People's Democracy

  Exports Of Democracy: US Style

Dipak Basu

ON September 17, 2002 the Bush, administration published its “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” The document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force anywhere in the world, at any time it chooses, against any country it believes to be, or it believes may at some point become, a threat to American interests. The document begins by saying that “The United States possesses unprecedented — and unequaled – strength and influence in the world.” It declares with conviction that “The US national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.”

AMERICAN INTERNATIONALISM

As president Bush asserts in the introduction of the document, America’s values “are right and true for every person, in every society.” These values are: “respect for private property”; “pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity”; “tax policies – particularly lower marginal tax rates – that improve incentives for work and investment”; “strong financial systems that allow capital to be put to its most efficient use”; “sound fiscal policies to support business activity.” The document then declares: “The lessons of history are clear: market economies, not command-and-control economies with the heavy hand of government, are the best way to promote prosperity and reduced poverty. Policies that further strengthen market incentives and market institutions are relevant for all economies – industrialized countries, emerging markets, and the developing world.” The USA and the EU through the international organisations they control, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organisation, promoting market economy worldwide are highly intolerant to any alternative system or any rival that may emerge.

Defining its idea of a “distinctly American internationalism”, the document states that “While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone.” In another passage, the document warns that the United States “will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.” In other words, the actions of the leaders of the United States will not be restrained by the conventions of international law. The recent reversal of the results of the election in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, in which elected presidents were replaced by new pro-Western presidents in a new election, as demanded by the mob, hired, fed, and employed by the Western organisations, is the direct result of that policy.

THE US POSITION ON GLOBAL CHESSBOARD

In 1997, Zbigniew Brzenzinski, the National Security Advisor of president Carter, published a book entitled The Grand Chessboard. By chessboard, Brzezinski meant Eurasia, the enormous landmass comprising two continents and containing the majority of the world’s population. He said that “America’s capacity to exercise global primacy” depends on whether America can prevent “the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power.” Brzezinski then concluded: “Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.”

The election of pro-western presidents through dubious means in Ukraine, the birthplace of Russian nation of Kiev-Rus in the 9th century, in Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin, and in Kyrgyzstan, the gateway to the former Soviet Central Asia, means the US now occupies a crucial position on Brzezinski’s global chessboard. Since 1945, the Soviet Union had formed the most important obstacle to the unrestricted world domination of American imperialism – now under no circumstances could Russia ever play a remotely comparable role.

Over the last 15 years in its entirety, the US has worked systematically to contain Russia. The first Iraq war in 1991 already undermined largely the influence of Moscow in the Middle East politically. When the American oil companies will own the oil fields of Iraq very soon, USA will control the world-price movements of crude petroleum as well. Russia depends heavily on its export of crude petroleum.

In the Balkans following the war on Serbia in 1999, the former Yugoslavia is firmly under Western control. In 2001, in the context of the Afghanistan invasion, the US established military bases for the first time in former Soviet republics and emerged as a presence in Central Asia. Since then, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan have allied themselves to the US. In 2003, a pro-Western regime came to power in Georgia, through the mob violence as withnessed in Ukraine as well. In Europe, most members of the former Warsaw Pact, including the former Baltic Soviet republics, have now joined NATO and the European Union. When Ukraine would join, NATO, Russia would be largely isolated.

Brzezinski said in his book, “Without Ukraine and its 52 million fellow Slavs, any attempt by Moscow to rebuild the Eurasian empire was likely to leave Russia entangled alone in protracted conflicts with the nationally and religiously aroused non-Slavs, the war with Chechnya perhaps simply being the first example.” It is worthwhile to remember that Brzezinski, as the national security adviser to president Carter, had manufactured the Mujahadeen terrorists in July 1978 from the ranks of the Pakistani army to destroy the socialist government of Nur Mohammed Taraki of Afghanistan to set up the trap for the Soviet Union, who came to the aid of Afghanistan in December 1979.

UKRAINE AND RUSSIA 

Relationship between Russia and Ukraine is like that between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Russian nation was formed in the 9th century in Ukrniane, as Kiev-Rus. Half of the population in Ukraine speaks Russian. There are centuries of intermarriages and migrations, which make it impossible to distinguish between Russians and Ukrainians. Some of the most powerful politicians of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev were Ukrainians.

Economic ties between Ukraine and Russia were extremely close during the Soviet era, and remained close after the collapse of the USSR and Ukrainian independence. This is reflected in the interlocking interests of the various factions of oligarchs. Some 83 per cent of the Ukranian aluminium industry, for example is Russian owned. The dependence of Ukraine on Russian oil and gas – four-fifths of its needs are supplied by Russia – underlies its close economic relations with Russia.

Since the break up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is passing through a catastrophic social and economic situation much worse than that in Russia. The average monthly income in Ukraine has dropped to $30. In the cities, it is barely more than $60, and in Kiev, approximately $100. Spending power plummeted by 40 per cent between 1989 and 1999. Social and welfare structures and facilities – strongly linked to the factories in Soviet times – have been devastated. Life expectancy has sunk to 73 years for women and 62 years for men, the lowest rates in Europe. In the meantime, the rate of AIDS victims is one of the highest in the world. Four million inhabitants have left Ukraine over the past few years, and deaths of miners are exceeded only by China.

UKRAINE AND THE USA

Since taking office in 1994, the former president Kuchma initiated a drive to lead Ukraine into the European Union and NATO. Ukraine under Kuchma was one of the biggest recipients of American financial aid. Following the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, which with US support, led to the removal from office of Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003, Kuchma tried to appease Washington by sending 1,600 Ukrainian soldiers to Iraq but failed to impress the Bush administration.

The US continued with its aggressive strategy and groomed opposition candidate and the president elected in the second election Yushchenko. Yushchenko had close relations with Madeline Albright, the secretary of state in the Democratic Clinton administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor under former president Jimmy Carter, and the fiancier George Soros. Donations from institutes established by Soros have financial  and encouraged the Ukrainian student movement “Pora” (“It is Time”) along the lines of similar movements in Serbia and Georgia. Pora has been in the forefront of the demonstrations in support of the opposition. The US state department said recently, it had spent $ 65 million over the past two years financing groups in support of democracy in Ukraine, part of the $1billion spent for the same purpose globally each year. A variety of NGOs, ‘The International Centre for Policy Studies’ funded by US money, Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe, a NATO organ, Freedom House in Kiev, another NGO funded by the US have condemned the election, when Yanukovich was elected in the first election as fraud. Colin Powell, the then the National security Advisor to Bush made the same accusation.

Ron Paul, a Texas congressman, said in comments posted on the congressional website that millions of dollars were sent by the US Agency for International Development to an NGO in Kiev called the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative, which then sent the money on to “numerous Ukrainian NGOs, supporters of Yushchenko.”

In the reorganised election, similar to what happens in Bihar, 80 per cent of the voters who had not voted for Yushchenko in the first election suddenly changed their minds. About one-third of the adult population in certain western regions of Ukraine live and work outside Ukraine, but the turnout in those areas was registered at 88 per cent. The share of Yanukovich who had won the first election remained unchanged.

Yushchenko’s way to power was accompanied with a series of strange assassinations. The assassinations of Viktor Yushchenko’s first wife, and the former chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Vadim Getman, were ignored by the Western media in its drive for democracy in Ukraine. Yushchenko fled Ukraine after being the finance minister, was arrested in the US for theft charges but came out from the US prison when his first wife was murdered, he married an official of president Bush in a hurry and came back to Ukraine as the champion of democracy for Ukraine.

THREATS TO RUSSIA             

Without Ukraine, Russia’s political, economic, and military survivability are called into question. With nearly 50 million inhabitants, Ukraine is, after Russia, by far the biggest of the successor states of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is connected to Russia by a common history, extending back to the Kiev-Rus in the ninth century. During the past 300 years, the largest part of today’s Ukraine was either Russian or Soviet national territory, or both. During this period, a considerable exchange of population took place. Seventeen per cent of the Ukrainian populations are of Russian descent and nearly half the population speaks Russian. The heavy industry of the Eastern Ukraine, developed under the Soviet regime, is closely linked with its Russian counterpart. The dissolution of these links would have damaging consequences for both countries.

An additional factor is the strategic significance of Ukraine. Eighty per cent of Russian gas and oil exports to Europe – its most important source of foreign exchange – flows through Ukrainian pipeline. The main base of he Russian Black Sea fleet, Sebastopol, is also situated on Ukrainian national territory. Russia is threatened with the loss of influence over one of the most important industrial regions of the former Soviet Union and the loss of control over the export routes of its most important raw materials, oil, and gas.

Ukraine’s cooperation with Russia will probably have to experience drastic changes in future: the two countries might cease the economic cooperation and shut down high tech joint productions. To crown it all, Ukraine might hand over the control over gas and oil pipelines to the USA or the EU. It is noteworthy that it goes about Russia’s existence as a subject of global politics. The loss of Ukraine will virtually mean that Russia’s existence as a superpower is over. It will only prove that Russia is unable to do anything in the country, where the majority of people speak Russian and where many think of themselves as Russians.

(To be continued)