Mr. Henry Kissinger , a man who is responsible for the millions of lives and assassination plots against several statesmen across the globe has sent advise from his retirement bed, about what to do and how to deal with the crisis that erupted in Ukraine over Crimea. The deadly crisis has claimed hundreds of lives so far, and caused hundred thousand refugees.
Writing to the Washington Post, last week, once again Kissingerian realpolitik tried to play around the US foreign policy which is based on intervention and destruction for profit making while keeping democracy as the pretext.
“Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities,” he argued. Kissingerian priorities are none other than plundering the sovereignty of nation and steeling their security while proffering the carrot of liberty. In the end neither liberty nor security will exist in the country. As in order to succeed with this well-planned strategy shadow leaders will become demons of democracy while continually having inside deals with the U.S. government.
We do not have to dig deep into history to understand this reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth.
The Kissingerian “establishing priorities” prevails on the real experiences of history rather than a presumptuous lesson which will only guide you to nowhere. Evidences of Kissinger’s “priorities” are to be seen all around the world, and many skulls still remained under the earth, while screaming for justice, and revenge.
Perhaps, the colour of Kissinger’s recent argument is a bit different and his theory is articulated against his long-rooted enemy which prevailed under the mask of the cold war.
However, his argument has given twilight to the Obama administration, rather than what the honourable lady who served as the same position years later under the Bush Jr. administration did.
Writing to the same paper, Ms. Condoleezza Rice[2] urged the U.S. to lead the crisis and manage the chaotic situation in Ukraine. True, as she says, “This is not 1968, and Russia is not the Soviet Union,” otherwise Mr. Edward Snowdon would never have made his journey to there and started exposing the truth of his motherland. That does not mean it will be a last milepost of that heroic gentleman who left behind all comforts and started the real struggle against the real enemy. Apparently he will never be nominated for a Nobel Prize, which one of the good talkers of our time: Mr. Barack Hussain Obama received unearned. The luck of the lottery is, most of the time, based on hypocritical political power and desires.
“The events in Ukraine should be a wake-up call to those on both sides of the aisle who believe that the United States should eschew the responsibilities of leadership. If it is not heeded, dictators and extremists across the globe will be emboldened. And we will pay a price as our interests and our values are trampled in their wake,” the author of “No Higher Honour”, the book described and attempts to justify what has happened in the name of the War on Terror, has noted.
Despite of all secrets of dominance, the visible result of the “responsibilities of leadership” was shown to the world, when a former refugees’ shelter turned into a prison of the terror suspects, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The argument that she tried to put forward is none other than the part of same song that she sang over the years, while millions of innocents sacrificed their lives for fake liberation.
The crisis in Ukraine, or in actual term, the Russian intervention of Crimea, prevails in this real notion. However, it does not mean that Mr. President Putin is trying to undermine what the people in general require. They need freedom to live. Certainly they should side neither with the U.S. nor Russia, but, historically, they do have genetic and cultural combinations with the Russians. Apparently, undeniable historical facts remain in the region which screaming for this unity. Once in the series of battles, then due to famine, millions of people in their past generation vanquished. Perhaps they deserved nothing but bitterness of the tyrants and the traumatic memories of Gulags.
We have passed some of the dirtiest chapters of mankind. Perhaps we are heading towards further inhuman treatments in many places such as Syria and Palestine. All these crises have a common tune and play the role of what the outsider needs rather than the needs of the people who are there. That is an open secret. Like Mr. Kissinger’s famous political cohabitation with the Pakistan military dictator, Yahya Khan, who was responsible for killing of millions of people in Bangladesh in what was then, East Pakistan. The U.S. helped military Dictator Yahya Khan, who earned the gratitude of both U.S. and China by making possible a secret visit by Henry Kissinger to Beijing in 1971 for talks with Mao and his associates. The crimes that occurred in Bangladesh shed more blood than Bosnia and to some extent it is comparable with what happened in Rwanda. What we are seeing is that, instead of helping people to win and keep their personal liberty, the U.S. instead engaged with the ruling parties and helped them to corrupt the criminal justice system.
Regime change is an idea to restore democracy where autocracy is in power. In recent history it has taken the form of direct military interventions, colour revolutions, and the famously named Arab Spring. But they deliberately ignored the situation of Arab Autumn period, and it led to more chaos than before.
In the beginning the popular media pushed us to understand this as a healthy exercise, but in many of those nations whose regimes have changed there are more tense and tumultuous circumstances now than in the past. Perhaps the best example is Libya where the former leader was killed in cold blood. It was a war crime in broad daylight. The situations in many countries are similarly worse than before. The idea of regime change and the restoration of democracy has become a tool of destruction.
When I asked, from Colonel (Rtd.) Lawrence Wilkerson,[3] who served as chief of staff to the former Secretary of State, Gen. (Rtd) Colin Power, why does U.S. foreign policy remain unchanged and what might cause a policy change? His simple answer was, “The objective of regime change is just that: regime change. As you say, with the US the objective is usually changing a dictatorship to a more democratic form of government. In my view, the US has no business engaging in such strategies. The US should encourage such changes through the force of its own democratic example, not through force of arms or covert actions to encourage coups d’etatas today it is doing in Venezuela. And, by the way, that US example has been tarnished enormously by such actions as torture and abuse.”
The other side of the Crimean crisis is presented by Liz Wahl[4] which gave rise to her unpleasant resignation. In spite of her employer, Liz Wahl, is letting everybody understand the cruelty of the disguised evils. It was a deliberately ‘attack’ rather than the expression of a couple of lies. Yet, as Rice said, cooking her piece in the Washington Post, “this is not 1968, and Russia is not the Soviet Union.” In these circumstances, most of cooperative media try to enlighten us, on their sincere ignorance. Those who opened up, realize their view point on most things is not the panacea but the knock to lid of Pandora’s Box.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa edits the Sri Lanka Guardian, an online daily newspaper, and he also an editor of the Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives, bi-monthly print magazine. He is the author of the just released non-fictions, “Nagna Balaya” (The Naked Power), in Sinhalese and “The Conflation”, in English. He can be reached at ilangamuwa@gmail.com