From Revolution to Confrontation - Washington Leads the Way by Brian Cloughley!
(2021-01-14 at 03:41:12 )

From Revolution to Confrontation - Washington Leads the Way by Brian Cloughley!

A depressing amount of Washington,D.C.s foreign policy comes down to cash and the preferred route to commercial gain seems to involve hostility.

As the anti-democracy militias were preparing to storm and loot the Capitol building in Washington,D.C. on January 6, in what one Republican legislator aptly described as a "banana republic" scenario, the United States Secretary of the Navy, Kenneth Braithwaite, announced that the Pentagon had produced a new Arctic Strategy paper detailing an aggressive policy which is unlikely to be altered by the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Domestically, the aggressive mobs at the Capitol had actually been encouraged by the current Washington,D.C. administration. As the New York Times observed, "President Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress incited a violent attack against the government they lead and the nation they profess to love. This cannot be allowed to stand."

The Times fulminated that "Mr. Trump sparked these assaults. He has railed for months against the verdict rendered by voters in November. He summoned his supporters to gather in Washington,D.C. on this day, and encouraged them to march on the Capitol. He told them that the election was being stolen. He told them to fight. He told them he might join them and, even as they stormed the building, he declined for long hours to tell them to stop, to condemn their actions, to raise a finger in defence of the Constitution that he swore to preserve and protect."

This was a bizarre situation, and while it is unthinkable that Joe Biden and the Democrats will behave in a similarly irresponsible - even criminal - fashion when in power, it is almost certain they will support such violent uprisings in other countries. They will continue to conduct subversive and openly antagonistic operations around the world, and, in the words of Braithwaite, "operate more assertively" in the Arctic to confront Russia and China and attempt to prevent their commercial use of the region.

It was coincidental, if gruesomely ironic, that while the revolutionary mobs were invading the Capitol the Washington Post reported that "Trump administration officials auctioned off oil and gas leases in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday, capping Republicans decades-long quest to drill in one of the nations most vast unspoiled wild places. The move marks one of the most significant environmental rollbacks the president has accomplished in his term." So now the Arctics bears, caribou and waterfowl are under threat from money-crazed gas-drillers, while Arctic waterways are going to be throbbing with United States Navy warships that are ordered to "accept calculated tactical risks and adopt a more assertive posture in our day-to-day operations." In other words, Washington,D.C.s policy of belligerent confrontation is set to continue in higher gear.

As to subversive operations, it is exactly two years since mobs took to the streets of Iran to protest against mismanagement and rising food prices caused largely by United States-initiated sanctions. The violent protests were greeted with satisfaction in Washington,D.C. with Donald Trump declaring it was "time for change", and his then ambassador to the Unitd Nations, the egregious Nikki Haley, echoing that "We want to help amplify the voices of the Iranian people." There must at the moment be a certain grim satisfaction among the loony theocrats in Tehran, because Washington,D.C.s blatant encouragement of violence in their country has rebounded dramatically, and the storming of the Capitol, with resultant but inevitable barbarity and death, is exactly what Donald Trump and his cronies wanted (and still want) to happen in their country. There is no reason to believe that the incoming Joe Biden administration will be any different.

The same holds for nutty Maduro in Venezuela. He is an incompetent ditherer and his country is in a desperate situation, but he is the elected leader and his people are aware that much of their economic suffering is caused by United States sanctions designed to foment unrest and revolution, with Mr. Maduro being replaced by a compliant puppet who will dance to the Washington,D.C. tune. In 2017, when the first United States sanctions were imposed, Donald Trump announced that Washington,D.C. was considering attacking Venezuela, saying it "is not very far away and the people are suffering, and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary." But, as made clear by a poll in Venezuela, "when asked whether they would support "a foreign military intervention to remove President Maduro from his position," only 35 percent of the population said yes."

It is not surprising, as revealed by the Pew Research Centre in mid-2020, that "just 41% of adults in the United Kingdom expressed a favourable opinion of the United States this year, the lowest percentage registered in any Centre survey there. In France and Germany, ratings for the United States are essentially as low as they were in March 2003, at the height of United States-European tensions over the Iraq War. United States favourability also reached all-time lows this year in Japan, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden."

It can be taken that much of the international distaste and disfavour has been caused by Donald Trumps deranged antics and spiteful malevolence, but it is far from certain that Joe Bidens foreign policy will be less confrontational so far as such countries as Iran, Venezuela, Russia and China are concerned.

His choice to be Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third senior post in the State Department, is Victoria Nuland, a rabidly nationalistic and anti-Russian figure who was among other things the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney and Barack Obamas Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

It is disturbing to note that during the move towards rebellion in Ukraine that was encouraged by the United States, Assistant Secretary of State Nuland was photographed together with the United States ambassador handing out sandwiches to rebels in Kievs Maidan Square in December 2013. One wonders what she (and Joe Biden and the United States mainstream media) would have said if Russias ambassador in Washington,D.C. had gone to the Capitol on January 6 with a bag of goodies to hand out to those who Mr Biden described as "Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists."

When he was vice president, Joe Biden was forthright about what he considers the undesirability of Europe and Russia cooperating economically. He was reported by Deutsche Welle as "warning European countries against becoming too dependent on Russian oil and gas, saying it would be "bad" for Europe." He was referring to the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline which "will deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea route from Russia to Germany, helping to safeguard Europes long-term energy security." Joe Biden does not want friendly cooperation with Russia and declared that EU countries could purchase United States liquefied natural gas.

A depressing amount of Washington,D.C.s supposedly principled foreign policy comes down to cash, in the end, and the preferred route to commercial gain seems to involve hostility.

Unfortunately for Washington,D.C. it seems that United States nationalistic aggression is not confined to global affairs and that it has surged domestically. But change is practicable, and it would be a very good thing for the world if the Joe Biden administration concluded that leading the way in revolution and confrontation is counterproductive.

Reprinted here from the "Strategic Culture Foundation" provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Since 2005 our journal has published thousands of analytical briefs and commentaries with the unique perspective of independent contributors. SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas.