Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: Foreign policy (Page 3 of 4)

Defence of self or of hegemony

11.04.2023 /

Have you heard of “perception management”? Simply put, it means persuasion on the basis not of facts but of lies (or suppression of facts).

During the 1980s, Reagan decided to “kick the Vietnam syndrome“, a condition from which the US public was suffering, sick to the heart of the horror and shame of the Vietnam war, so that future presidents would find it very difficult to pursue the nation’s foreign policy goal of maintaining global hegemony.

In Reagan’s case, the challenge was to convince the US public to support US martial activities in Central America. As Robert Parry subsequently wrote (in 2014):

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/30/endless-war-and-victory-perception-management

Various tactics were used, one of them being:

to weed out American reporters who uncovered facts that undercut the desired public images. As part of that effort, the administration attacked New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing the Salvadoran regime’s massacre of about 800 men, women and children in the village of El Mozote in northeast El Salvador in December 1981. Accuracy in Media and conservative news organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, joined in pummeling Bonner, who was soon ousted from his job.

Ibid

During its wars, the US Government found new ways of limiting television viewers’ insight:

One solution involved imposing strict control over the movements of journalists. The government could no longer afford to allow – as it had in Vietnam – enterprising reporters to run around the battlefield, going wherever they wanted and speaking with whomever they pleased.

https://theconversation.com/how-the-pentagon-tried-to-cure-america-of-its-vietnam-syndrome-83682

An important group targeted by perception management consisted of the many who were saddened and shocked by revelations of crimes against humanity. We have therefore been seeing, with increasing frequency, the waging of what Joseph Darda calls “humanitarian wars”. In his paper Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome Narrative: Human Rights, the Nayirah Testimony, and the Gulf War, he quotes George Bush, who in 1990 was preparing for yet another war:

With a war on the horizon, Bush took the proclamation [his own presidential proclamation designating December 10 as Human Rights Day] as an opportunity to situate the looming Gulf War in a human rights context. “In a world where human rights are routinely denied in too many lands,” he observed, “nowhere is that situation more tragic and more urgent today than in Kuwait.” Listing the atrocities reportedly committed by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait, Bush concluded, “As long as such assaults occur, as long as inhumane regimes deny basic human rights, our work is not done.” The Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait was not merely a threat to Kuwaiti sovereignty but also, Bush alleged, a threat to the sanctity of human rights everywhere. Americans could not feel secure in their own liberal rights until these rights were restored to the citizens of this small, oil-rich state in the Persian Gulf. Thus, the United States’ intervention in the Middle East was not really a war but, as Bush continually stressed that fall and winter, a unified “stand in defense of peace and freedom.”

https://josephdarda.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/darda-kicking-the-vietnam-syndrome-narrative-human-rights-the-nayirah-testimony-and-the-gulf-war.pdf

Next, I quote someone who appreciated George Bush’s appeal to humanitarianism. On the face of it, he sounds like a humane fellow. Only the name of the source, (hoover.org) gives us pause:

The Bush administration made its case for military action, and, after considerable debate, the American people, through their representatives in Congress, gave approval. The administration also made its case to the United Nations, highlighting the damage that inaction would inflict on prospects for peace in the long term.

Although the dangers of careless military activism are easy to imagine, the cost of passivity is more difficult to discern. In the 1990s, the Vietnam syndrome helped delay and limit U.S. military intervention in the Balkans. Those delays and limits extended murderous Serbian repression and actually accelerated ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Failure to intervene militarily often permits humanitarian crises to continue and leads to more dangerous conflicts.

https://www.hoover.org/research/kicking-vietnam-syndrome

I have previously written about the bombing to kingdom come of Libya, a vicious NATO operation performed allegedly to protect demonstrators. This was definitely a case of successful perception management, since the public hardly raised an eyebrow at the devastation in NATO’s wake.

Of course, one very important reason to go to war is “self defence”. For some years now, the USA has been spreading its network of military bases in the Far East – obviously for “self-defence” (in case the humanitarian plight of the Uighurs fails to capture sufficient public sympathy). I quote Glenn Greenwald, mocking the self-defence rationale:

I was looking at a video earlier today of George Bush and others saying that the reason we had to go fight in Iraq and invade Iraq is that we’d rather fight them over there than fight them over here. And I saw a video earlier today of California Democrat Adam Schiff saying exactly the same thing about the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Namely, the reason we must fight Russia over in Ukraine is that, if we don’t, we’ll have to fight them over here. Presumably, the Russian army is on the verge of attacking the American homeland right after it gets done trying to hold a town or two for more than three months in Ukraine, confident that it can conquer the American homeland, despite spending 1/15 in its military of what the United States spends.

https://rumble.com/GGreenwald (Sorry, I failed to take a note of the post)

More recently, “freedom and democracy” has supplanted humanitarian justification of destabilisation activities – bellicose or otherwise. During the Euromaidan Protests, Senator John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Chris Murphy visited Kiev to “show solidarity” to the demonstrators. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right‐​wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

John McCain — repeat: a US Senator — enthusiastically addressed the protesters — Ukrainian protesters in Ukraine, not in the USA:

Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better.

We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-ukraine-protests-support-just-cause (bold text is my highlighting)

He told CNN:

What we’re trying to do is try to bring about a peaceful transition here, that would stop the violence and give the Ukrainian people what they unfortunately have not had, with different revolutions that have taken place – a real society. This is a grassroots revolution here – it’s been peaceful except when the government tried to crack down on them, and the government hasn’t tried that since.

I’m praising their ability and their desire to demonstrate peacefully for change that I think they deserve.

Ibid (bold text is my highlighting)

Now, there is every reason to question how “peaceful” this so-called “peaceful transition” was. After all, quite a few protesters and some police officers were killed. We have been told that they were killed by officers defending (the Democratically elected) president Yanukovich. Apparently, the story is being compellingly disputed by Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, Ivan Katchanovski. Read the abstract of his paper and/or download it here.

However, his peer-reviewed paper has been ignored by mainstream media (which has proven its stalwart ignorance of late). It is truly quite fascinating. No less fascinating is the story of its suppression and the suppression of another of his papers, that of the 2014 Odessa massacre.

To conclude, for now, my exploration of applied perception management in Western foreign policy matters, I bring to your attention an investigative journalist’s address on March 24 this year, to the UN security council about the OPCW examination of the dreadful deaths by mysterious means in Douma, Syria, in April 2018.

So! The final OPCW report appears to have been a cover-up. For what? Why? What/who killed the victims in Douma?

There are still nearly 1000 US troops in Syria. What are they doing there? Who is currently controlling Syrian oil? What are the effects on the Syrian population of US sanctions?

Every day, to this day, Syrian civilians are being killed or maimed by land mines. And the nearly 20 Israeli attacks on Syria over the past year have not helped.

The regime change attempt in Syria was motivated and presented to the public as defence of human and civil rights. I put to you, though I cannot provide documentation — because investigative journalism is now becoming illegal in a growing number of “Democratic” countries — that the regime change attempt was largely orchestrated by the USA for reasons that are totally non-humanitarian. The result was death and devastation.

As usual.

Meanwhile, the arms race is on, full speed. And the engines of perception management are running at maximum capacity.

Please do not bring any more children into this world. I put to you that bringing children into the world now is turning into an act of parental egoism, the victims of which will be those same children.

Libya again

29.03.2023 /
NATO Killed Civilians in Libya. It’s Time to Admit It.

Why, you may be asking, am I writing about Libya when everybody else is writing about Iraq?

  • Well, for one thing, for that very reason; because everybody else is writing about Iraq.
  • Secondly, while the US demolition of Iraq happened 20 years ago, that of Libya is more recent and therefore more indicative of the current foreign policy outlook in Western countries.
  • Thirdly: While the war against Iraq met with considerable resistance in some of the Western press, the war against Libya met almost none. The press had been house-trained: no mainstream outlet peed on expensive carpets, so the general public was basically in the dark about the lies that legitimised the bombings.
  • Finally, I have been appraised of information that I have not previously known about.

And that brings me straight to the rather surreal aspect of this ignominious war, which some countries, not least my own, waged against a country that was, from the 1990s on, one where even you or I might have wanted to live.

Libyan Government revenue greatly exceeded expenditure in the 2000s. This surplus revenue was invested in a sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which was conservatively valued at $53 billion in June 2010.11 The United Nations Human Development Report 2010—a United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income—ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa.

House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report (HC 119)

My final point, that of information that has only recently been brought to my attention, is no more and no less than the above reference:

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (i.e. the UK H of C)
report on
Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options
Third Report of Session 2016–17

This report is a pretty damning document: For one thing, it explains, there was basically no truth in the claim that Gaddafi was planning to kill the protesters in Benghazi – on the contrary:

Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence. (etc.) (§ 32)

… émigrés opposed to Muammar Gaddafi exploited unrest in Libya by overstating the threat to civilians and encouraging Western powers to intervene. In the course of his 40-year dictatorship Muammar Gaddafi had acquired many enemies in the Middle East and North Africa, who were similarly prepared to exaggerate the threat to civilians. (etc) (§ 35)

An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge. (§ 36)

Ibid

Another matter was that Western intervention “shifted the military balance in the Libyan civil war in favour of the rebels”, ” turned a blind eye to the supply of weapons to the rebels” and, in short:

The combination of coalition airpower with the supply of arms, intelligence and personnel to the rebels guaranteed the military defeat of the Gaddafi regime. On 20 March 2011, for example, Muammar Gaddafi’s forces retreated some 40 miles from Benghazi following attacks by French aircraft. If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in less than 24 hours.

Ibid

Etc, etc. Read the report if you are at all in doubt about the cynicism of the entire operation, the purpose of which was, from the very start, to orchestrate regime change, not “to protect civilians”. I really cannot fathom how the House of Commons has been allowed to publish it, if not to humiliate the French:

A further insight into French motivations was provided in a freedom of information disclosure by the United States State Department in December 2015. On 2 April 2011,Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State:

According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

b. Increase French influence in North Africa,

c. Improve his internal political situation in France,

d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.

The sum of four of the five factors identified by Sidney Blumenthal equated to the French national interest. The fifth factor was President Sarkozy’s political self-interest.

Ibid

What did we, readers of the mainstream press, know about Libya in 2011, when France’s President Sarkozy started insisting on mililtary intervention in Libya? Did we know about Libya’s reserves of oil? Did we know about the vast network of underground pipelines and aqueducts, built under his rule which brought high-quality fresh water from ancient underground aquifers deep in the Sahara, and which, from 1991, supplied much-needed irrigation and drinking water to populous cities and farming areas in Libya’s north? This was the so-called “Great Mande-Made_River“.

Gone now. Alas, all gone.

Did the mainstream media tell us that the United Nations Human Development Report (UNDP) 2010 – a “United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income”– ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa? A country with a free national health service, free education and free electricity?

Did the mainstream media tell us about what emerged from Hillary Clinton’s 1700 emails released by Wikileaks about her role in the US engagement in Libya?

Unlike the Iraq war, the US and NATO crimes against humanity in Libya went practically unnoticed. The NATO countries’ intervention lasted less than a year, and since no ground forces were involved (at least not officially), no lives were lost on “our side”.

Although, the consequences of the war were disastrous for Libya, for Africa as a whole, and, indirectly, for Europe, (but not – I repeat NOT – for the USA) mainstream media has not taken pains to inform the public about the real facts.

Like the Iraq war, the war on Libya in 2011 was based on lies, the most important of which was that Gaddafi was preparing genocide against the people of Benghazi. The annihilation of Libya was officially undertaken for “the protection of civilians”.

Protection of civilians, my foot.

Look back in horror –Libya 2011

17.03.2023 /

In 2011, NATO bombed Libya to Kingdom Come.

Blasting a well-functioning country off the map was not – I repeat, NOT – in compliance with UN Security Council resolution 1973 (Incidentally, no less than five countries, including Germany, abstained from voting on that occasion).

The said resolution authorised action to “protect” civilians.

…. take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory

http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1973

The said resolution did not authorise reducing the country to rubble. It didn’t even authorise forcing regime change, which (as we now know) was what the freedom and Democracy-loving countries unofficially set out to do.

Now it is true that Gaddafi was a dictator, and it is also true that he did not take kindly to the Arab Spring demonstrations. Yes, the Arab Spring debacle evolved into a civil war in Libya as in Syria, and during civil wars, crimes against humanity tend to be committed. But unlike many other countries and like Syria and Iraq, Libya had, until we intervened to defend our blessed Democratic values (or interests), been a well-functioning state.

Public education in the country became free and primary education compulsory for both sexes. Medical care became available to the public at no cost, but providing housing for all was a task the RCC government was unable to complete. Under Gaddafi, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000, the 5th highest in Africa. The increase in prosperity was accompanied by a controversial foreign policy, and increased domestic political repression.

Wikipedia as at 17 March 2023

All of this was destroyed as we know. Libya has ever since been a failed state. The freedom-loving Democratic countries in the West, the countries that so love protecting other (particularly oil-producing) countries’ freedoms, apparently prefer failed states to “controversial foreign policies”.

Norway was apparently rather gung-ho in Libya, dropping bombs in areas where nobody else wanted to do so, including urban areas. We continued to do so, not only long after the Libyan military had been defeated, long long after the protesters in Benghazi whom we initially set out to “protect” no longer needed protection. Since Gaddafi was systematically described in the press as the Devil incarnate (just like Putin), the Norwegian press (with the honourable exception of Klassekampen and Ny tid) and its readers loudly applauded all of this bombing, hardly noticing that civilian lives also were lost to NATO bombs. (We will never know how many of them there were, but Amnesty International has painstakingly collected impressive documentation.) There are those who maintain that Norway dropped more bombs on Libya than any other NATO country.

Norway dropped 588 bombs on Libya. There are those who have suggested that there is a link between Norway’s enthusiastic performance there and the ascent of the former Norwegian Prime Minister to the post of Secretary General of NATO. Of course I would never suggest anything of the kind.

Neither NATO nor NATO countries have apologised for the havoc they left in the territory that once was Libya. Nor have they paid compensation to those (civilians) whose loved ones, homes and livelihoods they exterminated. Norway, the neocon Norwegian press and the increasingly neocon readers of the Norwegian press are no exception. After all, Gaddafi was a dictator, wasn’t he.

Pipe me a Tune

11.02.2023 /

For a year now I’ve been wondering why the Norwegian authorities are so rabid about the Ukraine war. I mean, their faces don’t turn scarlet when they talk about the de facto genocide of the Palestinian people, the torture going on in Egyptian prisons or the suppression of women in Saudi Arabia. But Russia, now, that is another matter.

An air of fear seems to be wafting through the corridors of power, at least judging from Norwegian press updates about Ukraine. Why?

Are we preparing for war? Are we at war without our, the general public’s, knowing it? Why do the authorities seem so convinced that Russia will attack, and that we will be engulfed and eaten alive unless we become the 51st US state?

I really cannot understand all this hysteria – or could not – until now, since Norway and Russia have traditionally been on very amicable terms. Unfortunately, though, a Norwegian former prime minister has recently been running the NATO show that eventually, in my opinion, led to the fateful Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is pressing for more bombs, more tanks and possibly also long-range missiles and fighter jets to Ukraine. He is contributing in a massive way to the Ukraine disaster and to the destruction of Europe, and nobody in Norway is protesting. Nobody is asking difficult questions, not on the left nor on the right. At least no such protests and no such questions are heard in public. All dissent is suppressed in mainstream media.

But now I, too, am getting uneasy. Sending food, medicines, blankets, hospital equipment, etc. to a war-torn country constitutes “humanitarian assistance”, something that in everyday speech could be termed “the only decent thing to do”. But now we are gifting weapons to Ukraine, yes, and tanks, and that is something altogether different. I, too, now need to remind myself, every time we have a power outage, that we have been having some pretty strange and difficult weather recently and that Russia is not responsible for the weather.

Only today, though, have I realised that Russia might have good reason to retaliate in a very serious way against Norway. Very good reason indeed.

Of course the Norwegian and US authorities have respectively rejected Seymour Hersh’s allegation as “utterly false and complete fiction” and “nonsense”, and the Norwegian media have hardly mentioned it all. One Norwegian paper ran a short article explaining that building a story on information from a single anonymous source was poor journalism. (I put to you that in view of the penalties for whistle-blowing in the US, you would have to be terminally ill to risk informing a journalist of anything at all.) Apart from that, we should all have learnt that whatever President This or Prime Minister That says about what is, or is not, true can safely be disregarded at all times.

In view of President’s Biden’s September statement about Nord Stream 2, US involvement in the sabotage should not come as a surprise to anyone. Norway’s involvement, however, is a bit of a shock, since that effectively means that Norway is a legitimate target for Russian retaliation.

I would say, then, that whoever authorised Norway’s participation (unbeknownst to the general public, not to mention the national assembly) should be indicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Note that Seymour Hersh, who has won a number of prestigious prizes for his journalism, including the Pulitzer Prize, has for some time found it necessary to publish his work on Substack, just as, for example Glenn Greenwald. Seymour Hersh appears to be neither right-wing or left-wing. He describes himself merely as an “investigative” journalist. His departure from NY Times and Washington Post is indicative of something, do you not agree?

Addendum to “Exclave”

06.07.2022 /

The Norwegian foreign ministry has decided to block transport of supplies to the Russian settlement Barentsburg on Svalbard, or Spitzbergen, as the island is also called. The Russian foreign ministry has threatened retaliatory action. This is in essence very much the same situation as the one in Kaliningrad. The 400 people living in Polar conditions in Barentsburg are completely cut off from the world and depend on regular food and medical supplies from Russia, supplies that have now been blocked.

This move on the part of Norway will not harm Russia financially or militarily. It will merely – unless Russia retaliates – harm 400 innocent people in Barentsburg. Only Norway’s former Prime Minister, Secretary General Rocky, could possibly consider this move useful from a strategic point of view: If Russia does retaliate, if Russia sends warships to Svalbard to supply its community there, would that not constitute belligerent action against a NATO member and would that not constitute an excuse to attack Russia?

When I wrote my previous post, I was not aware of this situation. I did not know that Norway had replaced a long tradition of cordial relations with Russia with one of reckless provocation.

Hardly no mention of this matter has been made in the Norwegian press, which is starting to remind me of the Russian press in reverse, as it were. Likewise, the New York Times – always loyal to the currently Neocon Democratic Party – has made no mention of the matter. In other countries’ news outlets, however, it is at least considered worth mentioning. See discussion in Le Monde, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post (true, only in Spanish) and the French state-owned France24.

For those of you who read Norwegian, I eventually found a link from the northernmost local department of the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). People not living in that area, i.e. the county neighbouring Russia – a county in which attitudes to Russia have been not only cordial but warm ever since Russia liberated Finmark from the Germans in 1945 – will not normally have seen that link.

I repeat: NATO is not protecting us, not defending us. Over the past decade, and under the leadership of USA, NATO has played a very insolent game, presumably in the hope that Russia would crawl under the table. There has been little real diplomacy and, in the face of growing Islamist terrorism, surprisingly little cooperation with regard to issues which threaten us all. Instead there have been provocations, the aim of which appears to have been to enter into a duel to the death, as it were, between powers. Europe has everything to lose by heading Stoltenberg’s summons.

Exclave

28.06.2022 /

I’ve learnt a new word this week. Actually, the difference between an enclave and an exclave still isn’t clear to me, nor do I think it is all that important. (See definitions and examples in Wikipedia as at 27 June 2022). Oddly, the Wikipedia article doesn’t mention the exclave Gibraltar. I wonder why.

Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave bordered on the South by Poland and on the North by Lithuania. A railroad connects Kaliningrad with the rest of Russia and ensures supplies to the city.

On the other hand, a 100 km long so-called Suwalki Corridor lies between Kaliningrad and Belarus. The Suwalki corridor is subject to much NATO hand-wringing, since the three Baltic states would be pretty helpless if Russia/Belarus takes control of it.

Nonetheless, Lithuania proudly announced the other day that they would hereafter block rail transport of goods between Russia and Kaliningrad (see a discussion on the matter in Foreign Policy) effectively creating a blockade.

This step on the part of Lithuania, which is merely implementing sanctions imposed by the EU, is pretty reckless, I’d say. Obviously, if Russia feels pressured into taking belligerent action against a NATO country to supply its city, all hell will be lose (i.e. WWIII).

Of course, when the day comes, nobody will remember that we, the NATO countries, almost forced Russia to attack in order to supply the roughly half million people living in Kaliningrad. We will have forgotten, for the simple reason that most of us never knew; our press barely murmured something about the exclave in a subordinate clause.

I find myself asking what the heck is the matter with Warmonger Stoltenberg. (His name, by the way, means proud rock, so why not call him Rocky?) Had I asked him personally, he would of course have replied that fear of death should not prevent us from defending Democracy, or something to that effect. I would have retaliated with dramatic gestures that Russia has never threatened my country’s democracy (or non-aligned Sweden’s or Finland’s), that Ukraine never was a democracy and that every country the US and/or NATO has touched since 1950 has been reduced to rubble. I never argue well with people I passionately despise.

For Mr Stoltenberg, who grew up in the lap of luxury, “death” is just a word. More importantly, though, he has never ever had to be anything but Norwegian. For Norwegians a number of modern values are self-evident. Anybody or any country that does not share and understand those values is “wrong” and subject to kind but firm conversion efforts or, at worst, defamation. That is, of course, unless the person or country in question is an ally, like apartheid Israel. And now, at last, Norway is proudly and ridiculously carrying the banner together with the big guys — UK and France and Germany — determined to fight for global Democracy. We are going to “save” China, Afghanistan, Iran… etc. First, though, we must crush Russia. Of course, we are not alone. At the head of this crusade is USA.

USA’s national assembly has just, we are jubilantly told here in Norway, managed to agree on some gun control. The infinitesimal gun control agreed upon has, however, been offset by a gargantuan gun liberation ruling passed by the Supreme Court. See the New York Times for details. You might not have noticed this decision, at least if you live in Norway, where negative references to USA tend to be shied away from these days. Is the press grooming us to rally around our dear leader, President Biden and his lieutenant NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg?

Winners and losers

14.06.2022 /

Now that the costs of this war are starting to stand out from all the dust and smoke, we are hearing a lot of semantic exercising. I quote N.Y. Times today: “Mr. Scholz, who has been criticized for not supplying more arms, faster, to Ukraine, says that Russia must not win — but has never said that Ukraine must achieve victory.” A growing number of people are belatedly finding it opportune to remind us of Neville Chamberlain’s adage: “In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”

Russia will most certainly have lost the battle against Ukrainian fascism. Opposing fascism with fascism rarely ends fascism. (War is, after all, fascism, seen from the perspective of the attacked party.) Russia will have won the eternal hatred of most Ukrainians, the fierce loathing of an enormous swathe of Europe’s previously neutral population – if you consider such an achievement a victory – and the addition of two countries into the enemy alliance NATO.

Most analysts finally agree, however, that the greatest loser will be Ukraine, both in terms of casualties and material damage and in terms of trauma. It will take years to rebuild the country economically and to heal emotional wounds. Fascism and Neo-Nazism will be alive and thriving, there will be political discord, and entry into the EU will be totally unrealistic for years to come.

Russia will probably have won some territory. It will not have been weakened economically. It will have consolidated its nationalism and Putin’s grip. It will have seen demonstrated even further how economically and politically feeble the US is, and it will have strengthened the case for geopolitical multi-polarity.

Ever since Navalnyj started looming too large for his personal comfort, Putin has become very much more of a hard-liner, more willing to brazenly demonstrate his fear of losing personal power. Nevertheless, having virtually lifted Russia out of the rubble when he took over, he still enjoys the unequivocal support of his compatriots. Moreover, the West has completely failed to understand Russians’ historic ties to Ukraine, and has disclosed appalling hubris, if you ask me. Russians won’t readily pardon western hubris.

Yet, much as Russians are used to keeping their mouths shut in public – they are not willing to shut down their brains. Disaffection about Putin’s refusal to accept opposition will probably grow, but only in the long term. After all, we’re increasingly seeing insidious restrictions of and even outright attacks on free speech/press also in the Western world. The Russians recognize hypocrites a mile off. (They’ve been breast-fed by their own 19th century novelists, for whom hypocrisy was a primary topic.)

The sad part is that those who clamoured loudest for military support to Ukraine have for once been not so much neocons as those who normally vociferously oppose neocons. In the name of “justice”, “fairness”, and all things good, they have been bamboozled. This is the case not least in my own country. Very sad. And here we are: Bear Market in the US, severe inflation everywhere, growing shortages of food, energy and spare parts … all inevitably to be followed by rising despair among mortgage holders and low-income households everywhere. (Despair, remember, equals havoc.)

My point being, once again: Yes, we must strive for “justice for all”, for fairness; we must oppose injustice, fascism, apartheid, BUT we must also bring our heads down from the clouds. Putin is arguably a dictator, but he is far, far from the worst of the lot. The Arabian prince, for instance, a long-term buddy of the US, is infinitely much worse.

As for winners and bamboozlers, I mean losers, Neville Chamberlain was not entirely right: Not all are losers. There will always be some people who know how to make astronomic profits from war.

International relations

16.05.2022 /

The expression “international relations” can be the name of a field of study or research. It can also refer – unsurprisingly – to “international relations”.

I see that experts of “international relations” tend to be qualified as either “realist” or “liberal”. You will have to do your own research, but I have done mine and have reached the conclusion that the “liberal” school is at best pitifully naive. “At best,” I insist, and I mean “at best”.

Most nation states will prefer diplomacy (polite coercion) and cooperation to armed conflict, if for no other reason because the latter is costly. Just as most people don’t take each other to court, even if they have “a good case”, because no matter how sure they are of the legal basis for their claims, they can never be sure that “justice will prevail”.

Some “nation states” call the shots more than others in international organisations. Take even the Security Council with its “permanent members”, who have veto powers: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; three Western countries against two non-western. Almost like the sharply bipartisan US Supreme Court. Except that the veto power means that the Security Council is pretty well paralysed. Were it not for the veto, the West would have its way in every case. You might think that would be a good thing, but if you are not a reasonably wealthy person in a reasonably wealthy state, you might not.

We are human, after all. Our species has many lovely traits, but also some that are less loveable. Take for instance our tendency to abominate those who are different (colour, religion, outlook, sex, whatever.) When I went to upper secondary school, the school’s very best student was kicked out because he refused to cut his hair. “Quite a few years ago”, you may say, and you may think we have changed since then. Changed, yes, but at all times, and in every place, there will always be abomination. India, a country I learned to revere as the home of Ghandi, as the cradle, as it were, of non-violence, has turned into an extremely violent place. Even Sri Lanka …

When people are desperately hungry, they don’t always act nobly. When people are desperate, period, goodness knows what they will do.

I’m sure you are familiar with “group dynamics”, in workplaces, for instance. Maybe you are a student. Maybe you have a child at school. Whoever you are, I’m sure that you know, in your heart of hearts, of people who were not included, not invited, not welcome. Maybe you yourself were excluded, treated overbearingly or even hectored. Or maybe you yourself were a bully. In the US, they are so ahead of us that they even have school shootings, more often than not perpetrated by people who have not been included, invited or welcomed.

That’s us, you see. Homo sapiens. We can be very kind. We can also be anything but.
“But,” you say, “cooperating nation states will not stoop to the level of vile individuals!”
No?

  • What did the West do with its Covid vaccines? Did we or did we not share them with, say Africa?
  • There is a terrible famine in Africa now. Far worse than ever before. And it’s due to climate change! What are we doing about that? Huh?

And by the way, a resolution to combat “glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” was adopted by the UN in 2021 against two votes. Guess whose votes they were. See for yourself, finding the N preceding the names of only two countries.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951466?ln=en

Now all this was just an introduction. My real agenda is to suggest a lecture held in 2015 by John Mearsheimer. John Mearsheimer is currently a favourite hate object for the press. He was and is still however, a prominent expert on international relations, a so-called “realist”. I think that we should have paid more attention to what he said back then.

Seven years after he held that lecture, we have a war on our hands and it’s too late to prevent it and probably also too late to stop it (because wars follow their own perverse dynamic. Remember, we’re humans, i.e. not entirely rational.)

  • A lot of people on both sides have died and will continue to die. Died! Like lost their lives (sometimes slowly and painfully) – leaving broken hearts, widows and orphans…
  • Innumerable homes and livelihoods in Ukraine will be gone.
  • Innumerable people in the US and Europe will sink into poverty or deeper poverty.
  • A handful of people will grow fantastically much richer, and I bet that you and I won’t be among them.
  • We are told that the war will lead to food shortages over the entire planet.
  • Meanwhile, the entire planet is facing a monumental existential challenge: Climate change.

Mind you, this war is not going to end any time soon. Will it have been worth it? If so, why?

  • Because we hate Putin?
  • Because we believe in “freedom”?

What is freedom? For whom? From whom? How and at what cost?
Now that I think about it, though, ultimate freedom is death, so I guess, yes, this war is a step in the direction of ultimate freedom for all.

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