adminMichael Hudson Correspondent
In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence or revolution.
This was his threat to promote revolution, coups and violence against any country not deemed a “democracy.”
In making this hardly veiled threat, he redefined the word in the international political vocabulary. Democracy is the CIA’s overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran to install the Shah.
Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan’s secular government by the Taliban against Russia. Democracy is the Ukrainian coup behind Yats and Poroshenko. Democracy is Pinochet. It is “our bastards,” as Lyndon Johnson said with regard to the Latin American dictators installed by US foreign policy.
A century ago the word “democracy” referred to a nation whose policies were formed by elected representatives.
Ever since ancient Athens, democracy was contrasted to oligarchy and aristocracy. But since the Cold War and its aftermath, that is not how US politicians have used the term.
When an American president uses the word “democracy,” he means a pro-American country following US.neoliberal policies.
No matter if a country is a military dictatorship or the government was brought in by a coup as in Georgia or Ukraine. A “democratic” government has been redefined simply as one supporting the Washington Consensus, NATO and the IMF.
It is a government that shifts policy-making out of the hands of elected representatives to an “independent” central bank, whose policies are dictated by the oligarchy centred in Wall Street, the City of London and Frankfurt.
Given this American redefinition of the political vocabulary, when President Obama says that such countries will not suffer coups, violent revolution or terrorism, he means that countries safely within the US diplomatic orbit will be free of destabilisation sponsored by the US State Department, Defence Department and Treasury.
Countries whose voters democratically elect a government or regime that acts independently (or even that simply seeks the power to act independently of US directives) will be destabilized, Syria style, Ukraine style or Chile style under General Pinochet.
As Henry Kissinger said, just because a country votes in communists it doesn’t mean that we have to accept it.
It is the style of “colour revolutions” sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy.
In his United Nations reply, Russian President Putin warned against the “export of democratic revolution,” meaning by the United States in support of its local factotums.
ISIL is armed with US weapons and its soldiers were trained by US armed forces.
In case there was any doubt, President Obama reiterated before the United Nations that until Syrian President Assad was removed in favour of one more submissive to US oil and military policy, Assad was the major enemy, not ISIL.
“It is impossible to tolerate the present situation any longer,” President Putin responded. Likewise in Ukraine.
“What I believe is absolutely unacceptable,” he said in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes, “is the resolution of internal political issues in the former USSR Republics, through ‘colour revolutions’, through coup d’états, through unconstitutional removal of power.
That is totally unacceptable. Our partners in the United States have supported those who ousted Yanukovych. . . We know who and where, when, who exactly met with someone and worked with those who ousted Yanukovych, how they were supported, how much they were paid, how they were trained, where, in which countries, and who those instructors were. We know everything.”
Where does this leave U.S.-Russian relations? I hoped for a moment that perhaps Obama’s harsh anti-Russian talk was to provide protective coloration for an agreement with Putin in their meeting later.
Speak one way so as to enable oneself to act in another has always been his modus operandi, as it is for many politicians. But Obama remains in the hands of the neocons.
Where will this lead? There are many ways to think outside the box. What if Putin proposes to air-lift or ship Syrian refugees — up to a third of the population — to Europe, landing them in Holland and England, obliged under the Shengen rules to accept them?
Or what if he brings the best computer specialists and other skilled labour for which Syria is renowned to Russia, supplementing the flood of immigration from “democratic” Ukraine? — www.counterpunch.org
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