EUROPE SOLD its Soul to the Devil USA..and now reaping its rewards

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Europe lost the US-Russian war, two years ago already.


reseauinternational.net, August 17, 2014
Translated from French by Tom Winter August 17, 2016
Translator's note: Yes, this was written two years ago today, in the wake of the Russian counter-sanctions. Some saw it, even then, and today, well, here we are.


War: you are either at war or you aren't. There is no pretending. For ignoring this simple fact, Europe is in the whirlwind, completely disoriented in search of benchmarks that it no longer has.
The war the US is waging against Russia is a war to the death. Europe, at once actor and at stake, does not want this outcome but, victim of its protective alliances and its historic, though now artificial status, is obliged and even ordered to take sides with its Great Protector. This war is not hers, but she has to do it. Then she makes believe, since both protagonists know the outcome can only be the total defeat of one or the other, reflected either in the full and complete submission of Russia or the US loss of any hegemony.
In this struggle of Titans, a fighter undecided, as is Europe, is quickly submerged. This is seen since the first Russian counteroffensive. Country by country, the European Union gradually manifests hostility to a war against Russia that they did not seek. Voices are rising up to find some kind of armistice. They are only, for now, 7-8 countries that have officially expressed in this direction, but the number is growing. Other countries are not speaking out, but are thinking it. And these refractory countries surely represent the majority in the EU.
We are witnessing something curious in the EU, similar to what one finds in all European countries: the majority counts for nothing. Only a small elite directs the whole thing, and decides and acts for all.
But still, after the implementation of Moscow's counter-sanctions, and after the last gesture of humiliating and fruitless honor with Russian partners, EU are moving towards looking for some kind of armistice.
For this coup, one thing is clear: the Great Protector is conspicuously absent from his subscribers. What could he do, anyway? Absorb all Europe's unsold goods? Subsidize? Impossible, especially at a time when, for various treaties, including TAFTA, they seek to rob even their "friends." Europeans could yet present the bill to Uncle Sam, because after all, it is for him they did everything that led them into this situation. But they did not dare and preferred to try to intimidate or cajole the ones smaller than themselves. It had to lead to comical situations. Imagine, for example France, shamelessly asking Evo Morales to forget the incident of his hijacking and agree to give a hand to the Europe that treated him like a nobody. To die laughing.
In case of some armistice, the losses will still be substantial, and some of them just plain irreversible. Because this time, unlike all the treaties of Versailles and others, where the assignments are made after the hostilites, the redistribution has already been done, and without them. If Russia resumed imports of products it had banned, EU will be forced to get in line after those who are new to the Russian market with agreements set in concrete, agreements that the Russians will never revoke.
In one way or another, Europe will pay for having sold its soul to the devil 70 years ago and perhaps even before. We can, however, recognize extenuating circumstances. The devil took advantage of a situation of extreme weakness to buy it cheap.
If the Armistice occurred today, Europe would come out reasonably well, and perhaps would come up a new era of prosperity thanks to a new global dynamic.
Otherwise, an analogy comes to mind: Ukraine. Ukraine had its interests in the East and practically none in the West. But the West has forced Ukraine to scuttle its own interests to join the western bloc, creating the secession of the southeastern part of the country. If the spirit of war persists in Europe, there is a safe bet that some countries will follow and more could secede, which could lead to an "internal" war of the same type as that which is going on in Donbass.
Keep in mind that, as for Ukraine, no dissent will be tolerated by the United States. The only chance Europe has to get out of this mess is to put up a blockage on behalf of their own citizens' interest and against the advice of agents like Barroso and others.

 

[teddytennisfan]

Washington’s Outrage and Excuses
August 16, 2016

Sometimes it seems that if not for double standards, Official Washington would have no standards at all – especially when it comes to outrage against some “strongmen” and excuses for others, as Lawrence Davidson describes.

By Lawrence Davidson

The United States has been, and continues to be, selective about which foreign strongmen it does and does not support. Among the latter, there have been Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (who was not as autocratic as publicly portrayed), Fidel Castro in Cuba, and Vladimir Putin in Russia. These are just a few of those recent rulers who have drawn the wrath of the “democratic” exemplars in Washington. That wrath often includes economic strangulation, CIA plots and even invasion.

In the meantime, another group of autocrats is well tolerated by the U.S. Among this group are Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and various European rightwing politicos such as Viktor Orban of Hungary. Each of these strongmen shows little tolerance for dissent and a ready willingness to exploit racially tinged nationalism.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Nov. 21, 2012. [State Department photo]

What is behind Washington’s double standards – its contrasting reactions to one set of regimes as against another? Often American politicians will talk about promoting democracy and claim that the dictators they support have a better chance of evolving in a democratic direction than those they oppose. It might be that these politicians actually believe this to be the case, at least at the moment they make these declarations. But there is no historical evidence that their claims are true. This argument is largely a face-saving one. Other underlying reasons exist for the choices they make.
Here are a few of those probable reasons:

The friend/enemy of our friend/enemy is our friend/enemy. In this scenario the primary friend of the U.S. is Israel and the primary enemy is Russia. The secondary friend/enemy countries are the decidedly undemocratic Egypt and Syria. Egypt became a friend of the U.S. once Anwar Sadat made a peace treaty with Israel in March of 1979. Syria, on the other hand, has always been hostile to Israel and it has remained an enemy state. No democratic motivation is to be found here.

Cold War positioning rationale. After World War II Turkey became a “strategic asset” by virtue of its proximity to the Soviet Union and its willingness to house U.S. air bases and missile launchers. The repeated interference of the Turkish military in civilian politics was of no consequence to Washington. Present-day East European governments, increasingly autocratic in nature, seem to be considered by many in the Pentagon as “post Cold War” assets on the border of a Russia that never ceased to be an enemy. For a whole subset of Americans (militarists and neoconservatives), the Cold War never really did end.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on March 30, 2012. [State Department photo]

Resource assets rationale. Autocracies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait fall into this category. The U.S. assumes a role of a supportive ally in exchange for stable and affordable worldwide oil prices. Sunni suppression of Shiite and other minorities in these countries is immaterial.
What happens if such resource-rich regimes do an about-face and are no longer cooperative with the United States? Well, you have your answer in Iran. Here the U.S. was once completely supportive of the Shah, but he was replaced by hostile ayatollahs in 1979. So friendliness has given way to tactics of economic isolation and CIA plots. Again, democracy has little to do with anything in these cases.

The classic left vs. right rationale. Finally, there is the historically entrenched U.S. tradition that economically cooperative autocratic regimes are acceptable allies. “Cooperative” here means rulers who engage in friendly capitalist behavior: tolerate private enterprise and safeguard the property of foreign investors. Such an economic stance pre-dates the Cold War and has always been more important than political freedoms.


President Ronald Reagan meeting with Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt.

Those who act this way, such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet or Argentina under its brutal regime of military rule, get a free pass when they suppress democracy and civil rights. However, other regimes, such as those in Cuba under Castro and Venezuela under Chavez are treated differently. In the case of Venezuela, democracy was in fact practiced, but because of its socialist-leaning economic policies, Washington tried very hard to destroy the country’s government. For those interested in the evolution of this classic U.S. foreign policy, its history is explained in detail in my book, Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest.

Democracy and the “Other”

By prioritizing traditional alliances, control of resources and economic ideology, the U.S. turns a blind eye to other aspects of autocratic behavior that contradict its own avowed values, thereby setting up a vivid display of foreign policy hypocrisy. An example is the issue of democracy and the “Other.”

Since the 1960s the United States has been struggling with its racist impulses. That is, most of its population knows that discrimination against the “Other” is wrong. They can recognize it in the country’s voting laws, in the behavior of its police, and in the attitude of a political candidate like Donald Trump. Official steps, even if they are agonizingly slow and subject to periodic reversals, are taken to dampen down, if not overcome, such public biases. You would think that such sensitivity would carry over into foreign affairs. Yet the opposite is true.

Many of the autocratic leaders the U.S. favors have risen to power, at least in part, through instilling fear of the “Other” – those who threaten the fantasies of an eternal national character, pure blood, and the status of a God-chosen people. For instance, Washington’s premier ally in the Middle East, Israel, is a state that, at best, can be described as an officially discriminatory democracy where bias against the “Other” (in this case the Palestinians and other non-Jews) is legally sanctioned.


Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973 and helped create Operation Condor, a campaign of assassinations across Latin America and even into the United States. Pinochet died in 2006.

In the case of Europe, the present rising popularity of the right wing and its authoritarian leaders is directly derived from a fear of the “Other.” This, in turn, has been stimulated by a refugee crisis that the United States and its allies helped to create.

The destruction of Iraq was a catalyst that let loose forces that have also overwhelmed Syria and Libya and set in motion the deluge of refugees moving out of the Middle East and North Africa toward Europe. The U.S. government accepts the anti-democratic rightwing autocrats who now exploit a fear of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons for which Washington is, in large part, responsible.

The end of the Cold War did not put to rest the West’s militaristic ideological forces. Indeed it gave them a boost. Those pushing “neoconservative” foreign policies are still well represented within U.S. government bureaucracies. Their policies are based on fantasies of “regime change” and remaking the world so it comes under the permanent influence of the United States. Democracy, however, is not now, nor has it ever been, the end game of this process.

Instead, U.S. foreign affairs have been designed to spread capitalist economic practices that facilitate the prosperity of its own “ruling” class. Along the way, the U.S, seeks resource reliability for itself and its trading partners, security for its traditional allies and strategic advantage over old enemies.

In all these pursuits, the United States has long ago contented itself with what Jonathan Freedland once called the “sonofabitch school of foreign policy.” In other words, Washington doesn’t care if its cooperating allies are murderers, corrupt thieves, racists and the like. They might be bastards of the first order, but it is OK as long as they are “our bastards.” Such is the company we keep.

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.