De Onthullende Yoeri Albrecht Affaire 17

Het vrijblijvend provincialisme van het establishment in de VS en Europa heeft ertoe geleid dat links vandaag de dag uitgesproken rechts is geworden. Terwijl de strijd tegen het failliete neoliberalisme in toenemende mate op straat wordt uitgevochten, heeft links de kant gekozen van het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex, waar president Eisenhower al in 1961 met klem voor waarschuwde. Ondertussen verspreidt  rechts zoals ‘Senior Director for Europe and Russia of the National Security Council’ onder president Trump, de Brits-Amerikaanse deskundige op het gebied van de buitenlandse betrekkingen, Fiona Hill, momenteel opvallend ‘linkse’ opvattingen. Eind juni 2023 zette zij tijdens een toespraak, getiteld ‘Ukraine in the New World Disorder. The Rest’s Rebellion Against the United States,’ de volgende feiten uiteen:

More than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the brutal war Vladimir Putin ignited has transformed, as major regional conflicts often do, into a war with global ramifications. This has not, as Vladimir Putin and others claim, become a proxy war between the United States or the ‘collective West’ (the U.S. and its European and other allies) against Russia. In the current geopolitical arena, the war is now effectively the reverse — a proxy for a rebellion by Russia and the ‘Rest’ against the United States. The war in Ukraine is perhaps the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone. 

In its pursuit of the war, Russia has cleverly exploited deep-seated international resistance, and in some cases open challenges, to continued American leadership of global institutions. It is not just Russia that seeks to push the United States to the sidelines in Europe, and China that wants to minimize and contain U.S. military and economic presence in Asia so both can secure their respective spheres of influence. Other countries that have traditionally been considered ‘middle powers’ or ‘swing states’ — the so-called ‘Rest’ of the world — seek to cut the U.S. down to a different size in their neighborhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what’s in their interest. In short, in 2023, we hear a resounding no to U.S. domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.

In this context, the next iteration (herhaling) of the global security, political and economic system will not be framed by the United States alone. The reality is already something else. It is not an ‘order,’ which inherently points to a hierarchy, and perhaps not even a ‘disorder.’ A range of countries are pushing and pulling in line with their own priorities to produce new arrangements.  We in the transatlantic community may need to develop some new terminology as well as adapt our foreign policy approaches to deal with horizontal networks of overlapping and sometimes competing structures. We have entered what Samir Saran, President of India’s Observer Research Foundation, has dubbed the age of ‘limited liability partnerships.’ The regionalization of security, trade and political alliances complicates our national security strategies and policy planning, but it may also intersect with our priorities in useful ways if we can be flexible and creative — rather than simply resisting and responding when things go in directions we don’t like,

aldus Fiona Hill, die onder president George W. Bush en Barack Obama een invloedrijke ‘intelligence analyst’ was. In haar voor de mainstream taboe doorbrekende toespraak concludeerde zij dat:

the war in Ukraine is a world or system changing war. It has stripped away the surface detail and exposed the flaws and fault lines in the international order. It is not a 21st century conflict. It is a retrograde war — what we hope will be the terminal spasm of the European convulsions that shook the rest of the world in the 20th century because of Europe’s previous mercantilist dominance and imperial conquests,

zo benadrukt Hill, die in tegenstelling tot de zelfgenoegzame Nederlandse outsiders een prominente insider is, die als functionaris van de ‘deep state’ uit ervaring spreekt, en  in het eerste kwartaal van 2017 door Donald Trump werd benoemd tot ‘deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian nations affairs on his National Security Council staff.’ Nogmaals Hill:

Since 1991, the U.S. has seemingly stood alone as the global superpower. But today, after a fraught two-decade period shaped by American-led military interventions and direct engagement in regional wars, the Ukraine war highlights the decline of the United States itself,

een feit dat door de provinciaals georiënteerde polderpers en polderpolitici nog steeds niet beseft wordt, hetgeen  hun absurde opvattingen verklaart. In plaats van zich goed te informeren, blijven zij hun opinies herhalen waardoor ze de schijn van feiten verwerven. En omdat dissidenten hier, net als destijds in de Sovjet Unie, geboycot worden winnen hun meningen aan kracht. Natuurlijk gaat intussen de werkelijkheid gewoon door. Hill:

‘America fatigue’ and disillusionment with its role as the global hegemon is widespread. This includes in the United States itself — a fact that is frequently on display in Congress, news outlets and think tank debates. For some, the U.S. is a flawed international actor with its own domestic problems to attend to. For others, the U.S. is a new form of imperial state that ignores the concerns of others and throws its military weight around. 

In the near term, this is particularly detrimental for Ukraine. Globally, the war in Ukraine is viewed as one in a long series of dramatic events since 2001 driven by the United States. America’s heavy-handed conduct of the ‘War on Terror’ alienated the vast swathe of the Muslim world. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, hot on the heels of Afghanistan, revived the horrors of U.S. Cold War interventions in Korea and Vietnam. U.S. inaction in conflicts like Yemen, and selective interventions in Libya and Syria, underscored U.S. foreign policy inconsistency. The 2008-2010 financial crisis and Great Recession, followed by America’s domestic upheaval and… more recently, the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, cast further doubt on the U.S. capacity for global leadership,

met als resultaat dat de manier waarop ‘de meeste staten en commentatoren over de Verenigde Staten denken, hun prisma’ is geworden ‘voor het beoordelen van Rusland’s acties.’ Wat de Europese politici en  bureaucraten niet tot zich laten doordringen is hoe wankel hun positie is, hoe ernstig hun geloofwaardigheid is aangetast sinds de komst van de neoliberale ideologie. Voor de mainstream-pers geldt hetzelfde. Hoewel onder andere de toonaangevende New York Times zijn excuses heeft aangeboden voor de kritiekloze wijze waarop de krant de illegale inval in Irak rechtvaardigde, beseft de westerse ‘corporate press’ niet echt hoe corrupt een aanzienlijk deel van het publiek de media beschouwt. Fiona Hill:     

The U.S. invasion of Iraq universally undercut U.S. credibility and continues to do so. For many critics of the United States, Iraq was the most recent in a series of American sins stretching back to Vietnam and the precursor of current events. Even though a tiny handful of states have sided with Russia in successive UN resolutions in the General Assembly, significant abstentions, including by China and India, signal displeasure with the United States. As a result, the vital twin tasks of restoring the prohibition against war and the use of force as the critical cornerstone of the United Nations and international system, and of defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, get lost in a morass of skepticism and suspicions about the United States.  

In the so-called ‘Global South,’ and what I am loosely referring to as the ‘Rest’ (of the world), there is no sense of the U.S. as a virtuous state. Perceptions of American hubris and hypocrisy are widespread. Trust in the international system(s) that the U.S. helped invent and has presided over since World War II is long gone. 

Elites and populations in many of these countries believe that the system was imposed on them at a time of weakness when they were only just securing their independence. Even if elites and populations have generally benefitted from pax Americana, they believe the United States and its bloc of countries in the collective West have benefitted far more. For them, this war is about protecting the West’s benefits and hegemony, not defending Ukraine.

https://lmc.icds.ee/lennart-meri-lecture-by-fiona-hill/ 

Senator Fullbright in 1966. De langst  zittende voorzitter van de Senaatscommissie voor Buitenlandse Betrekkingen.

De zogeheten 'op regels gebaseerde wereldwijde orde,' waarop Ursula von der Leyen, voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, zich blijft beroepen was en is nog steeds gebaseerd op de botte onwetendheid die eigen is aan de arrogantie van de macht. Daarover de volgende keer meer.