An Ideal Foreign Policy

Russian tank in Ukraine. Photo licensed under Creative Commons.

With revelations that U.S. national-security state officials assisted their counterparts in Ukraine to kill Russian generals and also to sink a Russian ship, it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States has been a combatant in the Russia-Ukraine war since the beginning and is simply using Ukraine as a proxy to destroy Russia and the regime of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. 

At the same time, the conflict is conveniently distracting people’s attention away from the catastrophes of Afghanistan and Iraq and the fiscal and monetary morass in which U.S. officials have plunged our nation, in large part because of the massive, ever-growing expenditures on the military-industrial complex. 

Even worse, It is also becoming increasingly clear that U.S. officials, either wittingly or unwittingly, are inexorably pushing Russia into resorting to tactical nuclear weapons to achieve victory in Ukraine. 

After all, Russia has made it perfectly clear that it will not countenance Ukraine joining NATO, which would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to achieve their goal of installing their nuclear missiles pointed at Moscow and other Russian cities in Ukraine — that is, on Russia’s border. That’s why Russia fulfilled the vow it had been making for some 25 years — the vow to invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening.

At the same time, U.S. and Ukrainian officials continue to steadfastly maintain that they intend to make Ukraine a member of NATO, notwithstanding Russia’s objections, which would thereby enable the Pentagon and the CIA to proceed with installing their nuclear missiles on Russia’s border. 

Moreover, U.S. military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine is clearly denying Russia a victory in the war. A Russian defeat would mean that Ukraine would then be able to join NATO and authorize the Pentagon and the CIA to proceed with installing their nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.

Therefore, something has to give. Will it be Russia? Perhaps. Russian officials might just realize where this is headed and simply give up trying to stop Ukraine from joining NATO and just let the Pentagon and the CIA go ahead and install their nuclear missiles in Ukraine.

On the other hand, having gone this far, the Russians might not give up. But to win, they might come to the realization that the only way they can do that is by resorting to tactical nuclear weapons. If that happens, it’s anyone’s guess as to where this would lead, but my hunch is that a lot of Americans would then be fleeing big U.S. cities. 

Either way, this is a highly dangerous gambit that U.S. officials are playing, one that has brought us closer to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everyone naturally assumes that that would never happen, and we can only hope it doesn’t. But even if it doesn’t, it’s still a highly reckless game that the Pentagon and the CIA are playing.

Let’s keep one important thing in mind: This conflict is not about freedom, as former President George W. Bush told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday. It is about NATO, an old Cold War bureaucratic entity that should have gone out of existence a long time ago and, even better, should never have been brought into existence. (For that matter, Bush’s invasion of Iraq wasn’t about freedom either, even though the Pentagon called it Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

If America is able to extricate itself from this conflict without a nuclear war between the United States and Russia — and we can only hope that that happens — it will be high time for Americans to do some serious soul-searching about where we are as a nation, where we want to go, and how we get there. 

For those who like living in a society that is characterized by forever wars and crises, a constantly shifting array of official enemies, out-of-control federal spending and debt, a militarized society, a government with omnipotent dark-side powers, and a reckless and highly dangerous interventionist foreign policy, then just continue supporting the system under which we have all been born and raised and continue to live.

For those who want a different direction for America — one that would help bring us a society of liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world — the following is an ideal foreign policy for which to strive:

1. Dismantle the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA — and restore a limited-government republic to our land, one with a relatively small, basic military. Our nation was founded as a limited-government republic. The conversion to a national-security state took place after World War II, ostensibly to fight communism and Russia, which, ironically, had been America’s WWII partner and ally. 

As I point out in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, the conversion to a national-security state was the worst mistake Americans have ever made. It brought into existence  the omnipotent dark-side powers that characterize totalitarian regimes, such as assassination, kidnapping, torture, indefinite detention, secret prison camps, denial of due process, and mass secret surveillance. All of those dark-side powers would be gone with the restoration of our nation’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic

2.  Restore America’s founding foreign policy of non-interventionism. No more coups, regime-change operations, foreign alliances, invasions, political assassinations, and wars of aggression. No more U.S. governmental involvement in foreign wars, civil wars, revolutions, insurgencies, and terrorism. No more war on terrorism because there would no longer be terrorist blowback from U.S. foreign policy.

3. End all foreign aid to everyone. It’s just a form of political bribery. 

4. Lift all sanctions and economic embargoes. They target innocent people as a way to achieve a political end. They also destroy the rights and liberties of the American people. 

5. Free Americans to travel wherever they want and associate with whomever they want.

6. Lift all trade restrictions and immigration controls. Free trade establishes mutual harmonies between people. Open immigration provides people who are suffering war, tyranny, or oppression to have a place to flee. Americans lived and prospered for more than a century under a system of open immigration.

This is the key to moving our nation — and indirectly the world — in the direction of liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony,

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.