[ad_1]
America, probably the most highly effective colonial empire in trendy historical past, is sponsoring a dialogue on its adversary’s ‘imperialism’
On June 23, 2022, a corporation funded by the US Congress, the Fee on Safety and Cooperation in Europe – also called the Helsinki Fee – held a digital convention calling for the “decolonizing of Russia.”
This begs the query of why they aren’t looking for the decolonization of america. In spite of everything, the nation was actually based by the successors of white colonists who had crossed an ocean to violently seize the territory from its indigenous individuals.
Whereas the convention audio system, who will be listened to right here, used the present disaster in Ukraine as a leaping off level, they demanded that the Russian Federation “decolonizes” from areas and republics which have been ruled by Moscow for the reason that sixteenth Century (e.g. Siberia and Tatarstan) and others going again to the early 1800’s (e.g. Chechnya).
That is, after all, tantamount to calling upon the US to relinquish practically all of its territory from the Atlantic to Pacific, to not point out newer holdings similar to Hawaii.
Certainly, when a convention attendee requested what the US ought to do with Hawaii in gentle of this “decolonization” dialogue, the panel audio system danced round this difficulty and shortly modified the subject, exhibiting they aren’t so involved about “decolonization” in any respect, however are actually thinking about breaking apart the Russian Federation for its personal sake.
The convention audio system centered enormously on Soviet-era Russia, although once more the republics they cited had been a part of Russia lengthy earlier than the multi-national 1917 Revolution. If something, the USSR gave these locations larger independence than they ever had. Elevating the specter of the Soviet Union, and conflating it with modern-day Russia is the usual canard used to drum up hysteria in opposition to Moscow as some sort of imperial energy looking for to beat the world.
However this try fails, for the irony, after all, is that, as nice historians similar to Eric Hobsbawm and Jean Bricmont have emphasised, there was no nation on this planet that supported Third World liberation struggles in opposition to colonialism (and this was invariably Western colonialism) greater than the Soviet Union. And, actually after World Struggle II, it was the US which fought mercilessly to retain Western colonialism.
Thus, when one seems to be on the instances of Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Palestine and Nicaragua, simply to call just a few examples, it was the USSR that aided the nationwide independence struggles of those nations, whereas the US militarily defended the ancien régimes. After all, probably the most notable case of this was South Africa and the southern African frontline states the place the US, and its accomplice Israel, tried desperately to keep up Apartheid and settler colonial domination whereas the Soviet Union, and its ally Cuba, fought, and fairly efficiently, to finish these techniques.
As well as, it should be emphasised that it was the Soviet Union, extra so than every other nation, which led the struggle, within the Forties, in opposition to the try of Nazi Germany to colonize Europe – and certainly the remainder of the world. And the USSR misplaced 27 million individuals doing so.
In the meantime, since WWII, the US has created an empire on a scope hitherto unknown on this planet. It’s now estimated that “america has roughly 800 formal army bases in 80 nations, a quantity that might exceed 1,000 in case you depend troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called ‘lily-pond’ bases, with some 138,000 troopers stationed across the globe.” No different nation on this planet has, or ever has had, such a army attain. Certainly, the comparatively few different nations which have army bases overseas have a mixed variety of bases totaling not even one-tenth the variety of US bases.
Thus, “solely 11 different nations have bases in overseas nations, some 70 altogether. Russia has an estimated 26 to 40 in 9 nations, principally former Soviet Republics, in addition to in Syria and Vietnam.” (emphasis added). And talking of Syria, whereas the Helsinki Fee audio system tried to say that Russia has been engaged in some sort of neo-colonial effort there, it’s in truth the US which is the uninvited (and subsequently unlawful) invader in Syria and is now occupying one-third of tje nation in opposition to the desires of the Syrian authorities and usually plundering Syrian oil from this occupied land in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
And naturally, it’s the US, not Russia, which has, in simply the previous 29 years, traveled midway world wide to invade, and invariably destroy, different nations similar to Iraq (twice), the previous Yugoslavia, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan. In a brazen act of colonial theft, the US merely stole $7 billion (or about 40% of nationwide income) from Afghanistan after its 20-year warfare there. The US continues to carry these funds whilst Afghanistan faces a looming famine and the after results of a devastating earthquake. Equally, the US purloined Venezuela’s biggest single supply of nationwide income – its US-based oil firm CITGO, which is now being offered off by Washington in items. And naturally, the US stole billions of {dollars} of Russian monetary reserves held in American banks earlier this 12 months.
In the meantime, Washington continues to keep up its colonial maintain over territories similar to Puerto Rico, Guam, Guantanamo Bay, and Hawaii, to not point out the truth that your complete territory of what’s now generally known as america of America represents lands stolen from indigenous peoples and Mexico.
In brief, the US authorities and its compliant NGOs haven’t any enterprise speaking about “decolonizing” anybody earlier than they get all the way down to the enterprise of decolonizing their very own lands. Such an effort may begin with the elimination of US army bases from world wide and the accompanying withdrawal of all US overseas troops; the return of all stolen monies and assets to such nations as Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela and Russia; the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba; holding referendums in Puerto Rico and Hawaii on independence; and paying main reparations to the indigenous peoples of america and the descendants of former slaves.
Such a deal with one’s personal nation’s sins will not be solely the fitting factor to do however has larger prospects for achievement and in addition avoids the dangers attendant in advocating the compelled break-up of different nations, such because the Russian Federation – one thing the Helsinki Fee is a minimum of implicitly calling for in its demand for the “decolonization” of Russia.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
[ad_2]
Source link