This is the first article of a series dedicated to the US foreign policy over the world.
Written by Yoana exclusively for SouthFront
‘’American realism deals with the world as it is but strives to make the world better than it is. More free. More just. More peaceful. More prosperous. Ultimately safer. Not perfect but better.’’
That’s what Secretary Condoleezza Rice said, in response to the criticism towards Bush’s foreign policy. That’s what Obama promises to do ever since he’s on power. But are they the one true ‘’empire’’ that is going to save the world. Why is America the one that is supposed to dictate the way everything should be done? This is the only country that policies the whole world through five global commands, maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents, deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean, and guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea. How can we be sure that all this is led by democracy but not by dollars?
Throughout the years, America’s priority around the world has been promoting democracy. But then they say: “America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country’’. We have listened to the speech about ‘’peace, freedom and democracy’’ too many times. America is turning countries into ‘’geopolitical ghettos’’ using the democracy. The double standards of this country are more than dangerous for the world. After we hear the well-known speech why we need to use tons of bombs in a certain country and to start a war, all we see is people dying, and people suffering, often not even mentioned by the media.
Let’s just look at the latest examples- Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. America is destroying any peace she can see in the Middle East. But as John McCain himself said ‘’America’s foreign policy depends on Middle East’s oil’’.
It’s a double standard to support Hussein’s regime until he’s on your side and when you see that he’s not been a ‘’good boy’’ anymore to say that he’s a dictator and we have to fight against him. The story is identical to Kaddafi in Libya. These wars were started out of America’s desire to take their resources through their corporations, or if it’s necessary to bomb them, to put thousands of American soldiers there and to open the country’s market to the American corporations.
The US has been criticized for supporting dictatorships with economic assistance and military hardware. Particular dictatorships have included Musharraf of Pakistan, the Shah of Iran, Museveni of Uganda,warlords in Somalia,Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Park Chung-hee of South Korea, Generalissimo Franco of Spain, Melez Zenawi of Ethiopia, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala, Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, Suharto of Indonesia, and Georgios Papadopoulos of Greece.
But then, they promote democracy. They are telling us how important is for them to promote human rights, equality and global market. But can we see the irony here? This is just dust in our eyes. And we will continue to believe them if we don’t look at the facts.
Israel and the US are the worst international law breakers. And yet the US is an example in the world rankings of freedom of the media, freedom of its citizens, and valuation of the human rights. It doesn’t matter that America has taken away their right to privacy without even telling them. It doesn’t matter that the media is not telling anything against their holly country. The American monopole of the world ‘democracy’ and its beautiful values in amazing.
It’s interesting what the US would say if it was Russia’s or China’s obligation to promote democracy. America has over a hundred wars and military interventions and it exists as a country from a little later than two centuries. We don’t need to see the list of its wars to conclude that we are allowing them too much, trusting them too much, and fearing them too much. We are living in a world where all the countries have the symbol of the American democracy- McDonald’s and a military base. But no one counts the people that have dies in these wars for democracy. No one actually talks about them, as if they are just numbers. There are nearly 2 million people that died in Vietnam and we are not counting the victims that even now are suffering from cancer because of the illegal chemicals used back then. 2 million people, these are not just numbers, these are human lives. America is guilty for the world’s worst genocide. And if two neighboring countries with dictators are existing and if one of them has oil, we all know where the bombs are going to be.