A Helpful Suggestion

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Headlines in the 2020s are continually dominated by the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and US brinkmanship against China with Taiwan.

The US asserts that it has been well within its rights to bring NATO to Russia’s doorstep and convert Ukraine into a heavily-armed NATO asset, and that it is perfectly entitled to menace China with military encirclement and its provocations with Taiwan. When Russia and China contend that these actions pose a threat to their national security interests, US empire managers argue that no nation is entitled to a “sphere of influence” beyond their own territory, and that the US is just helping its good friends on the borders of its top two geopolitical rivals protect themselves.

If I may, I have a solution that could help the US defend its foreign policy a bit more convincingly: simply welcome Russia and China to amass military forces in Latin America.

If the US made it clear that it would do nothing to prevent Russia and China from militarizing the nations south of the US border to the furthest extent possible, after those military presences begin to appear empire critics will no longer be able to claim that the US is the clear and obvious aggressor in its conflicts with Moscow and Beijing.

This would entail officially abolishing longstanding policies like the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary thereto which have led to the US continually intervening in Latin American affairs to crush socialism and advance its own interests, often with extreme violence and to the great detriment of the people who live there. Once the US has made it clear that Russia and China have an open path to establish an extensive military presence in Latin America using the same means the US has used to establish its military presence in eastern Europe and eastern Asia, opponents of Washington’s foreign policy will soon lose the ability to accuse the US empire of flagrant hypocrisy.

Let China militarize as much as it wants in socialist countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Let Russia make some military deals with Mexico and Brazil. Let them patrol their warships along the east and west coastline of the United States, and hang out in the Gulf of Mexico for as long as they like. Let them build bases. Let them build missile systems. Let them set up anything they like using whatever means they can get away with in the nations in that region, because according to the United States that’s all perfectly fine.

Then the US will have legitimacy in the arguments it has been making about its militarization around Russia and China. Then the objections from Moscow and Beijing to that militarization can legitimately be framed as unreasonable. Because the rules will be applied equally to all parties.

Of course, we all know this will never happen. If Russia or China began amassing military threats to US regional dominance in Latin America, it would immediately be treated as an act of war. The last time a foreign power placed a military threat to the United States near its coastline, it was responded to so aggressively that the world almost ended.

This is because the “rules” in the US empire’s much-touted “rules-based international order” do not apply to the US empire. They’re the for-thee-but-not-for-me kind of rules.

The drivers of the empire truly believe that the entire planet is their property, and that anyone who resists this claim is essentially attacking the United States. Its planetary hegemony is treated as the baseline norm, and any opposition to it is treated as a freakish affront to freedom and democracy.

The US empire claims to use its domination of the world stage to uphold the world order, yet it can only continue to dominate the world stage by endless violence, chaos and disorder. The US is the clear aggressor in its confrontations with Russia and China. It is an insatiable monster who feeds on human blood, and world peace will never be possible as long as it rules over us.

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