Tags
Chemical weapons, Donbass, Kiev, syria, US Foreign Policy, USA
The contrasting American statements and approaches to the Syrian conflict vis-a-vis the Kiev-Donbass conflict are illustrative of the fact that the United States will say and more important do anything to either keep or try to get a friendly ruling faction in power.
This has led the United States to back every faction in Syria except the government, no matter how vile such factions are, while in respect of the Kiev-Donbass conflict, the United States continues to back one of the most dangerous, war criminal regimes on the planet, simply because it suits its geo-strategic purpose.
To be certain, this is not the first time in history that a powerful state has backed any regime anywhere, in the name of its supposed geo-strategic advantage. What is unique is that the United States sells its foreign policy on the world’s stage, including at the UN, on the basis of a self-proclaimed ethical ideology and does so more pugnaciously than almost any power in modern history.
What’s even more peculiar is that as such, the US ends up backing among the most un-ethical and downright immoral factions in the conflicts it gets involved in.
In respect of the Kiev-Donbass conflict, the ethical argument can be understood in the following way:
Kiev has used chemical weapons on civilians–the Donbass Republics have not.
Kiev targets civilian populations while the soldiers of the Donbass Republics are simply fighting for and on their home territories
The Kiev regime came to power after a coup fomented and backed by the US and EU–by contrast the Donbass Republics are not even recognised as sovereign states by the only major power one might expect to do so, Russia.
The Kiev regime’s troops conduct exercises with NATO forces including the United States–the Donbass soldiers do not conduct exercises with Russia.
The Kiev regime buys and receives heavy arms from the United States–the Donbass fighters merely receive occasional civilian aid from Russian convoys.
In spite of this fact, the Kiev regime is painted by the US and by western mainstream media as the victim while the people of Donbass who are merely fighting for their right to self-determine their own futures are painted as the aggressors.
In Syria, things get even more absurd from the point of view of a so-called western ‘liberal democracy’.
In Syria, with the exception of Kurdish forces, all the groups fighting the Syrian Arab Army are Salafist terrorist groups.
These Salafist groups use beheadings as a means of punishing civilians for violating strict Wahhabi style laws while the secular government does not.
The Salafist groups seek to illegally overthrow a legitimate government recognised for decades by the UN as the only sovereign force in Syria. The government by contrast, simply seeks to restore order to the territory it legally has sovereignty over, with the exception of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights which Syria hasn’t tried to take back, although it lawfully could do so at any time.
The Syrian Constitution offers full rights to female citizens–the Salafists do the opposite.
The Syrian Constitution gives full rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion. The Salafists as the name implies, want an extreme Sunni only theocracy.
The Salafists and to some degree the Kurds also, seek Syria’s future to have an ethnic basis. In spite of the name Syrian Arab Republic, non-Arabs who are citizens of Syria have the same rights as Arab citizens.
Of course, it would be too much to ask the United States to adopt an ethical foreign policy, but given these facts, perhaps the US could simply say that they are backing sides in Syria and in the Kiev-Donbass conflict that suit its geo-strategic purposes and nothing more.
At least then America would be saying something honest about its increasingly dubious foreign policy.
