I studied for a time at
Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire and fell in love with the United
States in general, but in particular with the Granite state. I remember all the
cars with their licence plates stating “Live free or die” and having a feeling
that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Since it first came
into existence, I believe, the US has been on the right side of history.
Mistakes have been made, and like every country, it is possible to find fault
with the historical record, but unquestionably the world has been a better
place because the US existed.
What I’m going to write
is controversial. People I like and agree with on much else may disagree with
this. I hesitate therefore to write it, but do so because friends sometimes
disagree. It is, I hope, possible to criticise from the perspective of
friendship.
Since the Second World
War it has broadly been the policy of successive UK governments to support the
US in foreign policy. This was and is correct. Friends support each other and
the UK gains by having the US as a long term ally. For this reason I have
generally supported, though sometimes with reluctance, the UK’s support of our
ally in the wars of the past 20-30 years. We’ve fought side by side twice in
Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere. When a US president asks for
help, my first reaction is that we should help, simply because we are an ally and
have been asked. However, I am beginning
to become uncomfortable with this policy of unconditional support.
The United States has
intervened pretty much where it has pleased and then found justification for
doing so. That justification amounts to we think we ought to intervene. The US
is itself the judge of the morality and legality of its actions. For a long
time I have been willing to go along with this, on the basis simply that the
United States historically has been a force for good. It remains one. But I
begin to question the wisdom of the foreign policy choices that have been made
in recent years. Many of these wars have not turned out well. Iraq is
unquestionably worse off today than it would have been if we had not
intervened. The same can probably be said of Libya. It is unlikely that the
intervention in Afghanistan will turn out well long term.
If wars go well and
lead to a better outcome for both victor and vanquished, then I’ve always been
willing to be not overly concerned about the cause of the war. Wars have been fought
for far worse reasons than toppling dictators. But when wars go badly and the
outcomes are chaotic, then I’m forced to notice that the US has frequently had
no real right to intervene. I have in the past been willing to accept the
justification that the United States thinks the intervention morally justified,
but this position has become ever more untenable and made me ever more
uncomfortable as each intervention fails to turn out well and, moreover, does
not have the support of other great powers.
In 1962 the world
appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war, because the Soviet Union wished to
put missiles on Cuba. The United States objected. What right did they have to
object? The reason was that Cuba was nearby. They considered the whole region
within their sphere of influence. Fair enough. I’m glad the crisis ended with
there being no missiles on Cuba. The United States still maintains its sphere
of influence. Imagine if today a foreign power sought to overthrow the government
in Mexico and replace it with an ally. What would have happened if the Soviet
Union had tried to do this? The United States would unquestionably have gone to
war. How far does the US sphere of influence extend? They have been willing to
intervene in Korea, in Vietnam, in Chile and really pretty much anywhere else they
please. The justification for such action is the national interest of the
United States and the West in general. In many instances it has been right to
intervene. But let’s not kid ourselves the US has sought to change regimes for
the simple reason that it wants to, and has frequently had no more
justification for doing so than its own self-interest.
I believe, we made a
long term strategic error in 1991. The West chose to treat everyone in the
Eastern Block as an ally except one country, Russia. We expanded NATO and the
EU right up to the border of the Soviet Union and beyond. Russia was excluded
from the ever expanding club. We chose to enlarge in this way even though the
condition for the possibility of the Eastern Bloc collapsing more or less peacefully
was that Russia agreed not to fight the collapse. Russia did so solely on the
basis of an agreement that the Warsaw Pact would not simply be turned into NATO.
History teaches us the folly of crossing
strategic red lines and backing a great power into a corner.
During the Cold War the
Soviet Union also had a sphere of influence. The West stood by when the Soviet
Union sent tanks into Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We would have stood by, too,
if the Soviets had crushed the revolts which took place between 1989 and 1991.
They could easily have done so. A few shots and a couple of tanks would have
stopped those chipping away at the Berlin wall. Why would the West have done
nothing? Because the Eastern Bloc was within the Soviet sphere of influence and
to intervene would have led to nuclear war.
Imagine if present day
Russia tried to implement regime change within the US sphere of influence,
let’s say in Canada or Mexico. How would the United States react? They would go
to war to prevent it. But the US and the EU think it is justified to bring
about regime change in Russia’s neighbour.
The sphere of influence of the United States now extends even as far as
Ukraine, which until relatively recently was commonly known in Russian as ‘LittleRussia’.
Russia began in Kiev.
The present day borders of Ukraine only exist because of Russian and Soviet
military action and arbitrary decisions made by Lenin and Khrushchev when
everyone thought the USSR would be together for ever. The population of the
Ukraine is linguistically mixed, but there are nationalistic forces,
particularly from Western Ukraine, that would prefer that there were not
Russians and Russian speakers in that country. What has happened over the past
number of years in Ukraine is a tragedy for both Russia and Ukraine. People
who did not even think of themselves as particularly different during the
Soviet Union now hate each other. There has been great wrong on both sides. But
we in the West have also been wrong.
It was wrong of the
US/EU to agitate to overthrow the elected leader of Ukraine. No doubt, he was a
rogue, but it would have been possible to vote him out if only everyone had
waited a few months. It was wrong of Russia to intervene in the Ukraine. But it
was no more wrong than countless military actions undertaken by the United
States. Russia, too, has a right not to have a hostile power seek regime change
right on its border.
There is inequality
here. The United States can have wars
where and when it pleases, with no more justification than that it decides such
a war is in its national interest, but when Russia decides to act in its own
interest, the United States brings down the Russian economy causing suffering
to millions. Russia was not justified in
using force to change international borders. But at least their intervention
was on behalf of people who speak Russian. How many GIs could speak Pashto? Ukraine is just one more of a
growing list of countries where the West has intervened and caused disaster. If
the EU/US had just left Ukraine alone, it would today have the same borders as
it did in 1991, and we would not have had what amounts to a fratricidal civil
war.
The United States must
cease intervening in places that it does not understand. It has more power than
at any time in its history. Its control of international finance begins to look
like dictatorship. Democracy is about everyone
in the world having the same rights as Americans. Let us live free, too. At the
moment the US can say “Do as we tell you or we’ll ruin you.” They can say this
to anyone. Far from being the land of the free, the US is beginning to resemble
a Southern plantation owner, whose freedom depends on the slavery of others. It
took a Civil War to erase that blot on the historical record of the United
States. Let’s just hope ruining Russia doesn’t put the world back in to the
Cold War. History wouldn’t look very favourably on that either.†
If you like my writing, please follow the link to my book Scarlet on the Horizon.
The first five chapters can be read as a preview.
† My title is a quote from Horace’s Satires “O rus! quando ego te adspiciam?” [Oh rural
home! when shall I behold you?] used as a motto at the start of Chapter 2 of
Pushkin’s Onegin. Pushkin makes a pun
with “О Русь!“ [O Rus’ i.e. O Russia ]
