The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy.
The
West’s False Narrative about Russia and China
The
world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because
of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about
the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless
Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are
evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an
attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and
pressing diplomacy.
The
essential narrative of the West is built into US national security
strategy. The core US idea is that China and Russia are implacable
foes that are “attempting to erode American security and
prosperity.” These countries are, according to the US, “determined
to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries,
and to control information and data to repress their societies and
expand their influence.”
The
irony is that since 1980 the US has been in at least 15 overseas wars
of choice (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Syria, and Yemen
just to name a few), while China has been in none, and Russia only in
one (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union. The US has military
bases in 85 countries, China in 3, and Russia in 1 (Syria) beyond the
former Soviet Union.
President
Joe Biden has promoted this narrative, declaring that the greatest
challenge of our time is the competition with the autocracies, which
“seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence
around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices
as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges.” US
security strategy is not the work of any single US president but of
the US security establishment, which is largely autonomous, and
operates behind a wall of secrecy.
The
overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public
through manipulation of the facts. A generation earlier George W.
Bush, Jr. sold the public on the idea that America’s greatest
threat was Islamic fundamentalism, without mentioning that it was the
CIA, with Saudi Arabia and other countries, that had created, funded,
and deployed the jihadists in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to
fight America’s wars.
Or
consider the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, which
was painted in the Western media as an act of unprovoked perfidy.
Years later, we learned that the Soviet invasion was actually
preceded by a CIA operation designed to provoke the Soviet invasion!
The same misinformation occurred vis-à-vis Syria. The Western press
is filled with recriminations against Putin’s military assistance
to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad beginning in 2015, without mentioning
that the US supported the overthrow of al-Assad beginning in 2011,
with the CIA funding a major operation (Timber Sycamore) to overthrow
Assad years before Russia arrived.
Or
more recently, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recklessly flew to
Taiwan despite China’s warnings, no G7 foreign minister criticized
Pelosi’s provocation, yet the G7 ministers together harshly
criticized China’s “overreaction” to Pelosi’s trip.
The
Western narrative about the Ukraine war is that it is an unprovoked
attack by Putin in the quest to recreate the Russian empire. Yet the
real history starts with the Western promise to Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge to the East, followed
by four waves of NATO aggrandizement: in 1999, incorporating three
Central European countries; in 2004, incorporating 7 more, including
in the Black Sea and Baltic States; in 2008, committing to enlarge to
Ukraine and Georgia; and in 2022, inviting four Asia-Pacific leaders
to NATO to take aim at China.
Nor
do the Western media mention the US role in the 2014 overthrow of
Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych; the failure of
the Governments of France and Germany, guarantors of the Minsk II
agreement, to press Ukraine to carry out its commitments; the vast US
armaments sent to Ukraine during the Trump and Biden Administrations
in the lead-up to war; nor the refusal of the US to negotiate with
Putin over NATO enlargement to Ukraine.
Of
course, NATO says that is purely defensive, so that Putin should have
nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should take no notice of the
CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria; the NATO bombing of Serbia
in 1999; the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; the NATO
occupation of Afghanistan for 15 years; nor Biden’s “gaffe”
calling for Putin’s ouster (which of course was no gaffe at all);
nor US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stating that the US war aim in
Ukraine is the weakening of Russia.
At
the core of all of this is the US attempt to remain the world’s
hegemonic power, by augmenting military alliances around the world to
contain or defeat China and Russia. It’s a dangerous, delusional,
and outmoded idea. The US has a mere 4.2% of the world population,
and now a mere 16% of world GDP (measured at international prices).
In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the
BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the G7
population is just 6 percent of the world compared with 41 percent in
the BRICS.
There
is only one country whose self-declared fantasy is to be the world’s
dominant power: the US. It’s past time that the US recognized the
true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible
cooperation with the rest of the world, rather than the illusion of
hegemony. With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies
would avoid war with China and Russia, and enable the world to face
its myriad environment, energy, food and social crises.
Above
all, at this time of extreme danger, European leaders should pursue
the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European
security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests
of all European nations, certainly including Ukraine, but also
including Russia, which continues to resist NATO enlargements into
the Black Sea. Europe should reflect on the fact that the
non-enlargement of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk II
agreements would have averted this awful war in Ukraine. At this
stage, it is diplomacy, not military escalation, is the true path to
European and global security.
https://www.other-news.info/the-wests-false-narrative-about-russia-and-china/
Greek
translation published in Kathimerini
August
22, 2022
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