It has just been announced that Kamala Harris has been chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate. This will likely portend a continuation of the Neocon/Hyper-interventionist foreign policy we’ve been seeing for decades, along with hostility toward Russia. Below is a video Kim Iversen did back last November detailing how Kamala Harris is a proxy for Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.
Today’s guest post is by James Chen. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below – Natylie
The word “democracy” has been upheld as the holy grail of Americanism by contemporary American political practitioners and pundits. However, self-determination, which served as the corner stone of the nascent American republic established by our founding fathers nearly two-and-half centuries ago, is seldom mentioned in any of our governmental documents and main-stream-media publications.
Theoretically, on the political spectrum, the opposite of democracy is authoritarianism. Authoritarianism almost always leads to imperialism. And the only effective antidote against imperialism is faith in self-determination.
It is also worth noting that without self-determination, a democratic political system could hardly be cultivated in any political state striving for self-governance, let alone be implemented. In other words, when there’s no self-determination, there’s no self-governance. It could be recognized in Thomas Jefferson’s words:
Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
An important historical aspect regarding self-determination that every American should know, is that it was enshrined as the basic mandate of the two most prominent American foreign policy proclamations of the 20th century: the Fourteen Points by President Woodrow Wilson and the Atlantic Charter by President Franklin Roosevelt. Both documents served as the foundation to build a peaceful world respectively after the two most destructive calamities in human history.
Without discussing the reasons why self-determination is omitted from our current political discussion by our politicians and main-stream-media, we can still easily identify many disastrous consequences that have arisen from its omission while our government has been involved in manipulating the world order since the end of WWII. Let’s just name several out of the long list in a reverse chronological order: 1. Current expansion of Chinese imperialism in the East Asia, 2. Current expansion of Turkish imperialism in the Middle East, 3. The Yemeni Civil War by proxies, 4. The Syrian Civil War by proxies, 5. The Ukrainian revolution with American involvement, 6. The regime change in Libya, 7. The regime change in Iraq, 8. The NATO bombing of Belgrade without UN authorization, 9. The dissolution of Yugoslavia without dissolution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 10. The Kurdish genocide by the Turkish government with US support in Southeast Turkey, 11. The aggrandized expansion of the NATO war machine after dissolution of the Soviet Union, 12. The US interference of Russian presidential election in 1996, 13. the destruction of Afghanistan’s progressive society, 14. The Turkish invasion, occupation and colonization of Cyprus, 15. Multiple staged coup d’etats in Central and South America, 16. The regime change in Cambodia and consequent massacre, 17. The Vietnam War, 18. The 1965 regime change in Indonesia and consequent massacre, 19. The 1955 Istanbul pogrom, 20. The 1953 regime change in Iran and its consequences, 21. The Greek Civil War, etc..
The shameful thing is that in most of the cases listed above, not only was our government not on the side to promote or protect the principle of self-determination, but, on the contrary, it was on the side of the suppressors or perpetrators committing crimes against humanity with American taxpayer money.
By analyzing all the mistakes listed above, it should not be difficult for any fair-minded, rational American to appreciate the causal relationship between the reason, i.e., the total disregard of the world peoples’ will for self-determination and the obvious consequence, i.e., the American imperial power abused, the authoritarian regimes emboldened, many democracies suppressed and civilized societies destroyed, innocent populations massacred, wars and conflicts prolonged, and American interests severely curtailed.
There are several primary mechanisms taking places in the causal relationship leading to wars and serious conflicts:
Bearing in mind the importance of the principle of self-determination, the American politicians should try to relinquish our imperialist foreign policy and replace it with a commitment to supporting self-determination around the globe as the basis for democracy against authoritarianism. This was well understood by President John F. Kennedy more than half a century ago. He would have prevented the U.S. involvement in Vietnam had he not been assassinated five months after his last major speech, delivered on June 10, 1963, at American University, which clearly suggested a desire to end the meaningless cold war perpetuated by imperialism. The desire for genuine peace echoed the pledge he made in his inaugural speech less than three years before to uphold the same tenet for liberty, human rights and self-determination by our forebearers of the American Revolution.
Today, I urge all American politicians to finish what our fallen predecessors started and to continue safeguarding the principles upheld by our previous great leaders. This is the direction that will lead to doing the right things as opposed to continuing to do the wrong things.
James J. Chen has had a life-long interest in history, politics, and the humanities. He has begun writing on these topics, with a particular emphasis on the the U.S.’s role in the evolution of the modern world. He lives and practices medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. His website address is: https://jamesjchen.wixsite.com/save-the-country.
By Natylie Baldwin, OpEd News, July 30, 2020
“We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change, just as President Nixon wanted. We must induce China to change in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.
We must start by changing how our people and our partners perceive the Chinese Communist Party. We have to tell the truth. We can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country, just like any other.”
– Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continues to bloviate on a litany of sins that the Chinese government is guilty of, and various politicians and media outlets continue their nonstop propaganda about how evil Russia is, it is clear that the goals is to keep Americans perpetually indoctrinated with the idea that these two nations are incorrigible enemies.
This is consistent with the National Defense Strategy (NDS) of 2018, which states that the main threats facing the United States in the foreseeable future are Russia and China. And while the terminology of “great power competition” is thrown around, there is emphasis placed on the implicit clash of values with the U.S.-led west, with several references to the “free and open international order” that these two nations are putatively in violation of.
This shares some continuity with the Neoconservative-inspired Wolfowitz Doctrine of the early 1990’s, which granted Washington the right to forcibly determine what values and political framework the rest of the world should adhere to while maintaining hegemony over the world. The Democratic Party has embraced similar foreign policy ideas. Even the “progressive” wing, represented by Bernie Sanders, touted a need to take on the world’s “authoritarians” who were threatening the enlightened west.
All societies throughout modern history have had to prioritize various issues that impact national survival and their populations: the balance between the individual and the collective good, or the impact of change vs group instability, democracy versus economic development, etc. Different societies have resolved these issues in different ways, with varying results.
But the United States, with its triumphalist attitude at the close of the Cold War, decided that its way of life had been judged to be inevitable for everyone in the world. This was summed up in Francis Fukiyama’s The End of History. Western, especially American, political values and norms have been assumed to be the only correct way to resolve the most basic questions of organized life, regardless of whether a country has had any meaningful experience with western values. If a country disagrees or chooses to prioritize differently, they have been deemed backward or illegitimate.
This leaves no space for pluralism, negotiation or peaceful co-existence. Instead, it leads to a world in which conflict is inevitable and differences are irreconcilable. Constant war and the threat of war, especially with the three most powerful players on the world stage – the U.S., China and Russia – having nuclear weapons arsenals at their disposal, makes this an immoral and unsustainable framework.
Continue reading here.
For over three weeks straight, thousands of residents of the far eastern city of Khabarovsk have taken to the streets in protest of the removal and arrest of the local governor, Sergei Furgal, a member of the right-wing LDPR party who beat out the United Russia-favored candidate for the post in 2018. Protesters initially demanded that Furgal be released or at least tried locally rather than in Moscow where he is currently imprisoned. Protests swelled after Putin appointed an outsider, Mikhail Degtyaryov (but also a member of the LDPR party), to replace Furgal. However, the number of demonstrators in recent days appears to be decreasing.
Furgal was arrested for involvement in the murder of several entrepreneurs from 2004-2005. According to a July 16th Interfax report, the Russian Investigative Committee, which is overseeing the case has claimed “irrefutable proof” of Furgal’s guilt via its spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko:
“At this stage, the investigation already has irrefutable evidence of Sergei Furgal’s involvement in organizing the murders of entrepreneurs Yevgeny Zorya and Oleg Bulatov, and an attempt to murder Alexander Smolsky,” Petrenko told Interfax on Thursday.
The crimes were committed in the Khabarovsk Territory and in the Amur Region in 2004-2005, she said.
“Considering the gravity of the offences committed and the liability under the relevant Russian Criminal Code article, it’s for the court to decide whether statutes of limitation may apply. But the investigators have no doubt that Furgal participated in the murders as the immediate organizer,” Petrenko said.
This is supported by the evidence collected, including forensic expert reports, materials obtained in police inquiries, witness statements, and other information, she said.
“The work on uncovering the crimes was never interrupted but complicated badly due to the fact that most individuals aware of what happened were intimidated. They refused to give detailed testimony against Furgal or his accomplices,” Petrenko went on to say.
So, if there’s a plausible case against Furgal for multiple murders, one might ask, why the protests against his arrest? Naturally, the situation is more complicated than the western corporate media is making it out to be with their predictable line of this being strictly about dissatisfaction with Putin who is presumably taking his political revenge on the governor. Russia-based journalist, Bryan MacDonald, who lived for 2 and 1/2 years in Khabarovsk, wrote a good backgrounder on the conditions and atmosphere in Khabarovsk at the time that Furgal won his governorship:
In the end, it was a landslide. Nationalist opposition candidate Sergei Furgal of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) defeated President Putin’s man Vyacheslav Shport by a margin of almost 70 percent to just under 28 percent in the race to become governor of Khabarovsk. Meanwhile, contests in Vladimir, Khakassia and Primorye also delivered setbacks to the ruling party, United Russia.
But don’t get too excited – or worried – just yet, depending on your political preferences. These were regional elections, fought mainly on local issues, involving personalities barely known in Moscow but well-known in their own backyards. Small town heroes, or villains, as it were….
…The district’s capital, Khabarovsk, is a city of around 600,000 where Moscow is frequently seen as more of a hindrance than a help. That’s partly down to distance (8,400km by car, eight hours on a plane, or six days on a train) but it’s also a reaction to observing increasingly well-heeled Asian neighbors. Although this part of Russia is itself prosperous, boasting the highest wages in the country.
Because the world looks very different from Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. While Moscow and St. Petersburg gaze out upon the rest of Europe and feel reasonably content, the Far East is surrounded by some of the most dynamic economies in the world. And it’s hard not to feel jealous.
On the other side of the Amur river lies China, Japan is across the sea, and South Korea is “down the road.” But the Kremlin is far away. And it’s common to meet people in the Far East who have never been west of the Urals but know their way around the backstreets of Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai or Bangkok.
MacDonald goes on to explain how the increase in the retirement age fueled disgust at the Kremlin-backed United Russia party in 2018 as most Russians support the welfare state policies established in the 20th century. Read the full article here.
Another article by Kirill Shamiev from July 23rd, also provides a good comprehensive analysis of the protests and their context. Here he describes the history of governance of the Khabarovsk area in the post-Soviet era leading up to Furgal’s election:
The Khabarovsk Region has long been considered the patrimony of regional elites. The first head of the region, Victor Ishayev, emerged in regional politics in the late 1980s, becoming the director of the Khabarovsk Aluminium Plant and first deputy chairman of the executive committee of the Khabarovsk Regional Council of People’s Deputies. Ishayev remained governor from 1991 to 2009, becoming a kind of ‘father’ of the region. He survived the ‘gangster era’ of wild capitalism. He became a loyal supporter of Vladimir Putin. Then, he served as an envoy and minister for the development of the Far East for another five years. Yet in 2019, Ishayev was arrested and charged with fraud (facing up to 10 years in prison). In July 2020, the case was reclassified as embezzlement and sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office to be referred to court.
The mayor of Khabarovsk, Alexander Sokolov, who served continuously since 2000, became a key associate of Ishayev. Back in 1989, Sokolov became the First Secretary of the Khabarovsk City Committee. In the second half of the 1990s worked as the General Director of Khabarovsknefteprodukt, the largest distributor of petroleum products in the region. In 2018, Sokolov retired from politics. But a year later, he was back in the news. The Navalny Headquarters in Khabarovsk released an investigation, disclosing Sokolov’s ownership of houses in the U.S. and the Bolshekhekhtsirsky Nature Reserve, as well as apartments in Moscow and Khabarovsk. Many protesters remembered this as an example of Sokolov’s corruption and his ‘betrayal’ of the region. In the view of the Far Easterners, a mayor of a city with 600,000 inhabitants cannot legally own houses in the United States. This fact is perceived as a token of obvious corruption and lack of regional patriotism.
The Ishayev-Sokolov tandem controlled the Khabarovsk region for 20 years. In the 1990s politicians’ local ties were an advantage in the context of de-institutionalising political power in the country and surging crime. In the end, though, these qualities turned out insufficient as the situation in the country began to stabilise. The change in the post of governor in 2009 did not help the region. In his 10 years in office, Vyacheslav Shport was unable to achieve higher-than-average growth rates. His negative rating was so high that Shport’s portrait was vandalised several times and covered with spittle in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, his home city.
Shamiev points out that Furgal earned some popularity with his policies and approach to the governorship:
As a governor, Furgal quickly won popularity after solving obvious yet acute problems and thanks to his unprecedented political openness. Furgal helped to achieve a sharp reduction in the number of deceived shareholders, provided free meals to schoolchildren from low-income families, and focused on building boiler houses, local airports, roads and medical infrastructure in remote areas of the region. All these changes came with active information campaigns: video recordings of meetings; voters included in online receptions on Instagram; and Furgal being personally accessible. Furgal’s style of governance was quickly embraced by voters and praised by experts. In a region where everyone knows everyone else, his simplicity and openness stood out in Russia, becoming yet another factor reinforcing his popularity.
Read the full article here.
A couple of more analyses worth reading: Gilbert Doctorow’s, which discusses the idea of the Khabarovsk protests being motivated – at least, in part – due to residents’ disapproval of Moscow’s increasing partnership with China since Furgal was popular and represented a nationalist party; Mary Dejevsky has written about Putin’s “hands off” approach to the protests, letting them generally play out, and not making claims of foreign interference.
*Note to readers: I am starting to work on a larger research project that will be taking up my time over the next couple of weeks. Consequently, blog posts during that time will likely be more sporadic and less in-depth.