America’s Crusaders and their Moral High Ground


Today as Washington‘s think tanks label Russia an aggressor for no apparent reason, it is particularly interesting to take a cursory look at how many times the United States of America exercised aggression against other countries, how often US intelligence agencies would interfere in the strictly internal political affairs of sovereign international players. Against the backdrop of the massive drama, that is the so-called Russiagate that unravels in the US, one can be interested to know just how many times the White House pushed its own candidate in a presidential race in some other state or would appoint him to this post directly. But everything goes in the playbook of the Western think tanks as decades of Washington’s uncontested primacy on the international stage led them to the conclusion that America is so expectational it’s beyond any criticism.
Since its first intervention in the affairs of Argentina in 1890, America would soon develop a bad habit of meddling in the affairs of at least 50 countries for a total of well over 130 times. In recent decades alone, as the mainstream media would tell us, the United States has interfered in the affairs of other states 85 times.
Last April, the State Department made a decision to draft a list of countries that are casting their vote in the UN General Assembly in accordance with Washington’s opinion. At the same time, it is really disturbing that the sitting US president issued a warning to the countries that dare to put its own opinion on public display last December, since Donald Trump seems to be convinced that the rest of the world should be comp licitly follow Washington, even if it chose to go to extremes.
The neo-imperial approach adopted by the White House became a rule of thumb for the US State Department and a multitude of American ambassadors that are a little to kin to try on the rusty armor of ancient crusaders, while forgetting that their were supposed to wield diplomacy instead of swords. For instance, just recently American ambassador to Yaounde, Peter Henry Barlerin was accused by the authorities of this Cameroon of directly interfering in the elections in this African country.
A month earlier, a similar scandal broke out with a US ambassador to Berlin, Richard Grenell when German political circles demanded Angle Mekerl to expel this pseudo diplomat from the country for his outright lordly manner of approaching his “vassals”. As it’s been noted by the German TV station N-TV, German politicians were outraged by the statement that Grenell made about his desire to see the positions of conservative forces across Europe to be strengthened. It’s been also added that most of his previous statements in this capacity in Germany were made in direct violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961, which states that diplomats are prohibited from interfering in the internal affairs of the host state.
US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills actively insists on conducting an audit of all the major players on the Armenian mining market, especially those competing with American companies that are trying to secure a contract to extract gold from the Amulsar gold mine, thus trying to impose the rules that would be beneficial to Washington in the purely internal Armenian issue.
Speaking at a non-governmental festival in Moldova, US Ambassador to Chisinau, James Pettit has bluntly stated that Washington and Washington alone can help Moldova to build a “democratic society”.
We all know the typical condescending remarks that US ambassadors would make in the Latin American, Central Asian and Transcaucasian states, from the moral high ground so up above that they can be barely seen. And this goes without a mention of Ukraine, where the White House has been routinely appointing its own henchmen to occupy high-profile positions within the Ukrainian government. Those henchmen would push for Russophobic policies to be adopted by Kiev, undermining Kiev’s relations with the eastern regions of the country and instigating the continuation of the armed conflict in Donbass. A former US vice president, Joe Biden has made a lot of revelations about how Washington is capable of appointing the Attorney General of Ukraine and handle local political forces a number of statements he made for the Bloomberg.
However, one should be surprised by this kind of behavior displayed by American ambassadors, when the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo openly admits to journalists that Washington has been hard at work in its attempts of forcing European countries and businesses into abandoning the support for the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream-2 pipeline, which completely undermines the concept of fair market competition.
One cannot help be amazed by the written testimony that Pompeo presented to the Congress on April 12, in which he promises American lawmakers that the State Department would spare no minute in arming the so-called “brave guys ” in Georgia and Ukraine against Russia and that he will see to it personally. What kind of diplomacy is that?
An example of the neoimperialist approach to international affairs is, of course, is also displayed by the US leadership. For instance, the sitting vice-president of the United States Michael Pence at recent summit in Peru announced that Washington will not stop at nothing until “democracy will not be restored” in Venezuela. He has also urged other countries to take tough measures aimed at isolating the legally elected government of Venezuela.
Additionally, Washington has manifested on multiple occasions its desire to control directly even those states that are being fully complacent with Washington’s dictates . For instance, during Trump’s recent visit to Britain, the US leader didn’t hesitate to offer “his guy”, that is Boris Johnson, to become the next prime minister of the UK. So it remains only to wait, how quickly and without any protest will London follow this “good-hearted advice” from Washington.
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.