THE UNCOMFORTABLY STRAIGHT JOURNEY FROM IRAQ TO UKRAINE

Neoconservative theories of regime-change sparked the continuing Russia-Ukraine War and the disastrous 2003 Iraq War. In truth, the savagery and criminality of Russia's atrocities in Ukraine are easily matched, if not considerably exceeded, by the US record.

March 19 marks the 20th anniversary of the usa and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event inside the quick history of the 21st century no longer best maintains to plague Iraqi society to nowadays, however it additionally looms large over the modern-day crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for maximum of the worldwide South to peer the struggle in Ukraine thru the equal prism as US and Western politicians.

at the same time as america changed into capable of sturdy-arm 49 nations, consisting of many inside the worldwide South, to join its “coalition of the inclined” to support invading the sovereign country of Iraq, simplest the U.k., Australia, Denmark and Poland simply contributed troops to the invasion pressure, and the beyond two decades of disastrous interventions have taught many countries no longer to affix their wagons to the faltering US empire. 

nowadays, nations within the global South have overwhelmingly refused US entreaties to send guns to Ukraine and are reluctant to comply with Western sanctions on Russia. as an alternative, they're urgently calling for diplomacy to end the conflict earlier than it escalates right into a complete-scale warfare between Russia and america, with the existential hazard of a global-finishing nuclear struggle.

Neoconservative ideas of Regime-change

The architects of the united states invasion of Iraq have been the neoconservative founders of the undertaking for a brand new American Century (PNAC), who believed that the usa may want to use the unchallenged military superiority that it achieved at the stop of the cold conflict to perpetuate American global power into the 21st century. 

The invasion of Iraq would exhibit US “full spectrum dominance” to the world, based totally on what the past due Senator Edward Kennedy condemned as “a call for twenty first century American imperialism that no other united states of america can or ought to accept.”  

Kennedy become right, and the neocons have been thoroughly wrong. US army aggression succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, however it did not impose a strong new order, leaving simplest chaos, loss of life and violence in its wake. The same changed into authentic of us interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and other international locations. 

For the relaxation of the sector, the non violent monetary rise of China and the worldwide South has created an alternative route for monetary improvement this is replacing the united states neocolonial model. even as the us has squandered its unipolar second on trillion-greenback army spending, illegal wars and militarism, different international locations are quietly constructing a greater peaceful, multipolar global.      

And but, ironically, there is one country in which the neocons’ “regime-change” approach succeeded, and wherein they doggedly hang to energy: the usa itself. at the same time as most of the world recoiled in horror on the effects of us aggression, the neocons consolidated their manipulate over US foreign policy, infecting and poisoning Democratic and Republican administrations alike with their exceptionalist snake oil.

company politicians and media want to airbrush out the neocons’ takeover and persevering with domination of us foreign coverage, however the neocons are hidden in plain sight within the top echelons of america country branch, the country wide protection Council, the White residence, Congress and influential company-funded assume tanks.

PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings institution and changed into a key supporter of Hillary Clinton. President Joe Biden appointed Kagan’s spouse, Victoria Nuland, a former foreign coverage adviser to Dick Cheney, as his below Secretary of nation for political opinions, the fourth most senior role within the nation department. That changed into after she played the lead US role within the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which precipitated its countrywide disintegration, the go back of Crimea to Russia and a civil battle in Donbas that killed at least 14,000 humans.

Nuland’s nominal boss, Secretary of nation Antony Blinken, changed into the workforce director of the Senate overseas family members Committee in 2002, for the duration of its debates over the approaching US assault on Iraq. Blinken helped the committee chairman, Senator Joe Biden, choreograph hearings that guaranteed the committee’s support for the war, with the exception of any witnesses who did not completely support the neocons’ warfare plan.

Biden administration Persists with Neoconservative regulations

It isn't clean who's absolutely calling the overseas policy photographs in Biden’s management because it barrels toward global struggle III with Russia and provokes war with China, using roughshod over Biden’s campaign promise to “elevate international relations because the number one tool of our global engagement.” Nuland seems to have influence far beyond her rank within the shaping folks (and as a consequence Ukrainian) conflict policy.

What is obvious is that maximum of the world has visible thru the lies and hypocrisy people overseas coverage, and that the us is in the end reaping the result of its movements in the refusal of the global South to hold dancing to the music of the american pied piper.

on the UN wellknown meeting in September 2022, the leaders of 66 nations, representing a majority of the arena’s populace, pleaded for diplomacy and peace in Ukraine. And but Western leaders nevertheless ignore their pleas, claiming a monopoly on ethical leadership that they decisively misplaced on March 19, 2003, whilst the us and the United Kingdom tore up the UN constitution and invaded Iraq. 

In a panel discussion on “defending the UN constitution and the regulations-primarily based global Order” on the recent Munich safety convention, three of the panelists–from Brazil, Colombia and Namibia–explicitly rejected Western demands for his or her countries to interrupt off members of the family with Russia, and alternatively spoke out for peace in Ukraine.

Brazilian foreign Minister Mauro Vieira called on all of the combatants to “construct the opportunity of a solution. We can't hold on speaking best of struggle.” vice chairman Francia Márquez of Colombia elaborated, “We don’t need to head on discussing who could be the winner or the loser of a conflict. we are all losers and, in the end, it's miles humankind that loses the entirety.”

top Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila of Namibia summed up the perspectives of world South leaders and their people: “Our recognition is on fixing the trouble…not on transferring blame,” she stated. “we are selling a peaceful decision of that conflict, so that the complete global and all the sources of the sector can be targeted on improving the situations of human beings round the sector as opposed to being spent on obtaining guns, killing humans, and actually developing hostilities.”

So how do the yankee neocons and their eu vassals reply to those eminently practical and really popular leaders from the worldwide South? In a frightening, warlike speech, eu Union overseas coverage leader Josep Borrell informed the Munich conference that the manner for the West to “rebuild agree with and cooperation with many in the so-known as international South” is to “debunk… this false narrative… of a double fashionable.”

however the double preferred between the West’s responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and decades of Western aggression isn't always a fake narrative. In preceding articles, we have documented how the us and its allies dropped more than 337,000 bombs and missiles on different nations between 2001 and 2020. that is an average of forty six consistent with day, day in day out, for twenty years. 

the us record effortlessly matches, or arguably a ways outstrips, the illegality and brutality of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. yet america never faces financial sanctions from the global community. It has in no way been forced to pay warfare reparations to its sufferers. It supplies guns to the aggressors rather than to the sufferers of aggression in Palestine, Yemen and somewhere else. And US leaders—including invoice Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden—have by no means been prosecuted for the worldwide crime of aggression, warfare crimes or crimes against humanity.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the devastating Iraq invasion, let us be a part of with international South leaders and the majority of our pals round the world, now not most effective in calling for immediate peace negotiations to stop the brutal Ukraine conflict, but also in constructing a authentic policies-based totally global order, where the equal regulations—and the same effects and punishments for breaking the ones rules—practice to all international locations, such as our own.