way that unbound before all our eyes all the
profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of
bourgeois civilization, turning from its home
where it assumes respectable forms to the
colonies where it goes naked.’’
(In this respect see India and George
Orwell’s personal experiences in this jewel in
the crown of the British Empire. In two
particular factual pieces where he was
personally involved, he recounted the following
two essays which are well worth reading: ‘’A
Hanging’’ and ‘’Shooting An Elephant’’ 1936)
The British long retreat from empire was
given an additional shove by the US in 1946 with
the American loan – Michael Hudson explains:
‘’The first loan on the post-war agenda was
the British Loan which, as President Truman
announced in forwarding it to Congress, would
set the course of American and British economic
relations for many years to come. He was right,
for the Anglo-American Loan Agreement spelled
the end of Britain as a Great (imperial) Power.
(Super-Imperialism – pp.268/269). So the UK was,
to use an American expression, forced to eat
crow.
This pattern of imperialism, its rise and
fall, has been generally on the same trajectory,
with the various states involved having had only
a limited tenure. The UK, France, Germany,
Spain, Italy, Austro-Hungary, and even little
Belgium have had their own involvement with
their imperial fate. These are now all subaltern
regimes in the present American Empire.
(See The Fate of Empires and Search for
Survival. First published in 1913, Sir John
Glubb British-soldier and diplomat examined the
human race over a period of 4,000 years and
found the same patterns of rise and fall of
national greatness and all in the same
timescale.)
All of which brings us to the present
impasse.
The present geopolitical situation involving
the great powers seems to be reaching a critical
moment. To recount the history and present
situation. The Ukrainian government sent its
army into the Eastern Ukraine – some 100,000 men
– earlier in the year, with the intent of
invading and subduing the two breakaway
republics – the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts,
which had defied the bombing and shelling
campaign which had been going on since 2014.
This had cost the lives of some 14000
inhabitants of these two republics. But the Kiev
forces were thrown back after their initial
first push by a counterattack in 2014-15, where
they were comprehensively defeated at the
battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo. But the
shelling still continued. However, this second
Ukrainian offensive has had unforeseen outcomes.
When Putin heard of the new invasion from the
western Ukraine attacking the breakaway
republics, he had had enough, as had the Russian
people and the Russian Parliament a fortiori.
He firstly extended full citizenship to the
populations of the two republics which
automatically became part of the Russian
Federation. Next came the part which changed
everything. It was expected that having absorbed
the two breakaway republics he decided in his
own words to demilitarise and clear out the neo-nazi
forces – for good – in the rest of the Ukraine.
And then to the alarm of the western elites the
Russian forces rolled west.
Of course, this has caused consternation if
not abject panic, in western capitals with what
amounted in military terms to a complete
paralysis of the West. But then the information
war took off. This is the formidable weapon of
the western states and is used to potent effect.
But there were also economic effects which are
just beginning to come on stream.
These included shortages for various
components and food stuffs and raw materials
which will negatively affect western economies
as well as the all-pervasive death wish of
financialization. Russia has not yet rolled out
its own sanctions to see how they go down in
western capitals, but it will be interesting to
see their effect.
So, this is where we are. At the dawn of a
bi-polar world. As Robert Kennedy once said.
‘’Like it or not, we live in interesting
times.’’
The views expressed in this article are
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