Praise for Diana Johnstones

Queen of Chaos
Veteran journalist Diana Johnstone captures the imperial worldview of
Hillary Clinton in memorable detail. Hillary the Hawk, as U.S. Senator and
Secretary of State, never saw a weapons systems she did not support nor a U.S.
war practice she did not endorse. This included her hyper-aggressive launch of
the war on Libya (against the opposition of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates)
and the resulting sprawling chaos, violence and weapons dispersal spilling
beyond Libyas war-torn society to larger regions of central Africa. Johnstone
documents Hillary Clinton as the top salesperson for the ruling oligarchy and
the favorite candidate of the War Party. That is what is at stake in November
2016.
Ralph Nader, author of Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the
Presiden
***
In Queen of Chaos, Johnstone issues a Herculean call for peace. Similarly, in
another work, Dr. June Terpstra warns us to Beware the Women of the
Hegemon, whose policy positions are as warlike as any mans. Johnstone
shows us that like Madeleine Albright, the irst woman U.S. Secretary of State
before her, Clinton can defend sanctions regimes, bombs, and drone attacks as
well as any man. As Johnstone guides us from Honduras to Libya, it becomes
clear that Hillary quali ies as a woman of the Hegemon, supporting a
belligerent U.S. foreign policy on almost every Continent Hillary Clinton stole
democracy from the Haitian people. She stole their hopes, their dreams, their
aspirations for themselves; she stole their human rights. Now, if Hillary
Clinton would do that to them, theres no telling what she will do to us.
Johnstone gives us a kind of primer on Hillary Clintons foreign policy past:
from genocide to 'We came, we saw, he died!' I think its clear: should Hillary
Clinton become Madam President, we aint seen nothing yet.
Cynthia McKinney, former Member of Congress
Hillary Clinton, 'the top salesperson for the ruling oligarchy,' known in some
quarters as Hitlery, has met her match in Diana Johnstone. This is a marvelous
book, easy to read, by a superb writer who demonstrates that Hitlerys
ambition would bring not peace and justice but World War III. This is a must
read book that provides escape into reality from endless hype. The world
stands on the cusp of destruction. Hillary would ensure destruction.
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, author

How the Economy Was Lost

***
Wow! No other book cuts so starkly and accurately to the heart of the
current violent chaos engul ing the world, and to the signi icance of Hillary
Rodham Clintons decades-long love affair with power that has helped push us
to this precarious moment in history. The well-researched chronology and
factual details compiled by Diana Johnstone about Honduras, Rwanda, Libya,
Bosnia and Kosovo, to Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, turned into bloodbaths and
inally into dangerous, failed states, constitutes the harsh reality that we need
to appreciate if, as decent people, we want to regain some moral
conscience. But also for our simple self-preservation.
"Certainly Hillary is not the only neocon pyromaniac who likes to set a ire
and then laugh when no one can put it out. But as she now vies for leadership
of that cabal, more and more people will hopefully see through their Orwellian
lies, effectively selling perpetual war to the US-NATO-Israel as a noble cause to
bring democracy, human rights, peace and love. Self-perpetuating war may
indeed make the war pro iteers happy and wealthy who so prominently top
the Clintons donor list, but it is indeed as stupid as playing with ire. In
putting a nuclear-armed Russia in their sights, the story cannot end well for
anyone. I can assure that if you read Johnstones book, you will want to help
put out this insanity."
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal
Counsel, whistleblower and one of TIME Magazines Persons of the Year for
2002.
***
Diana Johnstones wit, clarity of style and political lucidity in this book are
matched only by Hilary Clintons opportunism, meanness and self-delusion in
the service of the American empire.
Jean Bricmont, author Humanitarian Imperialism
If you are still fooled by Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the Democratic
Party, then Diana Johnstones book will dispel the myth that either they or the
party are redeemable. Hillary, like her husband, Barack Obama and the
Democratic leadership, are controlled by corporate money and willing
accomplices in the crimes of empire. Her appeal to gender holds no more
promise for the poor, the working class or the wretched of the earth we
tyrannize around the globe than Obamas appeal to race. The predatory
engines of corporate capitalism and the security and surveillance state will run
as smoothly under her direction as they did under her predecessor. If you
doubt this, read this book.
Chris Hedges, author of Wages of Rebellion
***

Count on this witty, wise critique of U.S. Exceptionalism to expose Hillary

Clintons ruthless ambition. In keeping with past pursuits to win, Hillary
Clinton caters to bene iciaries of systems based on greed and violence.
Johnstone engages in 'slice and dice' analysis, but in describing Queen of Chaos,
Johnstone consistently suggests alternative policies based on respect for
human rights, particularly the rights of those most harmed by the menacing,
destructive reach of U.S. Empire.
Kathy Kelly, author Other Lands Have Dreams
***
Diana Johnstones Queen of Chaos is an excellent source of information
for Hillary Clintons political rivals But its much more than that. It offers very
perceptive accounts of US foreign policy of the last 25 years, particularly the
complex and highly controversial cases of Libya, Yugoslavia, Honduras and
Russia, as well as the issue of women in power. Is there something wrong
with American women, Johnstone asks, that they need Hillary Clinton as
President to make them feel better?
William Blum, author Killing Hope

Also by Diana Johnstone

Fools Crusade
The Politics of Euromissiles

Queen of Chaos
The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton
By Diana Johnstone
CounterPunch Books Petrolia, California

COUNTERPUNCH BOOKS
An Imprint of the Institute for the
Advancement of Journalistic Clarity
QUEEN OF CHAOS.
Copyright by Diana Johnstone.
All rights reserved.
For information contact:
CounterPunch Books,
PO Box 228, Petrolia, California. 95558
1(707) 629-3683
www.counterpunch.org
Cover Design by Tiffany Wardle de Sousa.
Johnstone, Diana. Queen of Chaos:
The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton.
ISBN: 978-0-9897637-6-9
ISBN-10:0-9897637-6-5

Introduction
Baby boomer Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, one year before U.S. policy
planner George F. Kennan famously wrote that: We have about 50% of the
worlds wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. ... In this situation, we cannot
fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period
is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this
position of disparity.
Hillary, a Republican and a Goldwater girl in her youth, grew up with the
viewpoint of a rich and dominant America obliged to maintain its position on
top of an envious and resentful world. This was the standard attitude.
It was the result of World War II. The United States won the war in the
Paci ic. In Europe, the overwhelming military victor was the Soviet Union a
reality that has been obscured by Hollywood movies and repeated
celebrations of the D-Day landing in Normandy, overlooking the fact that the
Red Army was already pinning down and defeating the Wehrmacht on the
Eastern Front. But the economic victor of World War II was overwhelmingly
the United States of America. In a world largely devastated and indebted by
war, the United States emerged with the huge advantage emphasized by
George Kennan.
Unfortunately, since then the United States has failed to develop any great
national purpose other than staying on top.
In recent years, it has become more frequent to speak of the United States as
an Empire. Yet it is an empire like no other. The United States has military
bases all over the world, but their aim is more to preserve the post-World War
II advantage than to expand in the ways previous empires expanded. The
former European empires assumed some responsibility for the countries they
conquered in order to exploit their riches more effectively. Alongside
exploitation of local labor and theft of resources, previous empires built
infrastructure and introduced certain bene icial measures to make their
colonies run smoothly. The United States is an irresponsible empire. It
devastates countries and leaves them in shambles, with no compensation. Its
actions are increasingly destructive because the purpose is not in reality to
build an empire, but to destroy real or potential rivals and so maintain the
position of superiority gained in World War II.
The destructive nature of these wars is con irmed by the fact that on close
examination, none of the recent U.S. wars have been won in any meaningful
sense. Temporary illusions of victory have given way to the rise of hostile
extremists. Most recently, the undeclared U.S. drone war against Islamists in
Yemen led to an even more effective revolutionary uprising which seized U.S.provided weapons and forced American of icials to lee. Despite the disastrous

results of one war after another in the Middle East, the War Party in
Washington seems ready to plunge into yet another proxy war in Ukraine, this
time against a much more powerful adversary. These are essentially spoiler
wars, intended to diminish potential rivals. They create deepening chaos and
bitter enemies, with no real benefit to anyone.

Vote For Me, Im a Woman

Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent years trying to sell women on the idea that
their ambition, rather than hers, will be rewarded if she is elected President of
the United States.
The idea seems to be that if she breaks the glass ceiling, American women
en masse will pour through, occupying the upper floors, the attic, even the roof.
But do we need to prove that a woman can be president?
If women can be wrestlers, for which they are clearly not naturally quali ied,
a woman can certainly be President. There is no serious quali ication for the
office that a woman lacks.
Proving this fairly obvious point is not the most crucial issue at stake in the
next U.S. Presidential election. There is also the little matter of whether or not
to lead the country into war with a major nuclear power. Avoiding World War
III is somewhat more urgent than proving that a woman can be President of
the United States.
Throughout world history, women have been rulers. This fact has had very
little effect on the daily lives of millions of women. Like Hillary herself, women
rulers have most often been the daughters or wives of male rulers. On her
South Asia tour in 1995, she observed, as her biographer Carl Bernstein notes,
that Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka all had governments headed by
women, yet women are held in such disregard in their cultures that newborn
girls are sometimes killed or abandoned. The social condition of women in a
society does not depend on whether or not the country has a Queen.
Women are distinguishing themselves in many ields where genuine
accomplishment is more signi icant than politics in creating inspiring role
models. For example, in August 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani was the irst woman
to be awarded the Fields Medal for excellence in mathematics. This could set a
positive trend.
In politics, as in other ields of power, women are often their own glass
ceiling, in the sense that they may be content to stay out of the limelight in
order to help others. This is not to be despised. But for women who need a
politically powerful female as a role model, history offers Cleopatra, Catherine
the Great of Russia, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elizabeth the First, among
many others. Many elected national leaders in todays world are women, most
notably in Latin America. Its too late for the United States to take the lead by

electing a women president, but dont worry, the USA is sure to catch up
eventually.
Is there something wrong with American women that they need Hillary
Clinton as President to make them feel better?
Certainly not. American women are creating many new ways to lead fruitful,
useful and rewarding lives. And rather than making us feel better, it might
make us feel much worse if the irst woman President brings disaster on the
world.
Let us hope that the inevitable irst woman president will be a person
distinguished by a profound understanding of the world and genuine human
compassion, rather than by relentless personal ambition.

A Taste of Hillary Clinton in action:

Hypocrisy in Honduras
Barack Obama promised change.
Then, upon election, he chose Hillary Rodham Clinton as his Secretary of
State. This was an early sign that when it came to foreign policy there would be
no real change at least, no change for the better.
The irst real test of change in U.S. foreign policy came six months later on
June 28, 2009, when armed forces overthrew the elected President of
Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.
It is easy to see what real change would have meant. The United States could
have vigorously condemned the coup and demanded that the legitimate
President be reinstated. Considering U.S. in luence in Honduras, especially its
powerful military bases there, U.S. resolve would have given teeth to anticoup protests in Honduras and throughout the Hemisphere.
That is not the way it happened.
Instead, we got a irst sample of the way Hillary Rodham Clinton treats the
world. She calls it smart power. We can translate that as hypocrisy and
manipulation.
In early June 2009, Hillary lew to Honduras for the annual meeting of the
Organization of American States with one thing in mind: how to prevent the
lifting of the 47-year-old ban excluding Cuba, which a large majority of the OAS
now considered an outdated artifact of the Cold War. Moreover, Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador would go as far as to characterize the ban, for
some strange reason, as an example of U.S. bullying.
So Hillary and staff solved the problem by pouring the old wine into a new
bottle. No more Cold War, no more communist threat.
Given what President Obama had said about moving past the stale debates
of the Cold War, Hillary wrote in her memoir Hard Choices, it would be

hypocritical of us to continue insisting that Cuba be kept out of the OAS for the
reasons it was irst suspended in 1962, ostensibly its adherence to MarxismLeninism and alignment with the communist bloc. It would be more credible
and accurate to focus on Cubas present-day human rights violations, which
were incompatible with the OAS charter.
Hillary has a strange de inition of hypocrisy. She sees nothing hypocritical in
simply changing the pretext for exclusion, while never mentioning the historic
reasons for U.S. hostility: the expropriation of U.S. property that liberated
resources for social welfare, education and one of the best free medical
systems in the world, as well as intense political pressure from the
dispossessed Cuban diaspora in the United States.
She sees nothing hypocritical in inventing a transparent device to keep Cuba
out while pretending to let Cuba in: What if we agreed to lift the suspension,
but with the condition that Cuba be reseated as a member only if it made
enough democratic reforms to bring it in line with the charter? And, to expose
the Castro brothers contempt for the OAS itself, why not require Cuba to
formally request readmittance?
Indeed, this proved just hypocritical enough to persuade the fence-hangers,
Brazil and Chile, to go along.
Thus Hillary began her diplomatic career in Latin America, marked by
rebranding hostility to any independent socio-economic policy from anticommunism to defense of human rights, by transparent hypocrisy enforced
by arm-twisting, and by enforcing the Monroe Doctrine in both domestic and
international affairs.
During her visit to Honduras, her host, President Manuel Zelaya, annoyed
he r. She didnt like his white cowboy hat, she didnt like his dark black
mustache, and above all, she didnt like his fondness for Hugo Chavez and Fidel
Castro. But she was hypocritical about that, too. I pulled Zelaya aside into a
small room and played up his role and responsibilities as host of the
conference. If he backed our compromise, he could help save not just this
summit but the OAS itself. If not, he would be remembered as the leader who
presided over the organizations collapse.
Hillary left Honduras satis ied at having succeeded in replacing an outdated
rationale with a modern process that would further strengthen the OAS
commitment to democracy.
Shortly thereafter, President Zelaya was overthrown.
The context of that coup dtat makes the motivation clear.
Manuel Zelaya was a traitor to his class. Although a landowner from a
wealthy family in the lumber industry, Zelaya had developed populist
ambitions to liberate his country from its longstanding status as the ultimate
banana republic. The country is divided between a small sel ish wealthy class

and the mass of dirt-poor inhabitants whose only prospects tend to lie in drug
smuggling. Fierce competition in the narcotics trade contributes to Honduras
holding the highest murder rate in the world. In addition, the U.S. Air Force
base at Soto Cano has served as the organizing center of two of the most
vicious regime change operations in history: the 1954 overthrow of
reformist president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, to the north of Honduras, and
the illegal Contra sabotage operations against Nicaragua, the countrys
southern neighbor, in the 1980s. Meanwhile, in Honduras itself, the rich got
richer and the poor got poorer.
Elected in 2005, Zelaya wanted to make a difference. With the apparent
breeze of change blowing throughout the region, Zelaya decreed a 60%
minimum wage increase amid howls of protest from private business
associations. Criticizing the so-called war on drugs as a pretext for foreign
intervention, Zelaya proposed instead a fresh approach to the drug problem
with a focus on educating addicts and curbing demand. And he thought that
Soto Cano should be transformed into an international civilian airport. In
2007, Zelaya made the irst of icial trip by a Honduran President to Cuba in 46
years and discussed policy matters with Raul Castro. Worst of all, he joined
ALBA, the Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra Amrica
(subsequently renamed the Alianza), founded in 2004 by Cuba and
Venezuela, inspired by Hugo Chavez. This rapprochement promised Honduras
real economic benefits.
In 2008, Washington sent as its Ambassador to Tegucigalpa the man who
had been director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council during the
failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002, Hugo Llorens.
Born in Cuba in 1954, at the age of seven Llorens had been one of over fourteen
thousand unaccompanied children shipped from the revolutionary island to
the United States in Operation Peter Pan to be saved from communist
indoctrination.
In May 2009, the Democratic Civil Union of Honduras was formed by civil
society organizations, many of them receiving democracy promotion grants
from the U.S.- inanced National Endowment for Democracy (NED), with the
objective of getting rid of Zelaya. Their campaign focused on Zelayas proposal
for a referendum to voters during the upcoming November elections on
whether or not to convene a convention in 2010 to revise the Constitution,
ostensibly to make it more democratic via proportional representation with a
recall mechanism and greater rights for ethnic minorities.
Honduras 1982 Constitution, the countrys twelfth in its 144 years of
existence, had already been amended over 20 times by Congress. But the
countrys reactionary oligarchy chose to decry Zelayas initiative as a criminal
attempt to violate articles written in stone which banned any attempt to

allow a president to run for more than a single four-year term. His opponents
denounced the referendum as aimed solely to end the current constitutional
ban on re-election and thus enable Zelaya to extend his presidency after the
end of his current term.
In short, the constitutional proposal was portrayed as a way to set the stage
for Zelaya to become dictator by election, like the elected dictator of
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. On June 23, the Civil Union issued a statement saying
that they trust the armed forces to defend the Constitution, the law, peace
and democracy. Llorens added the weight of of icial U.S. support to the
campaign by declaring that one cant violate the Constitution in order to
create another Constitution, because if one doesnt respect the Constitution,
then we all live under the law of the jungle.
This plea for constitutional order was clearly understood by the Honduran
military as a green light to violate the constitution in order to save it. In the
early morning of June 28, the day of the proposed opinion survey on amending
the constitution, a hundred Honduran soldiers invaded Zelayas bedroom and
whisked him off to Costa Rica without even allowing him to get dressed.
Expelling the President in his pajamas was an extra touch of disrespect.
The of icer in charge of the military coup, General Romeo Vasquez, was a
graduate of the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia,
which has trained a long line of Latin American putschists and torturers. The
Honduran military let it be known that they were obligated to remove
President Zelaya from power because of the threat he posed with his leftist
ideology and alignment with Venezuela and Cuba.1
Under the post-Zelaya regime, Honduras rapidly withdrew from ALBA.
As she tells it, Hillary was unprepared and unaware when she received word
of the crisis from Tom Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western
Hemisphere Affairs. He told me what we knew, which still wasnt much. This
was odd because it emerged that Shannon and Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State Craig Kelley had been in Honduras the week before, meeting with the
very same civilian and military groups who later carried out the coup. They
claimed subsequently that they had been there to urge against it. Hillary
could also count on expert analysis from the notorious former U.S.
ambassador to Honduras during the Iran-Contra affair, John Negroponte,
whom she had reportedly hired as a special consultant. Negroponte had
recently been to Tegucigalpa to urge Zelaya not to change the status of the
main U.S. Air Force base at Soto Cano. Now it was Hillarys turn to employ
smart power by never calling a coup dtat a coup dtat. Instead, what had
happened was a crisis or the forced exile of the President which inspired
the United States to call on all parties to resolve their differences without
violence.

In Hard Choices, Hillary implicitly endorses the golpistas pretext.

Certainly the region did not need another dictator, and many knew Zelaya
well enough to believe the charges against him. But Zelaya had been elected by
the Honduran people [] I didnt see any choice but to condemn Zelayas
ouster.
In a public statement I called on all parties in Honduras to respect the
constitutional order and the rule of law and to commit themselves to resolve
political disputes peacefully and through dialogue, she recalled in Hard
Choices. The State Department went on to praise the Honduran military, which
had hardly used peaceful dialogue to depose their President, for having acted
as the securer of public order during this process.
While Zelaya was demanding to be reinstated, Hillary sought mediation
between the two sides: the democratically elected President-in-exile in
Costa Rica and the temporary interim president Roberto Micheletti, installed
by the coup. In a sense, there were indeed two sides. It was a quarrel
between those who had violated the constitution and the man whom they
accused of wanting to violate the constitution. In the end, the accusation of bad
intentions won out over the plain facts of the matter a pattern which would
be repeated in Hillarys career, notably in Libya.
Meanwhile, representatives of the new Micheletti government trekked to
Washington to plead their case for saving democracy from a new Chavez to
Congress and the policy-making caste. The coup defenders enjoyed the
knowledgeable guidance of top lobbyist Lanny Davis. Davis happens to have
been special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 1998, and a close
friend of Hillary.
Stalling for time, Hillary strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras
and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately,
which would render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran
people a chance to choose their own future.
Zelaya was never reinstated. From then on, Hondurans have had the chance
to choose their future as long as it looks very much like their past.
Honduras is Spanish for depths. Politically, the impoverished country has
continued to deserve its name.
Our bottom line, as Hillary put it, is free, fair, and democratic elections
with a peaceful transfer of power. Elections to render the question of Zelaya
moot were held on November 29. Much of the campaigning in these free and
fair elections was severely inhibited by a temporary Micheletti decree
suspending the very same ive rights spelled out in the constitution that the
golpistas had been so eager to defend: personal liberty, freedom of expression,
freedom of movement, habeas corpus, and freedom of association. Over three
thousand soldiers and police were called in to neutralize members of a

newly-formed National Resistance Front which had called for boycott of the
elections in protest against the June 29 coup. The campaign was marked by
intimidation, beatings, at least one death, and the occasional disappearance.
Employees were told to vote or lose their jobs. Despite all the pressure, just
under half the voters turned out, at 49 percent.
Alls well that ends well, and the winner in the end was Por irio Pepe Lobo
Sosa, the National Party candidate who had been defeated by Zelaya in the
previous election. The governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua , Paraguay, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela
refused to recognize the result, but Washington was content.
President Lobo described his regime as a government of national
reconciliation. Hillary Clinton praised it as a resumption of democratic and
constitutional government.
Ever since Por irio Pepe Lobo came into of ice as President of Honduras in
January, after a fraudulent election from which opposition candidates
withdrew, hes been testing what he and the nations elites can get away with,
gradually unleashing more and more violence against the opposition,
historian Dana Frank noted nine months later. Paramilitary-style
assassinations and death threats against trade unionists, campesino activists,
and feminists active in the opposition continue unabated, with complete
impunity. Last Friday night, September 17, gunmen shot and killed Juana
Bustillo, a leader in the social security workers union. Nine journalists critical
of the government have been killed since Lobo took office. 2
Despite the repression, the resistance had by then collected 1,346,876
signatures (out of a country of 7.8 million) calling for a constitutional
convention to democratize Honduran society, just as the deposed populist
Manuel Zelaya had proposed.
In the following elections in November 2013, voters in Honduras were once
again free to choose a dismal past for their dismal future. But at irst there was
a glimmer of hope, as the polls for several months had shown the front-runner
to be deposed President Zelayas wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, leader of a
new party formed out of the post-coup resistance movement. Here was an
excellent opportunity for feminist Hillary Rodham Clinton to support
breaking the glass ceiling in Honduras the election of a charismatic woman
which would break the hold of the ruling oligarchy. It did not occur.
As the election approached, violent intimidation increased and Xiomara
Castros lead shrank.
National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernndez built his candidacy
around the promise of a soldier on every corner, as Dana Frank reported in
The Nation. Its well established that the countrys police, judiciary and
prosecutor are corrupt, interlaced with drug traf ickers and organized crime.

The police are directed by Juan Carlos El Tigre Bonilla, an alleged death squad
leader. Lacking the political will to clean this up, current President Por irio
Lobo and the Congress are instead sending in the military to take over police
functions Constitutionally, the military oversees the balloting process. In this
context, prospects for a free and fair contest are grim.3
According to the human rights group Rights Action, in the period between
May 2012 and October 2013, there were 36 murders and 24 armed attacks
targeting candidates or potential candidates and their families or supporters.
59 percent of Hondurans polled expected the elections to be fraudulent. Amid
accusations of fraud and intimidation, Juan Orlando Hernndez was
proclaimed President with 37 percent of the vote, while Xiomara Castro came
in second with about 29 percent.
According to Dana Frank: Yes, gangs are rampant in Honduras. But the truly
dangerous gang is the Honduran government. And our own tax dollars are
pouring into it while our top officials praise its virtues.
This June 28 marks the ifth anniversary of the military coup that deposed
democratically-elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Since then, a series
of corrupt administrations has unleashed open criminal control of Honduras,
from top to bottom of the government. Current President Juan Orlando
Hernndez, who entered of ice in January, was himself an enthusiastic
supporter of the coup
The Honduras police are overwhelmingly corrupt, working closely with
drug traf ickers and organized crime. Last August, even a Honduran
government commission overseeing a clean-up of the police force admitted
that 70 percent of the police are beyond saving. InSight Crime concludes: a
series of powerful local groups, connected to political and economic
elites...manage most of the underworld activities in the country. They have
deeply penetrated the Honduran police. The judiciary and prosecutors are
often corrupt as well: Perpetrators of killings and other violent crimes are
rarely brought to justice, reports Human Rights Watch; as a result, post-coup
Honduras now boasts the highest murder rate in the world, according to
United Nations figures.
In the two years following the coup, spending on public housing, health, and
education all dropped, while extreme poverty rose by 26.3 percent. In May
2014, the entire agency charged with childrens interests was eliminated and
its assets liquidated.
In this overall scenario, children indeed die. With few jobs and without a
functioning criminal justice system, truly terrifying gangs have proliferated,
and drug traf icking engenders spectacular violence, including multiple
massacres of children in April and May splayed all over the papers. According
t o Casa Alianza, the leading independent advocate for homeless children in

Honduras, in May 2014 alone 104 young people were killed; between 2010 and
2013, 458 children 14 or younger were assassinated.
On May 6, Jos Guadalupe Ruelas, the director of Casa Alianza, charged that
police are operating operate social cleansing death squads killing children. 4
Meanwhile, the ruling National Party has changed its mind about articles
written in stone. At the partys request, the Honduras Supreme Court itself
violated the Constitution by simply scrapping the articles banning a
presidential second term. At a meeting with businessmen in Miami, President
Juan Orlando Hernndez shrugged off the change, remarking that re-election
has become the general rule in many countries of the world
Ever since the ledgling populist Manuel Zelaya, who dared to try to improve
the lot of his people, was carted off in his night shirt, the situation in Honduras
has gotten steadily worse. More poverty, more crime, more murders so many
murders and so few arrests and prosecutions that it is impossible to
distinguish drug related killings from political assassinations carried out by
police and the military. The situation for youth is so dire that the in lux of
unaccompanied minors from Honduras has become an immigration problem
for the United States. In the summer of 2014, kids from Honduras made up the
largest contingent of some forty-seven thousand unaccompanied minors
apprehended as they tried to enter the United States.
Asked on a June 17, 2014 CNN Town Hall broadcast about what to do with
thousands of minors from Honduras and neighboring countries seeking
asylum in the United States, Hillary acknowledged that many children are
leeing from an exponential increase in violence. However, they should be
sent back as soon as it can be determined who the responsible adults in their
family are, she said; all of them who can should be reunited with their
families.
We have to send a clear message: just because your child gets across the
border doesnt mean your child gets to say, she said. Do we need to recall that
Hillary began her career as advocate for childrens rights?
It is interesting to compare the readiness of the United States to accept
thousands of unaccompanied children escaping from communist
propaganda in the 1960s to the current unwillingness to accept children
fleeing for their lives.
When a white hat appears on the horizon of a wretched place like Honduras,
proclaiming his intention to try to improve conditions, couldnt the rich and
powerful United States react otherwise than stigmatizing him as a potential
dictator? Instead of giving an advocate of change the opportunity to try,
Hillarys State Department connived to help bundle him out of power. All is
back to normal; however below normal that particular normal happens to be.
On the face of it, the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya was a relatively mild

regime change, as far as U.S. operations go. The real violence came later, with
the unsolved murders of oppositionists and children. But like other U.S. backed interventions in the political life of weaker countries, the result was
chaos; the chaos of poverty, crime and hopelessness. On the pretext of
preventing the elected President from becoming a dictator, Hillary and her
colleagues contributed to shoring up the longstanding United States
dictatorship over the Southern Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed
to protect the continent from outside powers, has in practice come to mean a
license for the United States to protect the inhabitants from themselves and
their errors.
As we will see throughout this book, the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton
amounts to the application of an enlarged Monroe Doctrine to the entire world.

Chapter 1
Riding the Military-Industrial-Financial
Tiger
In April 2014, a peer-reviewed study for Princeton and Northwestern
Universities concluded that the United States is not a democracy, but an
oligarchy run by economic elites. This has been obvious for some time to
anyone paying attention, but an academic study helps clinch the argument.
The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest
Groups, and Average Citizens, by comparing nearly 1,800 policy choices
between 1981 and 2002, concluded that what the rich and powerful wanted,
they got. That is, the policy choices of those above the 90th percentile of
income were enacted while the wishes of average Americans, in the 50
percentile of income, were neglected. The scholars concluded that: The
central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and
organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest
groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with
organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong
status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large
majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Only when the less af luent majority happens to want what the richest ten
percent want do they have a serious chance of getting it, the study concluded.
This imbalance is not new, as the rich have always had the advantage of
personal contacts and in luence over the politicians who make the laws and
run the executive. It has apparently been exacerbated by recent Supreme Court
rulings increasing the scope of campaign donations, as well as by the
extension of the presidential primary system, which is supposed to make the
choice of presidential candidates more democratic. In reality, it creates more
occasions for money to play a role in candidate selection and reduces the
in luence of party members on both choice of candidate and de inition of
political program.
Every four years, the U.S. two party system essentially gives voters a choice
between only two candidates, both heavily vetted by billionaires and lobbies
representing major corporations and inancial interests. There is the Bad Cop,
the Republican Party, and the Good Cop, the Democratic Party. They play their
roles, but however they appeal to the voters, the irst task of anyone who
aspires to be one of those two exclusive candidates is to appear as the best

investment for contributors who expect to get what they paid for. When it
comes to domestic legislation, no truly progressive or egalitarian policies are
feasible. However much they quarrel, both parties have accepted that
domestic politics must conform to the interests of inancial capital, the
markets. A perfect example is health care reform: in the United States, singlepayer programs, which function well in various other countries, were never
even seriously considered, but automatically condemned as socialistic, in
favor of a complicated and costly scheme pro itable to private insurance
companies.
In short, today presidential power is very limited on the domestic scene. But
the world stage offers the opportunity to wield great power or at least to
appear to wield great power.
This contrast sums up Hillary Rodham Clintons initial experience at the
White House. Her much-heralded universal health insurance plan ended as a
iasco. Aside from her own mistakes, this failure was fundamentally inherent
in the effort to construct a public health system on the basis of ensuring a big
profit margin for the shareholders of private insurance companies. Obamacare
suffers from the same contradiction.
Due to the current relationship of forces, inancial and ideological,
progressive domestic reform is an exercise in powerlessness. However, the
President of the United States is able to exercise enormous power abroad. It is
essentially the power of destruction. But it does make an impression, notably
on American voters. If Bill Clintons administration is not remembered solely
for Monica Lewinsky, it will mainly be thanks to the destructive forces Clinton
let loose on Iraq, Sudan and the Balkans. Wrap those sanctions and bombing
raids in a media package called defending human rights or defying
dictators and domestic failures fade before the grandeur of conquering Evil
abroad.

How We Got Where We Are

Starting in 1950, the United States built an economic trap for itself from
which it now seems unable to escape. The trap was given a name by Dwight
Eisenhower in his farewell speech as President on January 17, 1961: the
military-industrial complex (MIC).
The birth of this monster can be traced to National Security Council
document 68, NSC-68, submitted to President Harry S. Truman on April 14,
1950. The document was top secret then and remained so until 1975. Its main
author was Paul Nitze, a prosperous and highly educated investment banker
unknown to the general public. He summarized an elite consensus that in
effect turned the United States decisively away from its New Deal social
programs to endless military buildup. At the end of World War II, the United

States was in danger of falling back into the Depression, especially since
overseas trading customers were impoverished by the war. A Keynesian boost
was needed, but the elite implicitly favored spending on the military over
public works. To win Congressional and public support, it was therefore
necessary to exaggerate the Soviet threat. But Communism was never a
serious political threat to Western Europe beyond the Soviet-occupied buffer
zone in Eastern Europe. Nor was it a military threat, for, under Stalin, the
Soviet Union had abandoned the doctrine of permanent revolution (over
protests from the exiled Trotsky) and was now concentrating on
reconstruction from the devastation of the war and on building defenses
against the further aggression it feared from the capitalist West. NSC-68
claimed that the USSR was still led by a fanatic faith to impose its absolute
authority over the rest of the world. As a result, Pentagon contracts became
the life-blood of the U.S. economy, affecting every Congressional district and
virtually every activity (most notably in the universities) which welcomed the
influx of grants, ignoring the implications of the strings attached.
Without any public discussion, NSC-68 set the future course of the United
States for generations to come. The Cold War was already announced in
1947 in a speech in South Carolina by Bernard Baruch, who used the alleged
Communist threat as an argument against the wave of post-war labor
demands. Baruch called for unity between labor and management, longer
workweeks, and no-strike pledges from unions, since today we are in the
midst of a cold war.
This largely-invented and certainly overblown Soviet threat was used both
to pump Congressional appropriations into the Pentagon and to tame the
labor movement, using guilt by association with an American Communist
Party which was never a threat to anything but racial segregation in the South.
It is signi icant that this historic turning point was accomplished by an elite,
behind closed doors, which used dire warnings of an external threat to
smother any possible democratic debate on the direction the nation might
take. The media largely orchestrated this campaign, framing international
news as an eternal dualistic contest between freedom and communism.
The NSC-68 Cold War dominated U.S. foreign policy without serious
challenge until Mikhail Gorbachev moved to end it. The Soviet threat was
such a valuable focus for U.S. policy that much of the ruling establishment
remained wary, suspicious or outright hostile. What could we do without it?
The impulse for world peace came from Moscow. Clearly, the Soviet elite had
decided that their interest lay in loosening their power system and
abandoning their Eastern European buffer zone in the hope of a peaceful
partnership with the West. They were led to believe that this was possible
largely by the German peace movement of the early 1980s, which gave the

impression that German aggressive intentions toward the East had been
rejected by the post-war generation.
Western media have managed to distort that decisive Russian move for
peace by reducing the end of the Cold War to a single symbol: the fall of the
Berlin Wall. It was more a spectacle than an historic event. The real event
happened earlier: Gorbachevs visit to the West German capital, Bonn, in June
1989, which sealed Moscows abandonment of the German Democratic
Republic. East Germany was no doubt the most sincerely socialist and
economically successful of all the Eastern European Warsaw Pact members,
despite widespread resentment of institutions such as the Stasi.5 Once
Moscow decided to allow German reuni ication, the Berlin Wall was obsolete
and its fall in November was simply the inevitable result. To ixate on the
Fall of the Berlin Wall creates the impression that Eastern European changes
were caused principally by a popular uprising of the people against
communism. This interpretation obscures the historic decisions made by the
Soviet nomenklatura.

From Cold War To Global Leadership

The self-controlled collapse of the Soviet Union opened the prospect for a
new era of international cooperation, disarmament and peace. Moscow in
particular was urging Washington to agree to mutual nuclear disarmament.
But by this time the military-industrial complex had its clutches on the entire
nation, including its mentality. It would have taken extraordinary events or
extraordinary leadership to liberate the United States economy from the MIC
and direct it toward constructive domestic activities.
The moment of greatest opportunity was the presidency of Bill Clinton. But
far from marking a turn toward peace, the Clinton administration opened a
new phase of seemingly endless war.
It is doubtful that this was intentional or even conscious. A president with no
strong foreign policy vision who reacts to unexpected events in unfamiliar
places is inevitably manipulated by advisers with an agenda. In the American
oligarchy, the President is a temporary chairman of the board who is there to
take responsibility for actions decided in private sessions. He is there to sell
policy more than to make it.
A vast power such as the MIC demands a certain degree of continuity. It
cannot be bounced back and forth every four years between opposing forces.
Reduction of military spending would raise the question of inding an equally
pro itable alternative to the incredibly lucrative possibilities of MIC contracts
with government-guaranteed returns on investment.
But the MIC needs more than pro its. It requires constant ideological
justi ication for its dominance, if only to satisfy its own main actors, most

notably in the military, where belief in a mission is a vital necessity.

Congressmen and business leaders may be satis ied with votes and pro its, but
military of icers and soldiers are expected to be ready to die for a cause. They
and their families require some sort of inspiratio n. The immense military
power of the Pentagon has spawned a community of defense intellectuals,
always on the lookout for threats and missions to justify the very existence
of such a destructive, bloated power.
As the communist threat faded out, this task fell primarily to the
Washington think-tanks, privately-funded policy institutes that began to
proliferate in the 1970s. In the post-Gorbachev era, they became more creative
and more in luential. K Street and Dupont Circle are the centers of foreign
policy formulation, with strong links to the op- ed pages of major newspapers.
This privatization of policy-making represented an opportunity for rich
donors to gain in luence. The funding sources ensure that the leading think
tanks have a strong right-wing bias. The think tank community has become
overwhelmingly in luenced by generous pro-Israel donors and active proIsrael intellectuals.
The most notorious of the latter group are the neoconservatives, or neocons,
who have become the main force de ining U.S. foreign policy. The term can be
considered a euphemism, since this tight network of activists is far from
conservative in any real sense of the word. On the contrary, their ambition is
to use U.S. military power to bring about vast changes in the world. They are
nonpartisan; they go where the power is. In the 1970s, they nested in the of ice
of the Democratic Senator from Washington, Henry Scoop Jackson,
nicknamed the Senator from Boeing for his devotion to his major home-state
Pentagon contractor. The lagship legislative measure won by the early
neocons was the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, sponsored by Jackson in
the Senate and Charles Vanik in the House of Representatives, which denied
normal trade relations to Soviet bloc countries with brain drain restrictions
on the freedom of Jewish emigration. Jackson and Richard Perle championed
Ukrainian refusenik Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky. Once in Israel,
Sharansky became a leading ultra-nationalist politician and is currently
dedicated to the emigration of French Jews. The Jackson-Vanik amendment
merged main neoconservative themes which persist to this day: the assertion
of U.S. power to dictate internal policies of other countries, hostility to Russia,
devotion to Israel, and the use of human rights demands as grounds for
economic sanctions or other forms of intervention.
It was in the administration of George W. Bush that the neocons gained
notoriety as architects of the disastrous invasion of Iraq. The main thinker
behind this war was Bushs Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul
Wolfowitz, whose doctrine comes down to a few simple assumptions. Perhaps

the linchpin of this doctrine is the erroneous idea that democracies dont go
to war against each other, a notion that retains credibility only thanks to the
subterfuge of automatically labeling our adversaries as dictatorships. This
leads to the specious conclusion that war against dictators is the way to
ensure peace. Like it or not, in 1999, Serbia was quite as democratic as any
other country in the region, and Slobodan Milosevic had been elected several
times in perfectly democratic elections. But he was a dictator because the
United States and NATO bombed his country. In any case, thinks to this
syllogism, which has been absorbed as part of the U.S. foreign policy doctrine,
Wolfowitz persuaded George W. Bush that the way to solve the Palestinian
deadlock was to remove the dictators surrounding Israel. Thus the
neighboring states would become democracies and as such would naturally
make peace with democratic Israel. So much for the Middle East. The other
point of neocon focus is Russia and for that, the doctrine calls on the United
States to prevent the rise of a great power rival in Eurasia. Russia must be held
down. Inherent in all this is an apology for preventive war. That is,
unprovoked aggressive war, waged to prevent the rise of a rival, or to get rid
of a dictator, or to head off some supposed threat, such as (nonexistent)
weapons of mass destruction.
In the Bush II era, the neocons dominated the in luential American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) as well as operating through think tanks of their
own. Most notable of these was the Project for the New American Century
(PNAC), which disbanded in 2006, as its major policy triumph, the 2003
invasion of Iraq, was turning into a disgrace. But their in luence began before
George W. Bush, and lives on after his presidency.
PNAC was founded early in the second Clinton administration. Its June 1997
Statement of Principles asks whether the United States has the resolve to
shape a new century favorable to America principles and interests? The
implication is that the United States surely has the capacity to shape the
century, and the only thing missing might be its resolve. PNAC thus called
for a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American
principles abroad, adding that it is important to shape circumstances before
crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The wars against
Serbia, Iraq and Libya illustrate this principle, as all three wars were initiated
to meet threats that were in reality imaginary. This is the most blatant trick in
the preventive war doctrine: we may go to war to prevent something that
never would have happened anyway, but since it didnt happen, we can claim
credit for preventing it. In short, PNAC called for a doctrine of preventive war,
which has indeed been adopted and applied, with the sole clear result of
destroying existing regimes and to a large extent the countries that were
governed by them.

The PNAC Statement of Principles concluded with four demands:

1. to increase defense spending significantly;
2. to strengthen ties to democratic allies (meaning Israel especially) and to
challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values (meaning regime
change, supposedly to shape a democratic world);
3. to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad (opening
markets and intervening in the domestic affairs of targeted countries);
4. to accept responsibility for Americas unique role in preserving and
extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and
our principles.
This last point foreshadows current movements to create a Community of
Democracies, composed essentially of the English-speaking world and
Western Europe (plus Israel) to rival and dominate the United Nations as a
more legitimate world authority by virtue of being made up of purely
democratic states, with NATO as its global police force.
In February 1998, a PNAC offshoot calling itself the Committee for Peace and
Security in the Gulf sent an Open Letter to President Clinton urging him to use
U.S. military force to help friendly Iraqi opposition groups overthrow
Saddam Hussein. Bill Clinton was busy with other matters at the time, but the
policy was to be followed by his successor, using 9/11 as pretext. The
signatories were a roster of prominent neocons, including Elliott Abrams,
Robert Kagan, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.6
This neo-conservative line (which might better be termed archeo-radical,
since it actually reverts to a radical application of the ancient law Might
Makes Right) has won overwhelming assent from Americas political class
because it ills a vacuum: the vacuum of purpose for the military-industrial
complex. The United States of America, essentially a vast island without
enemies real or in potential, has absolutely no need to be armed to the teeth,
ever-ready to destroy the planet in self defense. Since the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the United States has been in a perfect
position to lead a movement of negotiated worldwide disarmament, starting
with nuclear weapons, a movement which the second great nuclear power,
Russia, was eager to join. By shifting resources to constructive rather than
destructive uses, the United States could have led a movement to combat
illiteracy and disease, to improve vital global infrastructure such as hydraulic
installations whose natural result would be to create conditions for solving
local con licts and promoting a peaceful world. But this would have implied
dismantling the very skeleton of the current U.S. economy. Rather than putting
engineers and scientists to work iguring out how to make such a dramatic
shift, it has been easier for U. S. leaders to heed the siren-songs of those fast
talking neocons who contrive countless pretexts for retaining and expanding

the existing order of destruction.

The term neocon makes sense only if it refers to the new con game that
has befuddled the U.S. political leadership class.
The neocons owe their ascendancy to their ability to espouse a coherent
world view that satis ies the military-industrial complex, the highly in luential
pro-Israel lobby, and a large section of liberal opinion (notably in the media
and entertainment industry) that eagerly adopts the worldwide defense of
human rights as a legitimate justi ication for U.S. intervention in other
countries. Even when the neocons have been in semi-disgrace, as in the
aftermath of disastrous interventions such as the one in Iraq, this ideology has
remained dominant. It offers a purpose to the militarization of American
society through the MIC that would otherwise persist simply through
bureaucratic inertia.
The idea that United States world leadership is necessary to ful ill the
nations unique global responsibilities provides a raison dtre for the
endless increase in so-called defense spending that is intended to maintain
the capacity for military intervention the world over. In the absence of the
communist boogeyman, the stress is now on the necessity to promote our
American interests and values worldwide, the two being considered
complementary if not identical, since both revolve around the idea of free
markets. In the hothouse atmosphere of the Washington foreign policy
establishment, dominated by military contracts, AIPAC, and the fear of losing
the next election, the neoconservative formula offers a simple way to appeal to
campaign donors as well as the least sophisticated part of the electorate. The
line that America is exceptional, a nation above all others (and above the
law) echoes a traditional semi-religious notion of America as Gods country.

As Much As Needed
The election of Obama in 2008, following the self-dissolution of PNAC
several years earlier, left a widespread impression that the neoconservative
hold on U.S. foreign policy had been broken, for the most part by disillusion
with the results of the war in Iraq. Yet Obama has gradually come to adopt the
PNAC line, albeit with seeming reluctance. His irst Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton, however, has positioned herself as their new darling.
In July 2014, billionaire Haim Saban declared in a Bloomberg TV interview
that he would contribute as much as needed to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016.
This is signi icant because both Sabans fortune and his zeal seem to be
inexhaustible. Saban declares proudly that his greatest concern is to protect
Israel through strengthening the United States-Israel relationship.7 Im a oneissue guy, and my issue is Israel. If Americans in general can see no urgent use
for the nations enormous military power, the use is obvious for someone like

Saban, with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship: the strengthening of Israels position

in the Middle East.
Saban sees three ways to be in luential in American politics: make donations
to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets. Although
he lost his bid to buy the Los Angeles Times in hope of changing its proPalestinian line, in 2002 Saban showered seven million dollars on the
Democratic National Committee, donated ive million dollars to Bill Clintons
Presidential Library, and above all, founded his very own think tank, the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy within the Brookings Institution, previously
considered the most politically neutral of major Washington think tanks. This
was accomplished by a record donation to Brookings of thirteen million
dollars. The Saban Center fosters dialogue, not between Israelis and Arabs, of
course, but between Israelis and American decision-makers.
While betting on the Democrats, Saban picks favorites, as illustrated by this
anecdote:8 Obama was asked the same question Hillary was asked If Iran
nukes Israel, what would be your reaction? Hillary said, We will obliterate
them. Four words, its easy to understand. Obama said only three words. He
would take appropriate action. I dont know what that means. Sabans rant
continued, calling Iran a rogue state that is a supporter of Hezbollah, which
killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization, etc. In short,
Hillary passed the test, but Obama lunked. Neither one of them would ever
dare say what former French President Jacques Chirac replied years ago to the
same question, by observing that should Iran dare attack Israel, Teheran would
be wiped out by Israelis nuclear arsenal, which was a way of pointing out the
absurdity of the scenario. For pointing this out, Chirac was attacked by
Frances pro-Israel press, a risk no leading American politician would ever
dare to take not with moneybags like Saban waiting in the wings.
On the very eve of her own entrance into electoral politics, Hillary had
learned her irst lesson in risk avoidance. As irst lady on a Presidential visit to
Ramallah in November 1999, her polite kiss on the cheek of her hostess, Yasser
Arafats wife Suha, caused an uproar. Shame on Hillary headlined the New
York Post. Right-wing Jewish leaders let it be known that this might be the kiss
of death to her campaign for junior Senator from New York in 2000. As Jason
Horowitz of the New York Times put it, this led Hillary to enroll in political
Hebrew School. Under the tutelage of the senior New York senator, Chuck
Schumer, she became extremely adept at winning the trust of audiences who
held an absolute pro-Israel position.9
In February 2007, with the Presidential race in sight, she tripped up slightly
at an AIPAC dinner by suggesting that it would be smart to engage with Iran.
The reception was cold. But she rapidly atoned during a July 2007 debate with
Obama by distancing herself from his declared readiness to meet with leaders

of pariah nations including Iran. In a September 2007 position paper,

Hillary played her trump card by expressing belief that Israels right to exist
as a Jewish state with an undivided Jerusalem as its capital must never be
questioned. This extreme position out lanked even that of the previous Bush
administration, and was a factor inciting Obama to turn to Malcolm Hoenlein,
executive vice chairman of the Presidents of Major Jewish American
Organizations, to get Hillary to take the job of Secretary of State in order to
reassure the lobby. She has since earned the devotion of Haim Saban.
Saban is not the only one. On the other side of the aisle, backing Republican
candidates, there is Sheldon Adelson, also with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship,
who made his billions in the gambling casinos of Las Vegas and Macao. A close
pal of Benjamin Netanyahu and a backer of AIPAC, Adelson despises Obama
and is as eager to buy the Presidency for a Republican as Saban is eager to
elect Hillary. As things look now, the 2016 presidential race could be a contest
between Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson. In either case, the winner would be
Israel.
To provide personnel and policy direction for the new president, whoever he
or she may be, two veterans of the defunct PNAC, William Kristol and Robert
Kagan, returned in 2009 to found the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI). Robert
Kagan is the current leading neocon theorist and the husband of Secretary of
State Hillary Clintons spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, instigator of the
Ukrainian coup in early 2014. To put it simply, the main purpose of the FPI, as
of earlier neocon emanations, is to keep the United States perpetually at war.
They stigmatize as isolationist those rare politicians who openly oppose
their war policy (although, as their arch-adversary Ron Paul has pointed out,
the neocons and their acolytes strive to isolate whole countries they dont
like).
The military-industrial complex has no direction of its own, no philosophy,
and no values. It is simply there, a monster which, as a planetary public safety
measure, desperately needs to be tamed and destroyed. But instead of iguring
out how to get rid of it, policy intellectuals contrive things for it to do.
Naturally enough, the most successful are those with a passionate cause to
serve, such as unwavering allegiance to the Israeli state, especially when the
money is there to finance their lobbying.
There is all that power, and, as Madeleine Albright famously said: Whats
the point of having all that military might if you dont use it? For politicians
who want power, this is the tiger to ride. Politicians who want to climb aboard
claim that this is an invincible force for good, when it is primarily an immense
force of destruction. It has brought devastation to Vietnam, to Iraq, to
Afghanistan, to Libya, and there is no limit to the chaos it may still create.

Chapter 2
Multicultural Manipulations
Our Exceptional Values and Interests
Our political leaders never cease assuring us that our foreign policy is
determined by our values and our interests. Whose interests exactly? Our
interests remain unclear. As for our values, democracy, freedom,
human rights are concepts that raise more questions than they answer, if
you stop to think about it. But thinking is precisely what such abstractions are
intended to prevent.
Hillary Clinton regularly repeats these standard, meaningless words as if
our interests and our values were divine commandments, guiding us like
icebreakers through a recalcitrant world. Get out of our way Here we come
with our values and interests!
America is an exceptionally ideological country and that is a clue to the
exceptional nature of the United States. No society lives without an ideology,
but the ideology of Americas current political leaders and opinion-makers
thrives in an utter fog of self-justi ication. For decades, so-called American
Exceptionalism has been successfully exported both by Hollywood and by an
extensive of icial propaganda machine funding non-governmental
organizations in countless countries (NGOs). The idea that America is the
best country on earth and the proper model for all others, has succeeded in
creating cultural inferiority complexes in youth around the world. Since World
War II, Western European leaders have accepted this notion to the point of
having surrendered their national sovereignty to the governance of the
European Union, a false and essentially unworkable imitation of the United
States. This is an unstable situation, but it helps to con irm Washingtons
illusion of world domination.
We are always very good at seeing through the mass illusions of other times
and other places, and especially those of the last century. Our own illusions
remain as invisible as the air we breathe. Hitler is considered insane for
having believed that the Germans were the master race. This judgment has
not yet been pronounced on current leaders who proclaim that America is the
indispensable nation and an exception to all the rules that apply to the rest
of the world.
Because it is shared by men and women in charge of the greatest power of
destruction that ever existed on earth, this ideology is the number one threat
to humanity, to all forms of life on our planet. It risks unleashing the total
devastation of nuclear war. None of our interests can do that; interests are

inherently not suicidal. It is our values that are dangerous. It is the belief in
our overwhelming superiority, the s uperiority of our values, which leads us
toward the destruction of ourselves and of others.
Hillary Clinton personi ies the hubris of American Exceptionalism. She
seems incapable of doubting that America is the last hope of mankind. Above
all, she certainly believes that the American people also believe in American
Exceptionalism and want to hear it confirmed and celebrated. As long as that is
what the American people want to hear, Hillary Clinton is not the only problem.
She is not even the most basic problem. A more basic problem is our
ideological fog.

American Globalization
If Americans were staying at home and minding their own business, belief in
the countrys exceptionalism would be nothing but a quaint ethnic trait. But
the present context is globalization, and for Americans believing in the
exceptional nature of the United States, globalization means Americanization
of the entire world. Our interests and values must prevail everywhere.
In short, globalization means a world tied together by the universal
penetration of inancial markets in every sector of each national economy,
thus allowing international capital to shape production, trade, and services via
their own investment choices. This has radical political implications. In their
efforts to attract mobile capital, nation-states are expected to lower dissuasive
taxes and provide widened investment possibilities by privatization even of
the most vital national activities, such as education and basic utilities. This
leaves the national government without resources to ensure public welfare, to
develop industry and farming, to redistribute wealth through public services.
The gap between rich and poor widens radically. The powers of national
governments tend to be reduced to maintaining public order. Even those may
be privatized.
Globalization is also an ideological construct. It is now widely accepted as an
inevitable stage of human history, as the product of communications and
transport technologies that turn the world into a global village. This notion,
which ignores the enormous subjective and material gaps which still divide
humanity, underlies the American assumption that we are justi ied in prying
into everybodys business.
Although presented as an inexorable destiny, real globalization is the
product of a particular relationship of forces. Promoted as free trade, the
slogan does not at all mean what the words suggest: freedom to buy and sell
goods and services. In practice, it means a complex system of international
agreements that facilitate the movement of investment capital in or out of
countries at the expense of national regulations. In hammering out these

agreements, the United States bene its from superior bargaining power thanks
to its control of the dollar as world currency, the in luence of its ideology, and
not least by its military presence around the world. The United States has
between 662 and over a thousand military bases or installations (depending
on what one de ines as such) spread across some 148 foreign countries,
effectively controlling the armed forces of many of these nations through aid
and joint training programs. The United States not only succeeds in using its
in luence to obtain trade deals to the advantage of its own corporations and
inancial institutions, it also feels free to violate the spirit and letter of free
trade whenever it chooses to punish some country or other with economic
sanctions.
U.S.-led globalization is a process. It is a process intended to absorb more
and more of the world into the sphere of free market democracy.
This is indeed a new form of world conquest. It is not a matter of conquering
territory by military force and creating colonies, as in past empires. It is not a
matter of taking over responsibility for governing conquered territories. It is a
process of creating conditions for the gradual absorption of one region after
another into a single system in which free enterprise, or private capital,
commands both the economy and the political process, based on the model of
the present-day United States. Note that free elections, U.S.-style, can be
freely in luenced by inancial contributions. Our modern so-called bourgeois
democracy began with voting rights limited to men of property. Gradually,
property requirements were lowered and for a short time in the twentieth
century, voting rights were equal in the United States (and still are in some
other countries). But by allowing unlimited campaign contributions, the
United States has reverted, not to bourgeois democracy, but to billionaire
democracy. The advantage of this revised democracy is that if you have the
money, you can buy it.
Such democracy, if exported, looks like the easy non-violent way for our
friendly inancial interests to take over foreign states. A free market
democracy can be in luenced politically and economically by international
inance capital. The United States government is already spending hundreds of
millions of dollars to support democracy usually through grants to NGOs in
foreign countries by way of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Such grants select leaders and build careers. These efforts are supported by
numerous associations and private foundations, more or less governmentlinked, of which the most notorious is George Soros Open Society Foundation.
The European Union is the vanguard example of this expansion process.
Under strong in luence from the United States, which effectively occupied
Western Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany, six countries France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg began the

integration process with the 1957 Treaty of Rome. It has been expanding ever
since. This expansion is closely related to, although not quite identical with,
the expansion of NATO. The paradox is that the more it expands, the less
democratic it becomes, as key decision-making is transferred to a central
bureaucracy. Free market democracy is becoming an oxymoron.
Soon to be cemented by the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), the
European Union, the United States and NATO will form the core of this
projected World Community of Democracies. 10 This international
community is designed to claim superior legitimacy on the world stage due to
two factors: the supposed moral superiority of democracy and the armed
force of NATO. Speci ically, the armed democracies, under U.S. leadership,
will as they are already doing in regard to Ukraine take it upon themselves
to intervene in any area of the world, citing human rights, R2P (the right or
responsibility to protect), or some other moral pretext.
In June 2014, lavish ceremonies were held in Normandy to commemorate
the 70th anniversary of D-Day, hailed as the Liberation of Europe. In 1944,
arrival of U.S. Armed Forces on the continent was indeed greeted as liberation.
But after seventy years of protracted military occupation and political
domination, this liberation might more appropriately be celebrated as a
conquest.
The European Union provides the paradigm for a world where nation states
give up their sovereignty to an overriding economic governance based on the
free market coupled with free elections free, but often expensive.

Blowing Away Whistleblowers

Security is another pretext for ignoring sovereignty. Nations that join
NATO consciously renounce their military sovereignty in order to enjoy the
alleged bene its of collective security, which means restructuring their
armed forces to serve as elements in the international tool box under U.S.
command. But another aspect of national and individual sovereignty has been
inadvertently surrendered to the United States National Security Agency
(NSA) as it strives to record, collect and store every last personal, political or
business communication exchanged anywhere in the world. For Hillary
Clinton, this intrusion is also a security imperative, necessary to protect our
friends and allies. On these grounds, she vigorously condemned the revelation
of NSA documents by Edward Snowden.
As an American, Hillary told Phoebe Greenwood in an interview for The
Guardian, I honestly believe that our acquisition of information saves lives
and protects not just the United States but our friends and our allies. 11 NSA
spying, in Hillarys view, is a generous public service that should be
appreciated: I think it would be shocking to most people if the United States

stopped gathering the information and we basically said: Okay everybody

youre on your own. We cant tell our allies in Asia whats happening, we cant
share information with our allies in Europe. Were gonna stop. Well, thats just
not the way the real world works.
For Hillary, when it comes to the information competition that exists
between the West and the Rest, I think it would be an abdication of
responsibility not to be gathering information that we can use to protect
ourselves and, as I say, our friends and allies. It follows then that Angela
Merkel should be grateful to the NSA for tapping her personal cell phone.
The real world, according to Hillary, is as dangerously divided as it ever
was during the Cold War. Today, this division is between the West and the
Rest, or as she imagines, between the Good and the Threatening.
Its no surprise to me that Hillary Clinton thinks that human beings who are
not formally U.S. citizens dont have any rights, said Julian Assange, who
considers Hillary Clinton a threat to solving the problem of whistleblowers.12
When she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton described the November
2010 Wikileaks document release as an attack on the United States and the
international community that puts peoples lives in danger and threatens
our national security. Speaking for the Obama administration, she announced
that: We are taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this
information. This was certainly the case with Chelsea Manning, who is now
paying the price for having revealed, among other things, the incriminating
video of a U.S. helicopter crew murdering a group of civilians (including a BBC
photographer) in the streets of Baghdad and then subsequently murdering a
man who stopped his car with children inside in order to come to the aid of the
victims of the first attack who were lying in the street.
For all her hostility to Wikileaks, Hillary judged Edward Snowdens May 2013
revelation of NSA documents to be a much more serious breach. 13 Since she
considers worldwide spying necessary on behalf of some imaginary contest
between the West and everybody else, foreigners need not know about it.
As for Americans, Hillary grants them the right to engage in a polite debate
about the tension between privacy and security. She considers that there are
other ways of doing it, that such a debate was already going on, that
Snowden deserves no credit for stimulating the debate, and inally that it
was puzzling for Snowden to abscond since we have all these protections
for whistleblowers.
All of this is highly questionable, at best.
In reality, previous NSA whistleblowers had played by the rules of the 1998
Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act but still failed to arouse
any interest in lagrant abuses of law, either among their superiors or in
Congress. When one of them, decorated Air Force and Navy veteran Thomas

Drake, inally gave information that was used as part of an award-winning

article in the Baltimore Sun in 2005, his home was raided and pillaged by
armed FBI agents and in 2010 he was indicted by a Baltimore grand jury for
willful retention of National Defense information under the 1917 Espionage
Act. This equates attempting to inform the American public with betraying
vital information to the enemy in wartime.
Daniel Ellsberg has argued that it is no longer possible to do what he did in
the 1970s when he released the Pentagon Papers, an inside evaluation of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam, because the government now silences defendants by
using state secrets privilege. National security cases are tried in Alexandria,
Virginia, where, as Julian Assange observed, the jury pool is comprised of the
highest density of military and government employees in all of the United
States. Its not possible to have a fair trial because the U.S. government has a
precedent of applying state secret privilege to prevent the defense from using
material that is classi ied in their favor. It is only because Snowden avoided
arrest that we can talk about the issues, instead of talking about whether or
not Snowden is guilty.
It was only by releasing of icial documents that Snowden was able to show
the complexity of what was going on. So we have proof. People did try to start
a debate, using all sorts of methods, including former National Security Agency
whistleblowers, and its only primary source documents in volume that are
probably capable of starting a debate about a complex issue like mass
surveillance, Assange has explained.
Hillary has even managed to insinuate that Snowden may deserve the
draconian Espionage Act, since she inds it odd that he would lee to China,
because Hong Kong is controlled by China, and that he had than taken refuge
in Russia, under Putins authority. She conveniently forgot that Snowden was
actually en route to Latin America and only ended up being marooned in
Russia because the State Department had revoked his U.S. passport on June 22,
2013. He remained stranded in a Moscow airport for well over a month until he
was granted temporary asylum by the Russian government on August 1. There
was never any indication either of Russias eagerness to receive him or of
Snowdens eagerness to be in Russia.
Hillary Clinton sees the issue as balancing privacy and security. What she
fails to notice is that privacy is itself a form of security. The privacy she is
concerned with is the privacy of the State. This privacy was violated by
Wikileaks, which believes that the people have the right to know what their
government is doing. In contrast, NSA prying violates the privacy of
individuals and by doing so, is a threat to the security of all citizens.
Many citizens who say that the surveillance state doesnt matter because I
have nothing to hide also miss another crucial point which NSA

whistleblowers have been trying to make. For the moment, the vast
accumulation of personal data may indeed be harmless for citizens with
nothing to hide. It may even be harmless for terrorists: an overload of
information can actually be an obstacle to tracking the few dangerous
individuals who might commit acts of violence. But we live in the midst of a
negative social trend: wealth and power have become increasingly
concentrated. As this imbalance increases, those who hold power may ind it
ever more tempting to suppress the inevitable protests and campaigns for
change engendered by the increasing gap between the very few and the very
many. Personal information can be used to frame, entrap, or eliminate anyone
who might oppose a system where the concentration of power has grown to a
point where ordinary people are forced to ight back. The surveillance machine
becomes an important weapon in any states arsenal of repression. Some
future leader, protecting the power of the ruling .01%, might say, echo ing
Madeleine Albright, Whats the use of having that splendid repressive
machinery if we dont use it? Like any powerful weapon, its masters can use
its very existence as an argument for its use. By the same token, its potential
use is a reason for those who do not control such a weapon to demand its
abolition.
Champions of state security like Hillary Clinton apparently neither know nor
care that the NSAs comprehensive surveillance machine is a serious potential
threat to the civil society they claim to cherish.

Co-opting Civil Society

On February 16, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of iciated at the
inaugural session of the Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society, a new device for
organizing U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. As usual,
she repeated the mantra that the United States supports democratic change
because it agrees with our values and our interests. As a matter of standing
up for universal principles, the United States will help our partners take
steps to open their own political and economic systems so that Uncle Sam
can walk right in.
This session took place in the State Department, with thousands of
participants via interactive videoconferences at 50 U.S. embassies around the
world. Hillary trotted out her favorite image of a three-legged stool that
upholds stable societies: a responsive, accountable government; an energetic,
effective private sector economy; and then civil society, which represents
everything else that happens in the space between the government and the
economy, that holds the values, that represents the aspirations.
This stool is actually the image of the bland governance of a corporate
society: a government responsive to the demands of inance capital, a

capitalist economy, and private, unelected and well-funded organizations that

will determine our values. Note what is missing: a vigorous political life,
scrupulously independent media, and an education system that prepares
intellectually alert and critical citizens.
Hillary said she was very pleased to announce that we are more than
doubling our inancial support for efforts to respond to threats to civil society,
to help human rights workers who have been arrested, activists whove been
intimidated, journalists who have been censored. We have launched an
international fund that will provide quick assistance, such as communications
gear and legal support to NGOs affected by government crackdowns.
In short, as Secretary of State, HRC presided over an intensi ication of U.S.
interference in the domestic affairs of ifty countries. Earlier, she had
instructed U.S. ambassadors to engage with civil society as a cornerstone of
our diplomacy. She named three senior State Department of icials to lead
working groups on governance and accountability, democracy and human
rights, and empowering women. What this means is that Hillary heightened a
major ongoing shift in U.S. diplomacy away from dealing with other
governments, as was traditional practice, toward dealing with civil society
against governments declared un it to handle these issues to Washingtons
satisfaction.
Needless to say, the United States is not keen to welcome such assistance
from foreign countries to help solve the problems of its own civil society. For
example, what to do about the high rate of infant mortality or the record the
U.S. currently holds for the worlds highest prison population. Or how to cure
the epidemic of fatal police shootings of unarmed suspects and the drugfueled violence of Americas inner cities. Or, how to curb the corruption of
democratic practice by billionaire campaign funding; or even such minor ills as
an education system that fails to teach the majority of Americans even the
most rudimentary history and geography of the world which their government
is intent on reshaping.
Civil Society is a malleable concept, but this much is certain: the
representatives of civil society are self-selected and do not represent anybody.
Or, in the case of groups chosen by NED, they may be selected by NED itself to
become oppressed dissidents representing genuine democracy. The State
Departments emphasis on civil society implies that the genuine values of a
society are not expressed by its government, whether or not that government
is the product of democratic elections, but rather by volunteer associations
organized outside the political process. By proclaiming U.S. support for civil
society, the United States government is very clearly attempting to co-opt
whatever grievances exist in dozens of foreign countries and to posit itself as
the only solution to these ills. The State Department is encouraging such

groups to look toward America, rather than to work politically for their cause
within their own society.
Hillary also counts on civil society to aid in genocide prevention by
spotting such dark tendencies and opposing them. This is a strange and
sinister assignment (more later on genocide prevention).
Active civil society is a matter of minorities, very often relatively
privileged minorities. However sincere, these educated, Western-oriented
minorities active in human rights organizations can easily be seen as the
beginning of a dominant managerial class in the globalized world that the
United States aspires to create and administer. The Strategic Dialogue with
Civil Society is one of many means to solidify the ideological hegemony
acquired by the United States since World War II. Although this ideology has
aroused a growing skepticism, and even outright hostility, as a result of U.S.
military aggression and intervention, it is not yet effectively opposed by any
coherent rival ideology. In much of the world, Americanization still holds a
strong appeal for certain privileged classes.
Any civil society is a complex of various minorities, and therefore defense of
ethnic, religious or sexual minority rights is a fertile ield for movements with
the potential to weaken support for central governments. By their emotional
impact, identity movements can destabilize governments without in any way
interfering with the growing domination of inance capital in determining
economic and social relations, as economically-based social movements might
do. Civil society is a good breeding ground for the formation of self-selected
elites eligible for recruitment to U.S.-managed globalization.

From Equality to Diversity

Over the past three decades, the economic left has been crushingly defeated
in the Atlantic core of the West. The defeat was homegrown in the United
Kingdom and the United States, led by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s. In
continental Europe, it is being pursued vigorously by the European Union
bureaucracy, whose directives and budgetary rules are dismantling the
European social model in preparation for the great TAFTA wedding.
Complicit elected leaders feign helplessness. In Europe, labor parties no
longer care about labor and socialist parties are not at all socialist. In the
United States, the Democratic Party has long since abandoned the social
reformism of the New Deal. But a certain left does continue to exist, claiming
to be both generous and progressive, but it is no longer the old social
democratic left, once concerned with the ight for economic equality. Instead
of equality, the new establishment left is more concerned with diversity and
the right to be different.
Incidentally, people are different. There is no reason why this should be

considered a right. It is just a fact. In a decent, fair and sensible society,

people would simply be different and nobody would make an issue of it. But for
us, the question of identity has become a major concern.
In many respects, the old division between right and left, between
conservative and progressive (or liberal in the United States), has mutated
into an historic compromise between economic dogma and social doctrine. On
the right, the economic dogma is not conservative in any meaningful way. It
does not conserve anything. It is wildly disruptive of stable existence. It states
that the markets must rule, meaning of course the financial markets. But even
political parties claiming to be left, liberal, progressive, or even
socialist in Europe, have largely come around to tailoring their programs to
meet the demands of the inancial market, in order to lure investments and
create jobs (jobs that do not get created). The economic order is presumed to
be logical, scienti ic, inevitable. Treating mainstream economics as an exact
science, which it is not, conveys the impression that the current economic
order follows the laws of nature.
For the left, the consolation prize is ideological hegemony in the more
sentimental area of human relations, especially that of human rights.
Completely defeated in the area of economic policy, the left gets to de ine the
dominant social doctrine, based on multiculturalism, concern for minorities,
and anti-racism. Americans are taught to judge the governments of other
countries almost exclusively by how they treat pro-Western dissidents or
select minorities. Other qualities or defects, such as whether or not they feed
and educate their populations, are of scant interest. The American
entertainment industry creates an imaginary world celebrating this doctrine
and channeling domestic revolt into artistic dead-ends. Rap music encourages
young Afro-American men to defy authority, but in the real world, a young
Afro-American man doesnt even need to defy authority to be shot dead by
police in the street or sent to prison for life.
Since Western leaders opted for the illusion of building their prosperity on
services instead of production, even the left has forgotten about the industrial
working class. In the 1970s, much of the radical left began to lose interest in
the working class as a revolutionary agent, since it had failed to bring about
that socialist revolution that had by now withered to a dissipating mass
illusion. Focus shifted instead to various identity groups that were supposed
to be more effective agents of revolution: students, women, blacks, or gays.
This has since evolved into a general left focus on identity groups of all kinds.
Multiculturalism expresses a view of society as a composition of
identities, rather than of classes. And yet, economic classes still exist. The gap
between rich and poor has been widening drastically in most of the West and
especially in the United States. Political power is more than ever concentrated

at the top, among the ultra-rich, the big corporations and inancial institutions.
There is no mainstream political force actively defending the interests of the
lower classes and striving to counter the growing inequalities between classes.
The Occupy Movement de ined the ruling class as the top one percent, and
claimed to represent the remaining 99 percent. It was eventually marginalized.
The societal left is primarily concerned with respect for minorities, rather than
the welfare of the majority.
In the 1990s, as the Bill Clinton administration proceeded to unravel the
New Deal, multiculturalism emerged as a social ideal. It is mainly a mixture of
European ideology with American reality.
Europes political integration has turned into a showcase for economic
globalization. But it began as something else. It was presented as the inal
renunciation of nationalism and war, primarily by sealing the reconciliation
and partnership of France and Germany, two nations that had destroyed each
other in a series of wars in the past. Transferring sovereignty to European
institutions was justi ied as a necessary remedy to that nationalism that was
the reason for war. Western Europe naturally became the center of antinationalist ideology, fed by the celebration of multiculturalism.
The promotion of multiculturalism owes a great deal to the seemingly
endless Western ixation on the long Hitlerian decade of twentieth century
history. It would seem that all values were ixed forever in the years between
Hitlers rise to power in 1933 and his fall in 1945, and this period must remain
the decisive reference for all subsequent events. Multiculturalism is the
virtuous pole of a secular Manichaeism. The evil pole is centered on the
presumed ideological core of Nazism: nationalism, racism and exclusion.
In luenced by the increasingly religious commemoration of the Holocaust,
which tends to blur all other aspects of the Second World War, Nazi antiSemitism is widely attributed to a more or less spontaneous hatred of those
who are different. This is highly questionable, since Hitlers anti-Semitism
was above all an extreme hysterical reaction to very speci ic historical events:
Germanys humiliating defeat in the war of 1914-1918 and the rise of
Bolshevism in Russia, a series of disastrous events for Germany that Hitler,
himself an heir to Austrias political anti-Semitism, attributed to the hostile
machinations of international Jewry. Exhortations against hatred of those
who are different are super luous in ensuring that such a sequence of events
will not be repeated. This is a fear of effects that overlooks causes.
Guilt over treatment of the Jews during World War II is the emotional core of
a West European tendency to hold every national majority under permanent
suspicion of oppressing minorities or of wanting to oppress them. Every ruler
with a restive minority is suspected of contemplating genocide.
In Europe, aside from environmental issues such as opposition to

genetically modi ied organisms, about the only cause that inspires active
protest from leftists is the defense of undocumented immigrants. For some
small ultra-left anarchist groups, the long-term prospect is a world without
frontiers, in which everyone is free to move everywhere. National borders and
nation states will disappear. These groups consider themselves radically anticapitalist, but their ideal is identical to that of the capitalist globalists, who see
more clearly: without nation states, private corporations and inancial
interests may rule the world unimpeded. The difference between the
anarchists and the capitalist-globalists is the perception of the relationship of
forces: the former ignores them, while the latter actively shapes them.
The multicultural ideal of globalism would turn every country into a mix of
identities. Each of these identities would be spread between countries and feel
more loyalty to its identity than to any State. This is not going to happen. It is
not even consciously planned, but it is the inherent logic of many capitalist
policies and anarchist dreams. In the short run, national loyalty will be
undermined by various group loyalties and the legitimacy of majorities will
then weakened by favored attention to minorities. The culmination would be a
world empire, divided among geographically dispersed tribes, somewhat
similar to a gigantic replica of previous empires such as the multiethnic
Habsburg or Ottoman. The past has shown that such a model leads sooner or
later to clashes between groups: one group accuses another of unfair
domination, or perhaps the confrontation occurs as a result of differences in
customs or religion. This leads, in turn, to centrifugal movements to
reconstitute separate territories. But the thrust of the ideal is to make the
whole world the same by turning each country into a mixture of differences.

Exporting Sexual Identity Politics

In recent decades, as labor unions and political party membership waned,
single -issue identity groups grew and proliferated. Multiculturalism shifts
focus from economic and legal equality to psychological attitudes whose
definition is problematic and whose control is impossible.
Some aspects of U.S. advocacy of multiculturalism abroad can be seen as an
export of American identity politics, especially concerning gender issues.
The main novelty has been the growth of sexual identity groups, starting
with gay liberation. Originally, gay liberation sought legal reforms to end
discrimination and criminalization for sexual orientation. This amounted to a
genuine civilizing advance for Western countries, even though it was not a
step toward the mass social revolution some activists hoped for.
The problem with identity movements is that once equal rights have been
obtained, where do you go from there? A wise choice might be the
consolidation of gains and the avoidance of backlash. Instead, the success of

gay liberation has favored the creation of new identities that can organize as
pressure groups claiming to represent a particular constituency which seeks
public recognition and political influence.
The most politically active identity group based on gender today is the
composite known as LGBT for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, and in
some circles, with a Q tacked on for Queer. There is no such thing as an LGBT
individual. Nor is there an LGBT community. Lesbians and gay men scarcely
make up a single community. Nor, for that matter, do heterosexuals. There
are too many variations within any sexual orientation, and aside from sexual
orientation, each and every individual also has a more comprehensive social
activity and interest with which to identify (e.g., professional, political,
religious, etc.). One can assume that transsexuals may have particular
problems in common with, but are very different from, the Ls, the Gs and the
Bs.
Nevertheless, there are organizations claiming to represent this
hypothetical community which act as political pressure groups. They have
successfully lobbied for legalization of gay marriage, which in France is called
marriage for everybody, but has aroused fresh controversy over its
implications for surrogate child-bearing. They also campaign in favor of extra
punishment for crimes motivated by hate, which can be seen as special
treatment in comparison to persons who are assaulted for some other reason
aside from identity. In the second decade of the 21 st century, the demands of
the LGBT lobby have largely displaced the demands of organized labor as the
leading progressive or left-wing cause.
Unable to accomplish anything for the economic losers of this society,
progressives welcome as a major victory of social progress the fact that gay
men and lesbians can now enjoy marriage and divorce on the same terms as
heterosexuals. This conformism masquerading as revolutionary gains
credibility from the outrage it arouses among traditionalists who fail to grasp
that these advances are more mimicry of tradition than true social
innovation. Prior to the gay marriage movement, the real social innovation
was acceptance that couples could live together without the permission of the
State or the Church. Insistence on gay marriage seems to be a step back from
innovative institutions providing security for long-term couples, whether
heterosexual or same sex, as well as for adopted children.
Gay marriage is not necessarily exportable, least of all to places where
marriage is still considered an institution designed to ensure the security and
identity of children born to a particular couple. Gay marriage echoes an
historically very recent view of marriage as the happy outcome of a love affair.
Time will tell whether gay marriage is a universal advance or a temporary
fashion in Western countries which may give way to new institutions and

customs.
Sexuality is humanitys most uneasy heritage from evolution, a condition
that is so necessary, so contrary to reason and so emotionally dangerous that
efforts to keep it under social control are at the basis of wildly varying social
customs and overriding obsessions, not least in the monotheistic religions.
Sexual customs are not only highly sensitive and often ringed with taboos, but
they also tend to be largely secret. It should be recalled that either the famous
anthropologist Margaret Mead, or her principal critic, Derek Freeman (who
contradicted what she wrote in Growing Up In Samoa), or perhaps both of
them, were fooled by Samoan women telling them about their youthful sexual
practices. Homosexuality has always existed but is treated very differently
from one society to another, and the way it is actually treated may be far from
obvious to outsiders. Hillary Clinton, like many others, cites former Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as claiming that: In Iran, we dont have
homosexuals, like in your country a preposterous statement at face-value.
What was not mentioned was that Iran is a world leader in free transgender
operations. Like it or not, this was how the Islamic Republic responded to the
demands of local activists. In various Muslim societies, as among the Pashtuns,
a corollary of the cloistered condition of women is the custom for adult men to
take boy lovers. Societies like Saudi Arabia that physically punish and even
execute homosexuals are both deeply hypocritical and deeply cruel. How to
oppose such barbaric practices is a complex issue which cannot be resolved by
imposing Gay Pride Parades.
The United States, which began with a reputation of oppressive puritanism,
is a late convert to of icial sexual liberation, but there is no zeal like the zeal of
the convert. In the post-1968 atmosphere, the American way of dealing with
sexual liberation, and particularly with gay rights, has been the political
protest model, demanding that everybody come out and organize lashy
parades. In a very short time, the United States has become a missionary for
its own newly discovered universal sexual values, demanding that other
countries adopt the same customs in the same way, complete with Gay Pride
marches. These customs are right at home in Western countries like Germany
but not everywhere else.
Hillary Clinton is particularly proud of her speech to the U.N. Human Rights
Council arguing that LGBT rights are human rights, although the use of that
acronym seems inappropriate. It should be possible to use plain English to say
that nobody should be treated cruelly because of sexual orientation.
In late 2013, when the United States was already deep into operations
planned to detach Ukraine from its traditional economic partnership with
Russia and to use it as a base to launch an anti-Russian offensive, Russian
president Vladimir Putin was absorbed in hosting the Winter Olympics in

Sochi. Although participants later expressed enthusiasm about the event,

before and during the games Western media concentrated on anything they
could denounce as socially backward in Russia, primarily on the alleged danger
to gay athletes in Sochi. World media usually enjoy sports, but not this time.
Aside from nitpicking examinations of hotel bathrooms, a scare campaign
lickered in the media over the question of whether gays would be arrested in
Sochi. This imaginary risk contributed to the mounting demonization of the
Russian president.
The anti-Putin campaign focused on an amendment to the child protection
law overwhelmingly adopted by the Duma in June 2013 that bans promotion of
non-traditional sexual relationships in the presence of minors. The measure
in no way outlaws homosexuality, but was certainly designed to outlaw Gay
Pride marches, which are seen by many Russians as Western-sponsored
provocations. The law rests on the dubious assumption that public
information normalizing same-sex relationships risks seducing children, and
by implicitly associating homosexuality with pedophilia, will have a negative
impact on efforts to overcome prejudice against homosexuals during the
present era of conservative backlash in post-communist Russia. Westerners
who are genuinely concerned about the problem need to realize that while the
Wests insistence that Russia should hold Gay Pride Parades is surely not
intended to corrupt children, as Church leaders claim, it is indeed clearly
intended to provoke dissension and embarrass Russian leaders, starting with
Putin.
The Christian Orthodox Church is not the only factor in todays Russia that
works against a more receptive attitude toward homosexuality. The postSoviet collapse of Russian society in the 1990s was accompanied by a
dramatic population decline. One aspect of Putins effort to revive the nation is
concern to restore a birthrate that can ensure Russias demographic survival.
Efforts from unfriendly Western powers to promote homosexuality can be
easily interpreted as attempts to undermine the very survival of the nation.
Good intentions include estimating how those intentions are perceived.
The international campaign for LGBT rights has been poisoned by the
inherent double standards of the U.S. position. Criticism of Saudi Arabia when
it executes a homosexual remains toothless, with no threat of boycott or
sanctions, in contrast to the uproar over nonexistent problems for gays in
Sochi.
As intended, blatant political exploitation of the issue to attack Russias
President causes divisions within Russia between those who defend tradition
and those who yearn to make Russia resemble their ideal of the West. For the
former, who currently seem to constitute a majority, this uproar con irms the
impression that Western advocacy of Gay Pride marches is simply an effort to

spread decadence as part of a multi-pronged campaign to weaken and defeat

Russia. If the West were behaving in a kindly manner toward Russia, things
might be different. But in the current climate, these exhortations are
understood by many in Russia as acts of hostility which indeed they are.
As gay rights activists in Russia told interviewers at the time of the Sochi
games, their cause could only suffer from aggressive Western LGBT agitation
which would only serve to arouse suspicion and associate gays with a
belligerent West. If Washington really cared about sexual mores in Russia, a
more discreet approach would be far more appropriate. Shoving gays and
lesbians onto the front lines of a perilous con lict of civilizations is doing
them no service, to put it mildly.
Times change. It is almost comic to recall that at the start of the Cold War, J.
Edgar Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy coupled homosexuality with
communism as the main threats to America. Whereas the United States has
become more sexually libertarian, Russia has become more conservative,
more Christian, more puritanical. For decades, the West railed against Russia
for its godless communism. Now Russia is a country in which the Orthodox
Christian Church has regained in luence as a result of the collapse of
communism. This return to religion is felt by many as the recovery of dignity
and morality after the humiliation and confusion of the Yeltsin decade.
Outsiders who sincerely want to contribute to the wellbeing of gays in Russia
should take these factors into consideration and keep their distance from the
hostile nagging of the U.S. propaganda machine.
But as for Hillary Clinton, she seems perfectly sincere in believing that world
progress depends on America telling everybody how to behave, from prayer to
the bedroom.
Gay rights or rather LGBT rights is now the one human rights area
where the United States can claim to be in advance of most of the world. The
issue can be used to attempt to discredit and embarrass other countries at a
time when the United States is lagging behind in areas such as child mortality,
income equality, life expectancy, primary education, and industrial
productivity. As mentioned above, there is one area in which it does lead the
world: the size of its prison population. Surely this is a more meaningful
measurement of the state of human rights in the United States than the
legality of gay marriage.

Religious Empowerment
On the West side of the Atlantic, multiculturalism is simply a term for the
natural composition of an immigrant society such as the United States or
Canada. As seen from the United States, promoting multiculturalism means
promoting a sort of global Americanization. The United States can live

comfortably with a mixture of religions precisely because the of icial religion

of the United States is the United States itself. U.S. schools celebrate America
every day, one nation under God, complete with extremely conformist
celebrations of the countrys lag and armed forces exercises that would be
considered ominously nationalistic in Europe. Hillary Clinton herself
demonstrated allegiance to this state religion by cosponsoring legislation that
would make it a federal crime to burn the American lag. In immigrant
societies, multiculturalism does not threaten the existence of the State: the
uni ication of different identities is even part of its basic identity. For
Americans, multicultural can mean little more than a choice between pizza,
burritos, or sushi before we all rally round the flag.
In America, religion is largely a matter of taste. Any religion will do, and they
are all considered good for you. The United States has a pragmatic attitude
toward religion which has worked well for over two centuries. But it is not
necessarily applicable to the whole world, least of all in places where a
particular faith is believed to be an absolute truth, rather than a personal
preference.
Indeed, religion in the United States is very largely a practical matter. It is
also a factor of personal identity, like style. While theological concepts are
vague, Americans tend to associate religious belief with morality and hold that
anyone who does not believe in divine punishment must be without a
conscience. There seems to be a lack of popular recognition of a rational, social
or innate basis for moral conscience and this leads to public displays of
religious faith by persons eager to convince others of their morality, especially
those with political ambitions. What matters is to be religious; any religion will
do. The separation between any Church and the State doesnt prevent a
growing symbiosis between the State and a one-size-fits-all religiosity.
Hillary Clinton exhibits a typically American attitude toward religion. Raised
as a Methodist, she says she still draws inspiration from the Bible, but
evidently not from this passage of Matthew:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received
their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your
Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Since 1993, Hillary has made a habit of regularly praying in public, in Bible
study groups, at the high-level annual Washington Prayer Breakfast or at the
weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. It seems to be forgotten in Washington that
ostentatious prayer has always been considered in ages wiser than our own as
a practice that should be rigorously banned from politics, for the simple
reason that nothing is easier to fake than piety. Ostentatious prayers were
once considered the most conspicuous sign of hypocrisy.
These Washington prayer events are power trips. They are organized by a

conservative network called the Fellowship, or the Family, headed by a very

ecumenical ordained Presbyterian minister, Doug Coe, born in 1928. His
mission is to bring together leaders from all over the world in a fraternity of
those who share the circumstance of having been chosen by God for their
high position and seek divine guidance as to what to do with it. Hillary has
described Coe as a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving
spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants
to deepen his or her relationship to God. 1 4 But attending the National Prayer
Breakfast is not for everybody: attendance costs over four hundred dollars and
guests are carefully selected. The goal is nothing less than the Fellowship of
the powerful, working together to do Gods work, whatever that may be.
Maintaining power is logically the irst order of business and power is what
makes good works possible. Doug Coe states that we work with power where
we can, build new power where we cant.
Building on her earlier study of the conservative, Cold War period of
Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, Hillarys religion is a utilitarian selfempowerment faith with little social content. Working for the community is
the stated goal, but this is primarily a way of ensuring personal salvation and
there is only a limited hope of accomplishing anything in this imperfect world.
As the pastor of the Methodist church she attended in Arkansas recalls, Hillary
is convinced that she is called by the Lord to be in public service at whatever
level he wants me. She may well believe that she is predestined to be
President.
Hillarys conspicuous faith has dulled the initial hostility of the most
conservative right-wing Republicans. She joined devout Catholic Senator Rick
Santorum in supporting an unsuccessful re-introduction of the Workplace
Religious Freedom Act, supported by a wide range of religious groups but
opposed by the ACLU. This Act would make it easier for employees to refuse to
cooperate with actions contrary to their convictions, such as abortion or the
sale of contraceptives.
This is a religiosity basically devoid of any coherent theology or intellectual
content, largely reduced to self-empowerment, and often combined with
conservative attitudes toward sexuality and reproduction. The Prayer
Breakfasts are the religion of the self-selected Power Elite, individuals who got
where they are by personal ambition, but who prefer to blame God.
Even American leaders who do not attend Doug Coes prayer breakfasts use
religion in much the same way: as national self-empowerment. Presidents
public prayers and reference to our values lift the hypocrisy of personal
bigotry to national and international levels. Gott mit uns referred to the
Christian God of the Germanic people, but In God We Trust is wildly
ecumenical, and like the dollar, is meant for everybody.

Under the Influence

The habit of thinking in terms of ethnic identities and religious groups is
supposed to be a sign of tolerance in a multicultural world. In reality, it
produces quite the opposite result, and sets the stage for con licts, since it
tends inevitably to highlight differences rather than shared values and goals.
As they began their forays into rearranging territories of the former
Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the Middle East, the Clintons, with their
interest in religion, had their moment of fascination with Islam. After all, they
were taking the side of Muslims in Bosnia against Christian Serbs, and (they
could suppose) of moderate Muslims in the Middle East against dictators
like Saddam Hussein. This new involvement in a previously unknown part of
the world probably encouraged Hillary to develop a particularly close
relationship with a rather glamorous young Muslim woman named Huma
Abedin.
Huma was born in Michigan in 1976 but her family moved to Saudi Arabia
two years later where her Pakistani father, Zyed Abedin, was recruited by the
Muslim World League (MWL) to work for the Institute of Muslim Minority
Affairs (IMMA), an organ of Saudi foreign policy designed to in luence and
make use of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries. After Zyed died in
1993, Humas mother Saleha Mahmood Abedin took over the leadership and
the Journal of IMMA (the whole family, including Huma, was involved in
working for the organization), as well as important roles in the MWL and the
International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC). She founded
the Muslim Sisterhood, an organization which includes the wives of Muslim
leaders, such as Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, wife of deposed Egyptian president
Mohammed Morsi. In short, Humas family was exceptionally prominent in
international Islamic affairs.
In 1994, at the age of 18, Huma returned to the United States to study at
George Washington University, and two years later went to work as an intern
in the Clinton White House. She was soon adopted by Hillary as her closest
aide and expert on the Middle East and Muslim affairs. Hillarys public
statements make it clear that she was infatuated with Huma: her competence,
her poise, and evidently her intimate knowledge of a world that to Hillary
Rodham Clinton was exotic and even romantic. In her chic designer dresses,
the striking Huma became an eye-catching appendage to the traveling Hillary
show for the next ifteen years. The two women were so close that a few
European newspapers went so far as to speculate on the nature of their
personal relationship. But what matters is that there can be no doubt that
Huma largely in luenced Hillarys vision of Islam and the Middle East. It must
have added a personal touch to Washingtons support to the Muslim parties in

the Yugoslav civil wars. The political interactions of the Middle East and of
Muslim societies in general are both highly complex matters. There can be
little doubt that putting such con idence in one charming young woman
inevitably transformed Huma Abedin into an agent of in luence, even if by
accident.
Since the entire Abedin family was so intensely involved in IMMA, it is no
surprise that as one of her irst initiatives as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton
created the of ice of U.S. Representative to Muslim Communities. On
September 15, 2009, Hillary gave the oath of of ice to the irst person to hold
this post, an attractive young friend of Huma, Farah Pandith. At the swearingin ceremony, Hillary stressed that the of ice would organize round tables with
Muslims in Europe, promoting the pluralistic values of the United States, and
building strong partnerships with Muslim communities around the world
based on what we have in common as people of faith. This seems to it in
with various U.S. initiatives to spot and foster young leaders in other
countries, in this case young Muslims in Europe.
Serious world powers, whatever their other faults, are suf iciently attentive
to their own national interests to see to it that some of their own experts are
trained to understand and explain other parts of the world. As an immigrant
country, the United States has militant diasporas able to overrule experts
(when they exist) and in luence foreign policy by appealing to members of
Congress. The Israeli lobby is the extreme example of a foreign nations heavy
in luence on Congress, but it is not the only one (the Cuban lobby is another
notorious case in point). But when it comes to less familiar places, a few
individuals may succeed in winning over most of a Congress whose members
are generally too engrossed in domestic political matters to have more than a
totally superficial notion of international affairs.
Naturally, Hillary Clinton, supported by Senator John McCain, has iercely
rejected suggestions that Huma Abedin could be a Saudi agent planted in the
White House. But even if such suspicions are entirely unfounded, it is simply
not serious for a Secretary of State to rely so heavily on a young woman with
her background to interpret the Middle East.
Indeed, at a time when support to Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo was
judged to be in U.S. geostrategic interests for various reasons, a sentimental
af inity with Islam was a way to merge interests and ideals. Having Huma at
her side could enforce the illusion that Washingtons pro-Muslim policy in the
Balkans was building genuine friendship between America and the Islamic
world.
In July 2010, Huma Abedin married Brooklyn Democratic Party politician
Anthony Weiner, a left liberal colleague of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Weiners
congressional career got off to a lying start during the Democratic Party

primary when he anonymously blanketed his heavily Jewish district with

lea lets linking his opponents to black leaders David Dinkins, then mayor of
New York City, and Jesse Jackson. At the time of their marriage, Weiner seemed
to have a promising future as a New York City mayoral hopeful. Alas, his
campaign was ruined by revelations of sexual exhibitionism on Twitter.
Weiner was always an ardent champion of Israel. He supported the 2003
invasion of Iraq, and in May 2006 tried to bar entry of the Palestinian
delegation to the United Nations, declaring that they should start packing
their little Palestinian terrorist bags. He even accused the pro-Israel New York
Times of being biased against the Jewish state. Following the September 11
attacks on the Twin Towers, Weiner led congressional demands to cut off arms
sales to Saudi Arabia, which he accused of having a history of inancing
terrorism and teaching children to hate Christians and Jews.
It may therefore seem paradoxical that Huma Abedin, with her strong Saudi
and Muslim background, should choose to marry a Zionist Jew like Weiner. And
yet, their surprising interfaith marriage actually embodies a key feature of
Clinton foreign policy: the de facto alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
That alliance, like the marriage, may look strange and precarious, but it is in
reality a major factor of international relations. In both these alliances, marital
or geopolitical, there is certain to be much that remains invisible to the
general public.

Diasporas and Discontents

As relatively recent nations built on mass immigration, the United States
and Canada are inherently multicultural in ways that are out of the question
for most of the world. The United States has absorbed masses of people from
diverse cultures in the context of its own extremely strong unifying national
ideology. As an immigrant country, the United States tells itself that it is
exceptional because people chose to come here: of all the nations of the world,
this is the country of choice. As such, the United States must embody what
humanity truly desires and this makes it the model that all other nations
should follow.
This belief can have a dire effect on U.S. foreign policy. Rich and in luential
exiles have shown that they can talk Washingtons leaders into believing that
their people back home yearn to be Americanized, and that they only need a
boost from the Pentagon to put them in charge of bright and shining new
democracies. So-called civil society recruitment abroad can also be used, not
to in luence foreign countries, but to in luence the American public. This has
been the case particularly with the Middle East, where the main advocates of
U.S. wars, the Israelis and their many friends in America, have managed to
enlist natives of the countries targeted to justify subsequent hostilities. U.S.

support to rebels in Syria certainly did not begin with the so-called Arab
Spring uprising in early 2011. In February 2006, the Bush administration
announced it would award ive million dollars in grants to accelerate the work
of reformers in Syria. To get that money, a group of Syrian exiles in Europe
founded the Movement for Justice and Development, described by Wikileaked
U.S. cables as a group of liberal, moderate Islamists who were former
members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many other such dissident exiles have
been funded through a variety of channels, often used in order to convince
well-intentioned American citizens groups that the people back home want
the United States to intervene on their behalf against their dictator.
Perhaps the most notorious of these high- lying international con men was
(and still is) Ahmed Chalabi, the Shiite exile who befriended the leading
neocons in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, brie ing the Pentagon, the
State Department, Congress and the New York Times into believing that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al Qaeda.
Chalabi ran a pro itable little trade, channeling the fantasies of various Iraqi
exile and introducing the notorious inventor of the Iraqi WMD called
Curveball to a grateful and generous Pentagon. Once the United States
followed his advice, Chalabi was put in charge of throwing all the Sunnis out of
the conquered Iraqi government; the repercussions of this act can be observed
today. Over hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, Chalabi is still making
money and hoping to pick up the remaining Shiite pieces of Iraq. French
intelligence believes Chalabi was an Iranian agent, but in Washington, they
loved him.
The plain fact is that Washington politicians are not very skilled at grasping
the true intentions of sophisticated exiles from exotic regions. This should be
one reason for caution in foreign adventures, yet it is a lesson that is clearly
ignored.
Diaspora lobbies can be all the more effective in in luencing members of
Congress with scant knowledge of the outside world if they back up their
stories with hefty campaign contributions. Even such a relatively insigni icant
diaspora as the Albanians managed to gain Congressional support by
in luencing a single important legislator. In the 1980s, Republican exCongressman Joe DioGuardi rediscovered his Albanian roots and created a
pro-Albanian lobby that channeled campaign funds to Republican Senator Bob
Dole, the 1996 Republican Party presidential candidate. Coached on Balkan
history by his staff adviser Mira Baratta, the granddaughter of a Croatian
fascist Ustashi, Dole in 1993 declared that Serbs are illiterate degenerates,
baby killers, butchers and rapists who should all be placed in Nazi-style
concentration camps. (Actually, that is precisely what the Croatian Ustashi
had done during World War II.) His Democratic colleague Joe Biden also shared

this identity politics approach to the Balkans, dividing the world between
our friends and a subhuman species. Serbian-Americans never had such an
effective organized lobby, and naively expected the United States to remember
that hundreds of American pilots shot down over Nazi-occupied Serbia in
1944 had been rescued by the Serbian resistance. In contrast, it was precisely
those Yugoslavian national groups that had been allied with the Nazis that felt
the need to sell themselves as Americas best friends.
The rich Israeli lobby has managed to buy virtually the entire Congress,
thanks to all-expenses-paid trips to Israel and campaign contributions
(especially the tacit threat to provide generous inancing to the campaign of
your opponent, if you get out of line), but over the years the Chinese
Nationalists, the Cuban lobby, exiled Iraqis and Iranians, and now the
Ukrainian lobby have all had their moment of in luence. The anti-Russian
Ukrainian diaspora has been influencing Washington ever since the start of the
Cold War, but now it also has power in Kiev. Immigrants and exiles with
ambitions to use U.S. power to in luence their countries of origin can
contribute to building American hostility toward the leaders they wish to
overthrow. They can also be used to replace governments Washington does
not like with client regimes.
One way to mine this domestic resource for use abroad was developed at the
end of the Cold War by former U.S. ambassador and leading policy-maker
Morton Abramowitz, as President of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (1991-1997). Faced with a drastic shortage of threats,
Abramowitz devised a rationale for an active foreign policy based instead on
the promotion of U.S. interests combined with American ideals.
American ideals and self-interest merge when the United States supports
the spread of democracy around the globe or what we prefer to call limited
constitutional democracy, meaning rule by a government that has been
legitimized by free elections, was the conclusion of a Carnegie study directed
by Abramowitz, summed up in the Endowments 1992 publication entitled
Self-Determination in the New World Order.
The authors of this study made no bones about the fact that the new world
order was a world with one superpower the United States in which the
rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle, disputes are settled peacefully,
aggression is irmly met by collective resistance, and all people are justly
treated. This future rule of law is not to be confused with existing
international law. Rather it will be developed under U.S. in luence.
International law as it always has done will respond and adjust to the
behavior of nations and the actions of multilateral institutions. A major
feature of this new world order will be the weakening, or destruction, of
national sovereignty, the basis of existing international law. The sovereignty

of the single superpower cannot be seriously challenged, but for other nations,
the concept of nationhood may be outdated.
The sovereign nation is being broken down from the outside by the
pressures of economic globalization. It may also be undermined from the
inside by domestic insurgencies. In the post-Cold War world, the Carnegie
Endowment study noted that groups within states are staking claims to
independence, greater autonomy, or the overthrow of an existing government,
all in the name of self-determination. In regard to these con licts, American
interests and ideals compel a more active role, which may extend to military
intervention when claims of self-determination or internal repression lead to
humanitarian calamities. In the future, the authors announced in 1992,
humanitarian interventions will become increasingly unavoidable. The
United States will have the inal word as to when and how to intervene. The
United States should seek to build a consensus within regional and
international organizations for its position, but should not sacri ice its own
judgment and principles if such a consensus fails to materialize.
In short, we are open to a coalition of the willing as in, willing to follow us.
Humanitarian intervention was theorized by the Abramowitz team shortly
before it was put into practice in Yugoslavia. And the people who put it into
practice were precisely those members of the Abramowitz team. Seldom has
reality imitated iction quite so rapidly. The Abramowitz disciples who led the
United States and NATO into war in Yugoslavia included Richard Holbrooke,
Madeleine Albright, special ambassador for war crimes issues David Scheffer,
State Department policy planning director Morton Halperin, and Leon Fuerth,
Vice President Al Gores foreign policy expert, who was subsequently put in
charge of administering sanctions against Serbia.
It is almost as if the team had rehearsed their play at the Carnegie
Endowment before producing it on the world stage. Yugoslavia was the
experimental laboratory for the defense of multiculturalism; it actually
produced the opposite effect. A multi-cultural nation was violently split into
ethnically monocultural statelets (although Serbia still includes ethnic
minorities who may be incited to demand further partitioning). The Western
left intelligentsia abandoned its previous reluctance to support war for the
illusion that force was necessary to save the precious ideal of multiculturalism
in Yugoslavia.
This mistake owed a lot to the canny strategy of the Muslim party in Bosnia,
which chose to play the role of total victim in the Abramowitz scenario. While
both Serbian Bosnian and Muslim Bosnian armies skirmished over territorial
control, and irregular militias on both sides wreaked havoc, Alija Izetbegovic
kept his forces and arms deliveries out of the sight of Western media (but not
of Islamic sites, which exalted his exploits), leaving the impression of a one-

sided war with Serb invaders slaughtering unarmed Muslim civilians.

Izetbegovics strategy was to get the United States to do what it seemed to
want to do: that is, to intervene on the Muslim side. A well-connected young
American from a family close to Izetbegovic, Mohammed Sacirbey, became
Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations.
On the eve of two major U.N. decisions concerning Bosnia, numerous
civilians were killed by mysterious explosions in a market square in Sarajevo.
While international military forensic experts concluded on both occasions that
the explosions were probably Muslim false lag attacks, international media
immediately described them as deliberate Serb atrocities. This led to
sanctions against Serbia and eventually to the fairly ineffective NATO bombing
of Bosnian Serb positions the start of humanitarian intervention.
The propaganda that identi ied the Muslim party in Bosnia with
multiculturalism enjoyed extraordinary success among Western
intelligentsia. Paris intellectuals formed an ephemeral political party for the
European elections around the slogan Europe lives or dies in Sarajevo.
Bernard-Henri Lvy was a leading promoter of the belief that the very
existence of Europes uni ication was at stake in Bosnia, interpreting a
struggle for political control of territory as a racist rejection of Muslims for
being different. Viewing the tragic con lict in terms of ethnic identities
obscured the political causes inherited from centuries of bitter con lict
involving the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Many in the West considered
Bosnia to be our Spain, the combat of a generation. But in this case, instead
of volunteering to fight for it themselves they were ready to send NATO.
Meanwhile, the Great Powers had other things in mind. Germany was taking
revenge for two World Wars. Washington had several geopolitical motives for
supporting Alija Izetbegovic. One reason was to demonstrate to the worlds
Muslim countries that the United States could be their defender, despite
constant U.S. support for Israel. Another reason to use Yugoslavia as an
experimental laboratory to practice methods of using Russias Central Asia
Muslim underbelly to weaken and dismember the great northern Slavic state.
Many in Washington thought of Yugoslavia as a miniature Soviet Union, with
Serbia as a mini-Russia. Tearing apart the little one could be practice for
tackling the big one.
A major drawback of intervention in foreign countries quarrels is that those
doing the intervening often do not get their facts straight, either deliberately
or by accident. In reality, Bosnia had never been a multiethnic paradise. It
was the most harshly-governed republic in the Yugoslav Federation, formerly
the scene of the worst interethnic slaughters during World War II, held
together only by Marshal Titos autocratic rule until his death. While the West
European left assumed that Muslims must be the underdogs, as in their own

countries, in Bosnia the Muslims had constituted the dominant caste for
centuries since the Ottoman Turk conquest. Alija Izetbegovic was a notorious
political and religious igure, supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who had
written that once a country has a Muslim majority, it must be ruled by Muslim
law. This led Bosnian Christians to fear belonging to a State where the Muslims
might soon constitute an absolute majority. Since Izetbegovic, with U.S.
political support, had installed himself permanently in what was supposed to
be a rotating presidency, he quite naturally wanted to maintain control over
the entire country, including the areas inhabited by Serbs, which then
constituted over half the countryside. For this, his propaganda network,
including professional U.S. public relations experts, dismissed as Serb
propaganda any attempt to point out that Izetbegovic was a political Islamist
and not a champion of multiculturalism. While Islamic countries supported
Izetbegovic because he was their coreligionist, the West supported him
because he was multicultural. This support prolonged the civil war, costing
many lives, including the victims of the Srebrenica massacre toward the end of
the conflict.
Once the West had chosen sides, secular Manichaeism took over. One side
was described as victim, the other side as evil incarnate. Under the in luence of
memories of the Holocaust, the Serbs were accused from the start of genocide,
an accusation that inally stuck after the massacre at Srebrenica. But the war
might never have started, had Izetbegovic not been encouraged by
Washington to reject compromise. Mujahidin who came from Afghanistan to
support the cause went as far as to photograph their games of football with
the heads of decapitated Serbs, but videos of these exploits were never shown
on Western television.
In 1999, based on the impression that in Bosnia, the Serbs had proved
themselves to be genocidal, the United State drew NATO into intervening on
the side of the Kosovars (Albanian separatists) in the Serbian province of
Kosovo. Once again, the defense of multiculturalism meant taking the side of
one culture against another.
The defense of multicultural Bosnia marked a mutation in much of the far
left and its historical attachment to international solidarity. In the past, that
had meant mutual support between groups sharing the same ideology and the
same long-term political ideals, such as socialism or working class solidarity.
No more. Since the civil war in Bosnia and the Kosovo war, most of the left has
been inclined to support almost any minority in revolt against its government,
regardless of the issues, and whether or not the demands were reasonable or
just. Form had won over content.
Thus, the remnants of past leftist international solidarity were
transformed into a cheering session for the Abramowitz strategy and U.S.

interventionism.
The lesson was not lost on other discontented ethnic minorities around the
world who might like to use U.S. support in order to gain local power, such as
the Uyghurs of Northwestern China. The National Endowment for Democracy
provides grants to the Uyghur American Association, whose exiled separatist
leader Rebiya Kadeer issues anti-Chinese statements from her home in New
York. While the United States of icially hails multi-ethnicity, ethnic
minorities in China and Russia are clearly seen as weaknesses to be exploited
in order to destabilize and even break apart these great nations into more
manageable pieces, on the model of Yugoslavia. Divide and rule is the eternal
imperial imperative.
The United States continues to show concern for the minority of its choice,
in the country it chooses to destabilize.

Looking For Genocide

The most unpleasant aspect of the current of icial U.S. foreign policy
ideology is the obsession with genocide. The subject itself is obviously
disturbing. Even more so is the assumption that we Americans are living in a
world full of monsters eager to commit genocide who can be deterred only
by the threat or application of U.S. military power.
It is important to recognize that the current U.S. obsession with genocide is
neither a national defense nor a humanitarian concern. It is an ideology and its
purpose is political, although this purpose may be unconscious or sublimated
by those who wield the powerful ideological weapon of Holocaust memory.
An of icial Genocide Prevention Task Force was jointly convened in
November 2007 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the
American Academy of Diplomacy and the United States Institute of Peace. It
was co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, two individuals certainly not
distinguished for their peacekeeping endeavors. In December 2008, the task
force released the report, Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S.
Policymakers, asserting that genocide is preventable and that progress to this
end begins with leadership and political will.
The thrust of the U.S. approach is to treat genocide as if it were a sort of
epidemic, apt to break out unexpectedly, with only the United States capable of
preventing contagion. U.S. prevention consists of spotting symptoms, such
as hate speech, which then need to be repressed. Genocide is seen as the
result of purely subjective psychological causes, rather than situations apt to
cause antagonism between groups, such as basic resource scarcities, as in the
case of Darfur. This is consistent with an essentially religious approach which
considers genocide a manifestation of evil. The religious approach sees

evil (Satan) as the cause, rather than as a description of the effects. The evil
is in the intention. As Hillary Clinton said in her keynote speech at a conference
entitled Imagine the Unimaginable: Ending Genocide in the 21st Century on
July 24, 2012, genocide is always planned.
The irst and most obvious political purpose of the of icial U.S. anti-genocide
campaign is to occupy the moral high ground. It is a way of telling the world,
but much more so of telling ourselves, that genocide the worst of all crimes,
the crime that makes other forms of killing almost acceptable in comparison
is something that we Americans cannot and will never do. Genocide is always
planned and we, surely, never plan genocide. We may make mistakes, but that
is different. The Vietnamese killed by the United States number in the millions,
but never can it be suggested that the U.S. committed genocide in Vietnam.
Subjectively, the United States never intende d to exterminate the Vietnamese.
Genocide is a subjective crime. The de inition of genocide always depends on
intention and our intentions are always good. We meant well. We always mean
well.
Firebombing Dresden and Japanese cities built of paper was not genocide
either. Of course, during World War II, it would not have been dif icult to ind
Americans expressing the desire to kill all those Germans, and even less so to
wipe out the Japs. Such sentiments lourish in war. People rage against the
enemy and want to kill them all. War does that.
So what needs to be prevented, genocide or war?
The U.S. anti-genocide campaign, by rating genocide as worse than war, and
as something that war can prevent, actually ends up justifying war.
At the conference mentioned above, Hillary Clinton cited Syria as an
example, complaining that Washingtons virtuous effort to stop atrocities
were being blocked by a small group: Iran, Russia and China. She went on to
say that: we are also increasing our efforts to assist the opposition, before
adding that if we are successful, Assad will increase the level of violent
response.
At a moment like this, one must ask whether she realizes what she is saying.
She is admitting that U.S. military aid to the opposition intended to prevent
violence will provoke more violence. If there is indeed a possibility of
genocide, which is doubtful, this possibility will be increased by that very
assistance to the opposition Hillary is calling for, since it will increase the
overall violence. Yet her speech received warm applause and a standing
ovation.
We are countering hatred with truth, Hillary proclaimed.
On the contrary. Hillarys speech, like the whole U.S. anti-genocide campaign,
thrives on arousing hatred against Washingtons current enemies, who are
denounced as potential genocidal murderers. However, when Washingtons

irregular Ukrainian allies can be seen on YouTube advocating wiping out the
excess inhabitants of Eastern Ukraine in order to take their resources, while
the of icial Ukrainian army shells civilian areas, the alarm bells remain silent in
the genocide prevention establishment in Washington.
Ironically, while eagerly looking out for genocide to be committed by Serbs
in Bosnia, the Clinton administration stubbornly refused to describe as
genocide the massive slaughter that took place in Rwanda in the spring of
1994. The difference is that U.S. policy-makers were looking for a reason to
intervene in Bosnia, but absolutely did not want to do so in Rwanda.
On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the presidents of two neighboring
countries, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President
Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down as it approached the Rwandan capital of
Kigali. Responsibility for this extraordinary act of terrorism remains
controversial and the crime has never been suf iciently investigated. A civil
war had been going on in Rwanda ever since armed Tutsi exiles crossed the
northern border from Uganda in early 1990 and began their long struggle to
wrest the country back from the Hutu majority, represented by President
Habyarimana. With Anglo-American support, the Tutsi invaders, under the
banner of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame, had
strengthened their political and military position in the country. The dramatic
assassination of two Hutu presidents set off a horrendous bloodbath, with
Hutus massacring Tutsi men, women and children while the RPF made a dash
to seize power in Kigali.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then U.N. Secretary General, frantically tried to get
the great powers to send troops to stop what he almost immediately described
as genocide. He wanted to beef up the small U.N. peacekeeping force UNAMIR
already in Rwanda, as it began to withdraw. The Clinton administration,
however, adamantly refused to speak of genocide or to agree to any form of
outside intervention. On April 15, a State Department cable instructed U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright to inform her
colleagues that the United States believes that the irst priority of the Security
Council is to instruct the Secretary General to implement an orderly
withdrawal of all/all UNAMIR forces from Rwanda. U.S. of icials refused to use
the term genocide, because that might oblige them to intervene, which they
were determined not to do. On May 1, a Department of Defense memo urged
caution, since State Department legal advisors warned that a genocide
finding could commit the U.S. Government to do something.
The slaughter had raged for weeks when President Bill Clinton, in a speech in
Annapolis on May 26, listed Rwanda among the worlds many bloody con licts
where the interests at stake did not justify the use of American military power.
We cannot solve every such outburst of civil strife or militant nationalism

simply by sending in our forces, Clinton said.

There were two reasons for this refusal to intervene; one technical and the
other political. The technical reason, well- documented, was that the Clinton
administration did not want to foot the bill for any more international peacekeeping missions. This was made quite clear at the time to Boutros BoutrosGhali. Madeleine Albright carried out her instructions to block any
intervention on the grounds that Washington would eventually get the bill and
did not want to pay it. In a January 2004 interview with PBS, Boutros-Ghali
recalled that when he pled for a peacekeeping operation, even without United
States participation, the Americans told him: We dont allow you to do a
peacekeeping operation even without the United States. Why? Because, one,
we have to contribute 30 percent of the budget of this peacekeeping operation,
and two and let us be objective it is true in the case that you will have
problems in this peacekeeping operation, you will ask our assistance, and we
will be compelled to give you this assistance. 15
The second, political reason that the United States stood on the sidelines
rather than support a U.N. cease- ire was related to its long-time support to
the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Kagame. The absence of any international
intervention left the way open for the RPF to complete its dash to seize power
in Kigali in the wake of the assassination of the president.
In the interview cited above, Boutros-Ghali was asked whether he, like very
senior people in the Clinton administration, was aware that the RPF had
made it clear that it was going to press towards Kigali.
Boutros-Ghali replied: No, no, no. Again, this just proves the weakness of
the United Nations system. The member states, to maintain a kind of pressure
on the United Nations, will not give you all the information. But de initely,
when a decision is taken, or when you are trying to oppose a decision, you are
in a weaker position than the member states, because they know more about
the situation than you. We gave information, but they never gave us any
information.
Later, he added: The control of the superpower on the United Nations is
greater than everybody will be aware of. They have a control on the inance in
the administration, they have the control on the Peace-Keeping Of ice; they
have the control on the Security Council, and they have information which they
will not share with others.
Washington knew that Kagame was going to seize power in Rwanda, and
didnt want to allow anything to happen that would get in his way.
The United States had strongly supported Kagame all along. It gave him a
year of military training at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, just before he took command of the Rwandan Patriotic
Front. As a consequence of Belgian rule, the Hutus remaining in Rwanda spoke

French as their international language, whereas the Tutsi exiles in the

formerly British colony of Uganda were English-speaking. This gave the
struggle the air of a colonial Anglophone-Francophone rivalry. In Brussels,
capital of the European Union and of NATO, in the spring of 1994 the Tutsis
were all considered heroes and martyrs and the French were despised for
having backed the Hutu losers. Moreover, it was enough to hold a private
conversation with American personnel to grasp that they were genuinely
enraptured with the Tutsis, in a candidly racist fashion, admiring them as tall,
beautiful and intelligent, and especially appreciative of the aristocratically
liberated Tutsi women. It was as if the racist prejudice against black Africans
in general had at long last found its redemption in an excessive admiration of
the Tutsis. And besides, they spoke English. In January 1996, Kagames Rwanda
adopted English as an official national language.
The Tutsis were a minority in Rwanda and could not expect to win the
elections promised under the auspices of foreign powers in the attempt to
negotiate a peaceful end to the civil war. The RPF needed a military victory to
gain power and it used the April 6 attack on the presidential plane to break the
truce and press for military victory. At the same time, desperate and enraged
Hutus went berserk and plunged into a ghastly slaughter of those they took to
be supporters of the advancing RPF.
And yet, after his military victory, Paul Kagame was unbeatable. In August
2010 he won a second seven-year term as president with 93% of the vote, and
a 95% turnout.
As usual, when the United States takes sides, a bloody con lict is described
by mainstream media as a one-sided killing spree. The reality is far worse. The
RPF had been killing Hutu civilians for quite some time and they went on doing
so, not only in April of 1994 but for years afterwards. And not only in Rwanda
but even more so in the neighboring Republic of Congo, where the death toll is
much higher than that of Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus. The truth here is that if
genocide is the appropriate term, it was a mutual genocide with horrible
massacres on both sides.
There can be no doubt that it was the worst bloodbath of this generation.
Still, is the term genocide really helpful? Who is to know whether the Hutus
who wielded knives against defenseless Tutsis really intended to
exterminate them all, or whether they acted in some sort of insane impulse
born of fear and revenge? Was this madness really planned in advance?
Allegations by the Kagame side of a deliberate Hutu plan to commit genocide
have never been satisfactorily proved. The corpses were there, the crimes are
unquestionable, and the horror is real. But what goes on in peoples minds in
such cases is unfathomable.
Moreover, if the subsequent mass killing across the border in the

Democratic Republic of Congo does not qualify as genocide, this could be

because less emotional motives can be discerned. In May 2001, former U.S.
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney accused the Clinton administration, the
Kagame regime in Rwanda, and the Ugandan state of using the pretext of
clearing guilty Hutu refugees out of eastern Congo in order to engage in the
large scale pillage of natural resources for the bene it of U.S. and European
companies. The illegally looted resources include tropical timber, gold, cobalt,
diamonds, zinc, uranium and especially the worlds largest deposits of coltan, a
mineral essential for the computer industry. 16
It is not easy to draw a moral from such a human catastrophe. But this much
can be said: the usual context for such massive slaughter is war especially
civil war. The sphere of civil war creates not only hatred but fear of ones
neighbors, a fear that leads to blind gestures made to remove the source of
that fear. One can see similar behavior even in animals: it is fear, much more
than hatred, which motivates such murderous reactions. If this is so, then
campaigns against hatred are irrelevant. What is necessary is to avoid
situations where fear reaches such a fevered pitch that blind, indiscriminate
killing is the result.
If this is the case, then the United States approach to combating genocide
is counterproductive. The fact that the superpower takes sides can help push
desperate people over the edge, whereas the prospect of a genuinely unbiased
power prepared to judge with wisdom and equanimity might have a calming
effect. Unfortunately, such a power does not exist. The United States
manipulates the United Nations and has managed to take control of the
International Criminal Court. It will not itself abide by the decisions of the ICC,
which destroys the very appearance of the Courts impartiality toward those
involved.
Taking their cue from Samantha Powers A Problem From Hell, even the
Clinton administration of icials responsible for the fact that Washington
stood on the sidelines as the blood lowed in Rwanda, now try to use that fact
to argue for future interventions. They are so dreadfully sorry now! And their
heartfelt regret proves that the United States must be the great humanitarian
sentinel looking out to spot genocide on the horizon in order to prevent it from
happening again.
Actually, it pretty much proves the opposite. The Rwanda episode shows
that for all the talk about ideals, the United States sides with its interests in
the crunch and will use its information advantage to keep others in the dark
until the crisis is past. The absence of international action in response to the
Rwandan catastrophe was due primarily to the fact that everything depended
on one single superpower, with its control of the U.N. budget, U.N. personnel,
and the knowledge of what was happening on the ground. This unipolar world,

which Samantha Power defends passionately as the proper result of Americas

unique virtue, is a major cause of deepening chaos. It doesnt work and it cant
work.
The U.S. approach is always Manichaean. It is a dualistic approach to
con licts, which consists of taking sides and then identifying the bad side as
potentially genocidal, even before people are killed. This was de initely the
case in Yugoslavia, where an International Tribunal was established with the
declared intent of judging Serbian leaders for genocide before any remotely
genocidal crime had been committed. In the absence of any evidence of
intention, the Srebrenica massacre was judged genocide by that Tribunal
thanks to a rather odd sociological argument: Bosnian Muslim society is
patriarchal, and by killing off only the menfolk, the Serbs ensured that
Muslim women and children, although spared, would never return to
Srebrenica, thus committing genocide in a single town. This reasoning broadly
extended the meaning of genocide, but satis ied the American sponsors of
the Tribunal who wanted the label of genocidal to stick to the Serbs, thereby
giving an advantage to the Muslim side which they supported in both Bosnia
and Kosovo.
A massacre is a massacre. There are bodies, there is forensic evidence, and
there is material proof. Murdering prisoners or civilians in time of war is
wrong, whatever the label. A massacre is called genocide only because of the
assumption of an intention for which, in the case of Yugoslavia, there was
never any evidence. Calling a massacre genocide is not dependent on the
number of victims; the number of victims at Srebrenica was tiny compared to
the number of Vietnamese killed by the United States. But a massacre labeled
genocide is understood to be much worse than any ordinary massacre
because it implies the intention to kill everybody in a particular human group.
The word is a moral multiplier.
It is also a political term. Once a leader is accused of genocide, there can be
no negotiations, no diplomacy, no attempt to ind a peaceful solution to the
con lict which is the background of the alleged crime. The guilty party can only
be indicted or killed.
A glance at the way the United States has used the term genocide in the
last two decades suggests that the current search for potential genocide,
supposedly for prevention, is in fact a search for internal conflicts which can be
labeled potentially genocidal in countries targeted for regime change. The
threat of genocide can justify destabilizing measures: propaganda
campaigns, boycotts, sanctions, the threat and even the use of military forces,
with the possibility of armed intervention if the relationship of forces is
favorable.
There is no end to these double standards. The United States sets itself up as

uniquely capable of identifying and combating what it calls genocide, thereby

ruling out the very possibility of a coordinated international effort to prevent
ethnic con licts from degenerating into mass slaughter. In the case of the civil
war in Syria, Hillary Clinton claimed that well-intentioned U.S. efforts at
intervention were thwarted by a small group which included Russia and
China. There was no real threat of genocide, and moreover, Russia was more
than cooperative in the effort to get rid of Syrias chemical weapons. On the
other hand, when real slaughter was going on in Rwanda, a small group,
consisting of the United States and Britain, did indeed block any effort at
international intervention in order to make sure that their side won. Their
team did indeed win and the crocodile tears keep lowing, twenty years on,
simply to justify future interventions.

Chapter 3
The Taming By the Shrew
For a woman to get ahead in the United States foreign policy establishment,
it helps to be as aggressive as the policies themselves. Tough women are proof
that there are no soft spots in Americas approach to the world. Indeed, in
recent years, aggressive women in key positions have become a trend.
A precursor of this trend was Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Reagans
ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985. Kirkpatricks career
provided the same lesson as that of her contemporary, Margaret Thatcher:
women in power are no more tender-hearted than men. Given what it takes to
succeed in a mans world, they may go out of their way to act even tougher.
An early neoconservative, Kirkpatrick was credited in Washington with the
doctrine that it was perfectly all right for the United States to support regimes
that were authoritarian, usually referring to U.S.-sponsored Latin American
military dictatorships, while Washington must oppose totalitarian regimes,
meaning communist states. As a member of the Committee on the Present
Danger, she helped stoke the national paranoia that keeps the arms industry
lourishing. Focused on imaginary threats and perils, Kirkpatrick was openly
contemptuous of human rights and cared little for the supposed United States
mission to spread democracy. The collapse of the Soviet Union rendered the
Kirkpatrick line obsolete.
During the Bill Clinton administration, foreign policy focus shifted to human
rights. Americas values and interests demanded intervention to protect
and save the victims of human rights violations. The concern and indignation
of a woman seemed particularly appropriate and convincing for this position.
Ignoring legal and political complexities, the disintegration of Yugoslavia was
treated by Western media and governments primarily as a human rights crisis,
in which one party was the violator and other parties were victims. CNNs
correspondent Christiane Amanpour, particularly close to the State
Department, led the way in using one-sided reports to demand U.S.
intervention against the Serbs. The model was so successful that it became the
standard for the Obama presidency, applied to Libya, Syria and the Ukraine,
with women in the forefront.
In the Clinton co-presidency, Hillarys domain was domestic policy, in
particular the design of a vast health care reform initiative. When that failed,
she reverted to her original public service field of childrens law, writing a book
about care for children (It Takes a Village), under the in luence of New Age
gurus. For a while, she reportedly sought refuge in New Age selfempowerment, gaining spiritual strength through religion and mystical

experience. The trouble with such subjective self-empowerment is that it may

produce more self-con idence than is justi ied when facing particularly
difficult encounters with complex reality.
After the debacle of her health reform project and the damage done to her
image from endless Republican probing both into her past as an Arkansas
lawyer and her dealings with White House staff, she was sent on a tour of
South Asia and Africa. Her main interest continued to be women and children.
In September 1995, Hillary led the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Fourth
World Conference on Women held in Beijing. In China, Hillary made a favorable
impression with a dramatic speech denouncing abuse of women and girls: It
is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or
suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are girls. It is a
violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of
prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with
gasoline, set on ire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are
deemed too small
Hillary, in semi-disgrace back home, was now suddenly hailed as a heroine.
The New York Times praised the speech as her inest moment in public life.
The political lesson was strong and clear: when in trouble on the home front, a
politician can compensate abroad, especially by defending human rights.
Up until then, Hillarys interests and expertise were limited to childrens
rights, education and health care. Those were traditionally feminine ields,
vitally important to be sure, but not yet presidential, because they were too
far from the traditional center of male power: war.
War is the citadel that women must conquer for full equality. It is considered
an advancement for women to be able to join the military, and not just in
clerical jobs, but also in combat, doing the real killing. Glorifying this particular
path toward breaking the glass ceiling is potentially useful to the War State.
The way to make war acceptable and even popular is to show that it is good
for women and children: war protects them. Who better to get this message
across than women? A mutual interest brought together neocons who want
war and women who want to break glass ceilings. If neocons need women to
make war look good, highly ambitious women need war to advance their
careers.
Hillary strongly urged Bill Clinton to choose her friend Madeleine Albright to
replace Warren Christopher as Secretary of State for his second term. Hillary
and Madeleine were both Wellesley graduates, and Hillary argued that the job
of Secretary of State should go to a woman. Unlike Hillary, Madeleine, who had
already served as Clintons ambassador to the United Nations, did indeed have
a background in foreign policy. Her father, Josef Korbel, a former Czech
ambassador to Yugoslavia, immigrated with his family irst to Britain to

escape World War II and later to the United States, where he founded the
School of International Studies at the University of Denver. One of his students
was Condoleezza Rice. Like many East European immigrants, Korbel saw U.S.
power as a force to be used to settle issues in the rest of the world. In 1959,
Madeleine married into the U.S. press aristocracy as the bride of Joseph Medill
Patterson Albright, grandson of the founder of the New York Daily News and
great grandson of the owner of the Chicago Tribune. During her 23-year
marriage, she worked for Zbigniew Brzezinski while he was National Security
Advisor during the mid-1970s and taught international relations at
Georgetown University. At age 59, as she prepared to take of ice as Secretary
of State, she announced: Its conceivable that Im of Jewish background.
While claiming to be shocked at the news of her familys hidden identity,
being a Holocaust survivor bestows incomparable moral authority today.
Albright liked to say, My mindset is Munich. She was the rare of icial in the
Clinton team who lobbied relentlessly for NATO bombing and who laced her
public condemnations of Serb extermination and expulsion with Holocaust
references, according to Samantha Power. 17

Mad For War

A salient trait of the new school of women diplomats is that they are
strikingly undiplomatic. Indeed, Madeleine Albrights greatest diplomatic
success was to obstruct diplomacy. When European allies expressed
reluctance to bomb the Serbs without at least a stab at diplomacy, her
manipulation of a special conference held in the Rambouillet chateau outside
Paris in February and March of 1999 made sure that there could be no
negotiated solution to the crisis in the Serbian province of Kosovo. NATO
would have its pretext to bomb what was left of Yugoslavia (Serbia and
Montenegro the latter subsequently seceded peacefully under Western
pressure).
The Kosovo problem was basically an ethnic minority issue that was no
more intractable than many other similar problems on the planet. Albanians
were a recognized minority in Yugoslavia, but a majority in the southern
Serbian province of Kosovo, bordering Albania. As is often the case, the
problem was aggravated by con licting versions of a shared history (each side
accusing the other of past abuses), but was no more acute or unsolvable than
dozens of others. There were voices on both sides in favor of the sort of
compromise that the United States of icially stated to be its goal: a large
measure of autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia. Jan Oberg of the Swedish
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research was meeting with
both sides in search of a compromise at the time. Serbias most distinguished
novelist, Dobrica Cosic, who had served for a short time as President of

Yugoslavia, went so far as to call for a negotiated independence for Kosovo.

Meanwhile, in Paris, another Presidents wife, Danielle Mitterrand, was
discretely using her in luence to seek a peaceful agreement. Danielle, who had
been a liaison agent for the French Resistance as a teenager, was hosting
meetings of leading Serbian and Kosovo Albanian intellectuals to discuss
possible solutions. All that was needed was for the Great Powers to actively
promote such genuine efforts at diplomacy and the war and its destruction
could have been avoided.
In the winter of 1998-99, there were Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors in Kosovo who saw clearly that
incidents of violence were being deliberately provoked by armed Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) killers in order to goad Serbian police into retaliation
that the media would describe as ethnic cleansing or the threat of
genocide. To please Washington, the Polish foreign minister Bronislaw
Geremek used his temporary chairmanship of the OSCE to put the Kosovo
mission under the command of U.S. agent William Walker, a veteran of dubious
operations in Central American. Walker provided vital aid to the KLA project,
notably by publicly denouncing a police action against the KLA in the village of
Racak as a massacre of civilians, a crime against humanity. With few
exceptions, Western media eagerly helped in late Walkers sensationalist
accusations into the casus belli NATO needed.
As Secretary of State, Madeleine Albrights role was to prevent diplomacy
from producing a peaceful solution that would get in the way of NATOs irst
humanitarian war. Bombing Yugoslavia provided the opportunity to
transform a formally defensive alliance into an offensive force prepared to act
outside its treaty area. On its iftieth anniversary, NATO took its irst steps
toward becoming a planetary police force under U.S. command.
The United Nations had to be kept out of this. As U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations, Madeleine Albright had seen to it that Boutros Boutros-Ghali
was deprived of a second term as U.N. Secretary General. As substitute,
Washington chose Ghanaian diplomat Ko i Annan, whose wife Nane Lagergren
was from an aristocratic Swedish family, the niece of Raoul Wallenberg,
famous for having rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.
In 1995, as Assistant United Nations Secretary General for Peacekeeping
Operations, Annan enabled the United States to go ahead and bomb the
Bosnian Serbs. For that reason, according to Richard Holbrooke, Ko i Anna
won the job of U.S. Secretary General, replacing the less manageable BoutrosGhali.18
Having got him the job, Madeleine Albright tended to treat Annan like hired
help, calling at all hours to give him orders. Eventually, Annan complained that
she never quite understood that he was supposed to work for all the other

members of the United Nations. As she prepared for Rambouillet, Albright

grew alarmed by reports that Annan was thinking of appointing a group of
negotiators to deal with Belgrade. To head that off, she called him twice, telling
him: Ko i, we dont need negotiators running all over the place. She followed
up, calling Annan again to make sure he doesnt have negotiators
proliferating.
In reality, U.S. agencies were making deals behind the scenes with the most
radical element of the Albanian nationalists in Kosovo, whose assassination
targets were mostly Serbs but also included Albanians whose jobs, such as
postman, branded them as collaborators with the Serbs.
While Madeleine Albright took the public lead, her old mentor from the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Morton Abramowitz, was in the
background, in the role of advisor to the Albanian delegation at Rambouillet.
Madeleine Albrights job was to steer peace negotiations toward a
deadlock which could be blamed on the Serbs. In Rambouillet, Albright was
assisted by her close aide James Rubin, who would go on to marry mainstream
medias star advocate of war against Serbs, CNNs iercely pro-interventionist
war correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Belgrades delegation, including
members of all Kosovos ethnic groups, expressed readiness to compromise.
The two sides, Yugoslav and Kosovo Albanian, were kept separate and fed
ultimatums by the U.S. delegation. In a surprise move, the Americans pulled off
a coup in the Kosovo Albanian delegation, replacing Professor Ibrahim Rugova,
who had been extra-legally elected Kosovar President in 1992, with the 30year-old KLA leader, Hashim Thaci, alias the Snake. In February, Rubin and
Thaci met and got together over a lunch of lamb chops and red wine at the
ornate residence of the U.S. ambassador to Paris and have been chums ever
since.19 Thaci was wanted by Yugoslav police for various crimes; moreover,
only a year earlier the KLA had been labeled a terrorist organization by
special U.S. envoy Robert Gelbard. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Throughout the Kosovo crisis, Mr. Rubin personally wooed Hashim Thaci, the
ambitious leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Rubin went so far as to
jokingly promise that he would speak to Hollywood friends about getting Mr.
Thaci a movie role. Coddled by Rubin and Albright, Thaci followed U.S.
instructions, reassured that he would gain control of Kosovo as a result.
Fifteen years later, Thaci is still in charge of independent Kosovo, a U.S.
satellite, best known for its illegal traf icking of drugs, prostitutes and human
organs. Crime, ethnic cleansing and murders have gone unpunished ever since,
despite (or because of) the presence of NATO forces. Today, the principal
cultural attraction in Pristina is a giant gilded kitsch statue of Bill Clinton. A
smiling Hillary has posed in front of it, photographed by her daughter Chelsea.
The closed meeting in a French chateau ended with the so-called

Rambouillet Accords, which were not accords at all, since Belgrade refused to
sign onto a deal that included an addendum which would have permitted U.S.
forces to occupy all of Yugoslavia with total impunity at the expense of the
host country. Even Henry Kissinger described the false agreement as a
terrible diplomatic document, a provocation, an excuse to start bombing.
Off the record, Madeleine Albright told reporters that: we intentionally set the
bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and thats what
they are going to get. 20
When the NATO bombs started falling, OSCE monitors had been hastily
evacuated by their U.S. chief. Thus there were almost no foreign witnesses to
what was actually happening in Kosovo during the war. Wild reports circulated
of massive killings, which proved false. The stream of Albanians who crossed
nearby borders to wait out the bombing in Albanian-inhabited regions of
Albania or Macedonia was described as ethnic cleansing or even genocide,
although as soon as the bombing was over, the refugees rushed back to
Kosovo, bringing other Albanians with them to take over housing abandoned
by terrified Serbs.
Madeleine Albright had reportedly convinced Clinton, against the better
judgment of the Pentagon, that Milosevic would back down after a little light
bombing. When it didnt happen that way, with Serbian civilians wearing
target badges and massing on Belgrade bridges to keep them from being
bombed, the anti-Serb propaganda escalated dramatically. Tony Blair
proclaimed the war to be a battle between good and evil; between civilization
and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship. The Serbs were guilty,
Blair claimed, of hideous racial genocide. Albright claimed that Milosevic was
creating a horror of biblical proportions in his desire to exterminate a
group of people. On April 7, 1999, she told CNNs Larry King: It has
reminiscences of the kinds of things that people saw during World War II
where there really is a desire to exterminate a group of people or use them as
pawns.
This was pure war propaganda. There was no extermination and no threat
of extermination, but a con lict between a government and an armed
secessionist group supported by neighboring Albania. The refugee exodus was
dramatized by Western media as the tragic cause of the war, when it was
actually the result. Albanian refugees leeing the violence obliged Western
media with invented tales of rape and murder. Reporters searched Albanian
refugee camps for somebody who has been raped and speaks English.
Nobody was interested in the people getting killed by NATO bombs. Nobody
cared about the little Serbian town of Varvarin, of no military signi icance
whatsoever, yet targeted by NATO. Air strikes against people gathered on Holy
Trinity Day killed at random the town priest and the mayors daughter, 15-

year-old student Sanja Milenkovic, the pride of the town for having won a
mathematics prize. Schools, hospitals, and bridges were struck in an effort to
turn the population against their president. A bus full of Albanians returning to
Kosovo was also massacred by NATO bombs. The infrastructure that people
had spent a generation building from scratch, after the devastation of two
World Wars, was leveled.
In Washington, the Kosovo war was called Madeleines war and she
seemed proud of it. Perhaps it soothed some male consciences to put the
blame for this shameful masquerade on an emotional woman. Madeleine gave
a feminine veneer to a strategic enterprise largely planned and carried out by
men. Perhaps this was supposed to strengthen the humanitarian pretense.
Aside from starting the irst of NATOs aggressive wars, Albrights greatest
legacy was a few remarks which cast serious doubt on her humanitarian
commitment. The most famous was her reply to question about sanctions
against Iraq broadcast by 60 Minutes on May 12, 1996, when she was still
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Noting reports that half a million
children have died as a result of sanctions, more children than died in
Hiroshima, interviewer Lesley Stahl then asked, is the price worth it?
Madeleine replied that we think the price is worth it.
Madeleine Albrights other famous remark was her rhetorical question to
General Colin Powell in favor of using military force: Whats the point of
having this superb military, Colin, if we cant use it?

Killing Diplomacy
The presence of women at high levels in the State Department could be seen
merely as the result of womens well-deserved success in signi icant careers.
But the roles played by these women express hostile aspects of U.S. policy
more eloquently than men could ever manage in the same positions. Each in
her own way uses her personality to sharpen the aggressive edge of U.S.
foreign policy and to make reaching any diplomatic understanding with others
more dif icult. There was a time when feminists claimed that women in
powerful positions would make a tremendous contribution toward world
peace. Americas tough women are squandering expectations, dating back to
Aristophanes Lysistrata, that women could be mobilized against war.
The snarls of Madeleine Albright, the gloating lectures of Hillary Clinton, the
insults of Susan Rice, the tough talk of Victoria Nuland, the eloquent temper
tantrums of Samantha Power and even the arrogant ignorance of State
Department press spokeswomen tell a different story.
These harpies all work for Democratic administrations claiming great
devotion to the cause of human rights, but they have made it clear that this
devotion, far from stemming from kindness and gentleness, functions

primarily as a motive for punishing alleged offenders. The Obama

administration intensi ied the use of women to whip the rest of the world into
line in a U.S.-produced and directed production of The Taming By the Shrew
on the world stage. Washingtons foreign policy women specialize in
haranguing foreign leaders or diplomats as if they were badly behaved
children. Their bullying behavior displays an assurance that, because they are
women, they can get away with rudeness that most men in their position
would feel obliged to avoid. 21
As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, before she became President
Obamas National Security Adviser, Susan Rice showed no concern for the
niceties of diplomatic usage. She advocated rejoining the U.N. Human Rights
Council largely as a way to ight against the anti-Israel crap coming from
defenders of the Palestinians. Protge as well as successor to Madeleine
Albright, Rice often sounds the same tone. Just as Madeleine sponsored
creation of the breakaway failed State of Kosovo, Susan is credited with a large
role in creating another breakaway failed State, South Sudan. Susan Rice
acknowledges that she is seen as brusque, aggressive and abrasive, but
doesnt care. Of course people dont say that to my face, Susan Rice joked at a
U.N. Correspondents Association ball, because they know Id kick their butts.
While acting as unfeminine as possible, Ms. Rice was implicitly taking
advantage of a feminine privilege womens certainty that the men they insult
are still too civilized to kick their butts in return.
Susan Rice was succeeded as Ambassador to the United Nations in Obamas
second term by Samantha Power, whose style is totally different, although
their policy positions are usually the same. During the 2008 presidential
election campaign, Power was obliged to resign from the Obama support team
for publicly calling Hillary Clinton a monster, who would stop at nothing to
be elected. However, all was apparently forgiven. As a member of Obamas
National Security Council, Samantha Power joined Hillary and Susan Rice in
urging Obama to bomb Libya.
Samantha Power has enjoyed a carefully crafted career. Her biographies
usually state that her career began as a freelance journalist in Bosnia, where
she witnessed horrors that transformed her into a crusader against genocide.
But that is somewhat disingenuous.
Born in Ireland in 1970, Samantha Power went straight from Yale to a junior
fellowship with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, working on
the staff of the President, former Ambassador Morton Abramowitz. That was
when Abramowitz was developing his theory that the United States would be
obliged to intervene in foreign countries on behalf of beleaguered minorities
(see Chapter 4). Samantha Power was an eager apprentice.
One of her colleagues at Carnegie recalls Samantha as zealously ambitious

and ingratiating, and already focused on Bosnia as a career opportunity. Ready

to do whatever she could in order to get where the action was, 22 at the age of
22, Samantha joined the swarm of freelance reporters heading to the big story
in Bosnia, but unlike others, her Carnegie connections assured her the promise
of publication in big-time mainstream magazines. At only 25, she was taken on
by the International Crisis Group as a political analyst monitoring the
implementation of the Dayton Accords. Later, her travels to Kosovo and
Cambodia were financed by George Soros Open Society Institute.
Since the very start of the con lict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the word
genocide had been bandied about by supporters of the Muslim party as a
way to stigmatize the Serb adversary in what was a three-way civil war
between the ethnic communities that lived there: Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
The Yugoslav Army units stationed there broke up at the start of the civil war,
with the two largest groups, Serbs and Muslims, forming separate hostile local
armies. Serbia was then falsely accused of invading Bosnia. Meanwhile, the
Croatian Army did in fact cross the border from Croatia to annex an ethnically
pure Croat region in southwestern Herzegovina, most notable for the thriving
tourist business at the site of alleged mystical visitations by the Virgin Mary in
the town of Medjugorje. Nobody complained about this violation of the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This is just a sample of the extremely selective coverage of the complex
Bosnian con lict. Journalistic careers could be made by inding what editors
wanted, and they usually wanted the worst: rape, ethnic cleansing, genocide
perpetrated by Serbs.
For example, the use of Muslim humanitarian organizations as cover to
smuggle weapons to the Muslim Army, and massacres perpetrated by foreign
volunteer Mujihideen, were kept out of sight. Once it was clear that the United
States was on the side of the Muslims, agents of Izetbegovic could feel
con ident that they could get away with false lag attacks designed to
incriminate their Serb adversaries.
In July 1995, toward the end of the war in Bosnia, the term genocide inally
stuck to the massive revenge killing of Muslim men following the Serb
takeover of Srebrenica. Neither Samantha Power nor any other Western
reporter witnessed the horrors of genocide, since in fact there were no
witnesses and no photographic evidence: there were only verbal reports, well
after the fact. But the fact of having been in Bosnia lent an air of authenticity
to her subsequent best-selling book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age
of Genocide. Enthusiastically acclaimed by the establishment, this best-seller
was above all an impassioned argument in favor of U.S. military intervention
to stop genocide a dramatic and eloquent popularized version of the dry
political theory irst elaborated by Abramowitz. Samantha Power has gone

even farther and maintains that the United States should intervene militarily
in any situation it deems a potential genocide. In short, hers is an argument for
preventive war.
With a lair for drama, a knack for Irish blarney, literary talent and a forceful
personality, Samantha Power has managed to drape herself in a tragic gravitas
which has enabled this ambitious young woman to jump the career queue and
successfully pose as the very embodiment of Moral Conscience.
There is, after all, nothing extraordinary in being opposed to genocide. Who
is for it? But Samantha Powers specialty is to want to do something about it. Or
rather, she wants the United States military to do something about it, and that
makes her a valuable asset to the War Party. The whole power establishment,
starting with Morton Abramowitz, plus The New Republic, the International
Crisis Group, the Pulitzer Prize Committee, Harvard, President Obama and the
long list of prominent figures who endorse the later editions of A Problem From
Hell have combined to make this striking and talented young woman the very
symbol of Humanitarian Intervention. It is brilliant casting.
Looks also count, and Samantha Powers long mane of red hair makes her a
dramatic figure in the U.N. Security Council when she leaves her seat to go over
and upbraid the startled Russian delegation. However, it did not take long
before her histrionics had reduced her to a laughing stock in their eyes.
Whether just plain rude, like Susan Rice, or melodramatic, like Samantha
Power, self-righteous tirades serve only to derail reasonable discussion and
prevent diplomacy from finding solutions to avoid war.

Smart Power in Action

In Hard Choices, her own version of her stint as Secretary of State, Hillary
writes that her foreign policy philosophy embraced a concept known as smart
power. For her, she explains, smart power meant choosing the right
combination of tools diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and
cultural for each situation.
In fact, that doesnt mean much of anything. The term was used by
Democrats primarily to distinguish themselves from the George W. Bush
administration, which had relied on unilateral hard power (military force),
while neglecting what Joseph Nye called soft power (which means
everything else, especially propaganda and various forms of pressure on allies,
or multilateralism). Smart power actually means the use of both.
The term especially came into fashion with a 2004 article by Suzanne Nossel
in Foreign Affairs entitled Smart Power: Reclaiming Liberal Internationalism.
Nossel wrote that progressive policymakers should turn to the great
mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism,
which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less

prone to war. Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive
leadership diplomatic, economic, and not least, military to advance a broad
array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law,
economic development and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike conservatives, who rely on
military power as the main tool of statecraft, liberal internationalists see
trade, diplomacy, foreign aid, and the spread of American values as equally
important.
When the cheering dies down, we can observe that this is a recipe for
massive intervention in the affairs of other countries, including breaking up
states we dont like, such as Sudan or Yugoslavia (self-determination),
insisting on maintaining those we do like, such as Ukraine or Georgia (the
rule of law), sanctioning and bombing offenders (spreading American
values), and above all, regime change (elimination of dictators). The notion
that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war
is based on the totally unproven assumption that wars are caused by
differences in political systems rather than by competition for resources,
territorial disputes, or any number of other con licts that may arise. It rules
out coexistence between systems; the underlying implication is that our
particular cause for going to war is to make every country resemble ours.
Finally, there is no evidence whatsoever that democratic states are
necessarily less warlike than any other kind the contrary might even be true.
Smart power simply means using every conceivable means to advance U.S.
world hegemony. In its arsenal, the most important soft power concept is
surely human rights. This is an area in which Suzanne Nossel is a specialist.
Born in 1969, Nossel has headed both Human Rights Watch and the U.S.
branch of Amnesty International. In January 2009, Hillary brought her back to
the State Department (where she had worked for Richard Holbrooke) to be
Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, responsible for
multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, womens issues, public
diplomacy, press and Congressional relations. This occurred just as the U.S.
had rejoined the U.N. Human Rights Council, after a long boycott, with the
intention of distracting it from criticizing Israel by turning the focus instead on
the sins of countries Washington doesnt like, or on new issues, notably LGTB
rights. Ms Nossel has won international recognition for working for the rights
of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, thereby cementing the
position of the United States as the vanguard of human rights against the
worlds many traditional societies, especially regimes that U.S. smart power
wishes to embarrass, isolate, or outright overthrow. Nossel has played a role
in getting the Human Rights Council to act on false reports of impending
massacres in Libya, leading to NATO bombing and the subsequent destruction

of that country.
In January 2012, Nossel left Hillary Clintons State Department to render
another service to smart power, this time as executive director of Amnesty
International, in a year marked by a major campaign of support for Pussy Riot.
This is perhaps the strangest aspect of American soft power projection in
recent years: the ostentatious U.S. support given to groups of young women
practicing organized provocation against traditional moral, religious or
behavioral standards.
Once upon a time there was an organization called Amnesty International
that was dedicated to defending prisoners of conscience all over the world. Its
actions were marked by two principles that contributed to its success:
neutrality and discretion. In the context of the Cold War, the early AI made a
point of balancing its campaigns between prisoners from each of three
ideological regions: the capitalist West, the communist East and the
developing South. The campaigns remained discreet and avoided ideological
polemics, with focus instead on the legal and physical conditions of all
captives. Their aim was not to use the prisoners as an excuse to rant against
an enemy government, but to persuade governments to cease persecuting
non-violent dissidents. It strove successfully to exercise a universal civilizing
influence.
Since the end of the Cold War, the work of Amnesty International has
become more complicated and more dif icult. Back in the early days, most of
the prisoners of conscience were held either in the Soviet bloc or in the US
satellite dictatorships in Latin America, and this fact facilitated symmetry
without undue offense to the U.S superpower. But especially since the Bush
administrations reaction to September 11, 2001, the United States has
increasingly become the worlds most notorious jailer and this has brought
con licting pressures to bear upon an organization whose core is AngloAmerican. While it has protested against such lagrant abuses as Guantanamo
and the cruel jailing of Bradley Chelsea Manning, such punctual criticism is
heavily outweighed by blanket denunciations of governments targeted for
regime change by the United States. In the case of U.S.-backed color
revolutions, human rights organizations such as AI and Human Rights Watch
are enlisted not to defend speci ic political prisoners, but rather to brand
whole governments as human rights offenders.
Suzanne Nossels year at the head of Amnesty International was a milestone
in the U.S. takeover of the organization. In its new phase, Amnesty, like Human
Rights Watch and other Western humanitarian organizations, has ceased to
make any distinction between genuine prisoners of conscience and semiprofessional provocateurs, whose actions have no purpose other than to get
them into trouble with the authorities, in order to accuse the targeted

governments of being repressive. In its effort to weaken and overthrow

Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the Clinton administration
systematically used the techniques advocated by the Massachusetts-based
theorist of nonviolent action, Gene Sharp. U.S. of icials in Budapest coached a
Serbian youth group calling itself Otpor (resistance) in these techniques,
credited with destabilizing Milosevic at the time of the 2000 elections, which
he lost. Born in 1928, Gene Sharp was inspired by the civil disobedience of
anti-militarist and liberation movements to systematize disruptive actions
which have paradoxically become part of the U.S. soft power arsenal. Otpor
was the pioneer of the so-called color revolutions supported by the United
States. The simple theme of these campaigns is typically that the current
leader must go, with little concern for what comes after. Aimed primarily at
public opinion, effectiveness depends on a sympathetic media eager to give
publicity to provocative actions, actions which would be considered disorderly
conduct anywhere else in the world, but are celebrated in this case as the
heroic defiance of tyranny.
Neither the quality nor the context of such dissidence seems to matter.
Nobody stops to seriously ponder on how to deal with provocateurs that
deliberately break the law in order to be arrested. Should the law be suspended
especially for them? Should some other action be taken? Arresting them is
taking the bait, but not arresting them would arouse indignation from citizens
who dislike such exhibitionism. It is a real dilemma.
On February 21, 2012, ive young women, scantily-clad in bright colors and
wearing balaclavas to cover their faces, barged into the Cathedral of Christ the
Savior in central Moscow and took their place in front of the High Altar. They
began to shout obscenities, calling the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox
Church a bitch and inserting scatological language into liturgical phrases.
The women were accompanied by technicians who ilmed the performance
and later, the words uttered by the performers were revised to refer to
President Putin. Offended worshippers on the spot heard the anti-Christian
obscenities, not any political message.
Although the women led the scene, in March three women of the Pussy Riot
group were arrested: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and
Yekaterina Samutsevich. On July 30, 2012, the three women went on trial for
group hooliganism (violation of public order). This was used as an occasion
for a massive display of U.S. soft power, mobilizing NGOs, the media and
international celebrities. No other government on earth could have been this
effective in making pop stars out of agitators.
Aroused by deceptive newspaper articles claiming that the women were
being put on a show trial for merely singing a song in a church, a whole
galaxy of Western pop stars, from Paul McCartney to Madonna to Bjrk, rushed

to the defense of their (supposed) fellow artists, now imperiled by the

dictator Putin. Singers who earn millions of dollars can easily be persuaded
that they have a moral obligation to say a few words to save the world from
something evil or another.
Pussy Riot was a recent offshoot of a group of anarchist provocateurs called
Voyna (war). Nadezhda Tolokonnikovas partner (and the father of her child)
was a leader of the collective, which had a history of public actions that would
get people into trouble anywhere in the world: public fornication in the
Timiryazev Museum in Moscow (Tolokonnikova took part while visibly
pregnant), throwing live cats at employees of a McDonalds restaurant in
Moscow, irebombings and attacks on police cars, and - maybe the oddest
stunt of them all - a woman stealing a chicken from a supermarket by stuf ing
it up her vagina. All of it was filmed for the internet.
Strangely enough, although they were frequently associated with anti-Putin
slogans, none of these peculiar actions had got the group into trouble with the
law. It was the Church that brought suit against them, not the State, although
the group claimed that its target and tormenter was Vladimir Putin.
Amnesty International awarded prisoner of conscience status to the three
Pussy Rioters and devoted extraordinary attention to the Pussy Riot case,
treating it as a major human rights campaign. No comparable attention was
devoted to the harsh treatment of Bradley/Chelsea Manning, the threat of U.S.
prosecution against Julian Assange, the repeated murder by U.S. police of black
suspects, the world-record prison population in the United States, or
Guantanamo Bay.
The tone of the Amnesty Internationals Pussy Riot campaign was as far as
possible from a diplomatic appeal intended to persuade authorities to free the
women in question. Rather, it was precisely a tone of provocation.
For instance:
Masha, Nadia and Maria, who are being detained for their peaceful
performance of a protest song in a cathedral, could very well be carted off to
a labor camp in Siberia where they will be at risk of rape and other
abuses. (The stress is from the original texts, widely distributed by the
organizations cited.)
Pussy Riots crime? Singing a protest song in a church.
Amnesty International is mounting a strong global response to help keep
Pussy Riots case front and center. Help us send a truckload of colorful ski
masks to President Putin in protest. Todays verdict is emblematic of
increased efforts by President Putin and his cronies to sti le free speech in
Russia. Thats why were sending President Putin as many colorful masks,
called balaclavas, as we can. Donate $20 or more to send a mask to Putin.
It is clear that Russian authorities are trying to silence these women and instill

fear in other activists -- dont let them succeed.

This was a tone that could only make it more, not less, politically dif icult for
President Putin to grant Pussy Riot a presidential amnesty. Nevertheless he
did so, prior to the Sochi games. Released, the young women pursued their
anti-Putin campaign in Western countries.
Amnesty International, like other Western media, have constantly simpli ied
the case in terms designed to suggest that Russia is returning to 1930s
Stalinism. The French tabloid Libration splashed across its front-page a photo
of the three women, To the GULAG for a song.
Avaaz, the on-line protest organizer, went farther.
"Russia is steadily slipping into the grip of a new autocracy Now, our
best chance to prove to Putin that there is a price to pay for this repression lies
with Europe.
The European Parliament is calling for an assets freeze and travel ban
on Putins powerful inner circle who are accused of multiple crimes. if
we can push the Europeans to act, it will not only hit Putins circle hard, as
many bank and have homes in Europe, but also counter his anti-Western
propaganda, showing him that the whole world is willing to stand up for a free
Russia.
Well before the Ukraine crisis, Americas soft power instruments were at
work preparing Western public opinion to punish Putin. On September 26,
2012, I was among millions who received this personal message from
Suzanne Nossel, saying that Amnesty International is working directly with
the lawyers and family members of Pussy Riot to shine a spotlight on this case
in a big way.Stand with us, she exhorted, Refuse silence (as if there were
any chance of that).
In between appeals for money, Suzanne Nossel got to the point:
Russias treatment of Pussy Riot reveals a chokehold on freedoms and
an unwillingness to respect human rights that must be addressed.
Beyond the clampdown within Russias borders, President Putin continues
to support ally Syria, despite mounting evidence of crimes against humanity
committed by the Syrian government.
We need to turn up the volume.
Avaaz also revealed what the real issue was:
What happens in Russia matters to us all. Russia has blocked
international coordination on Syria and other urgent global issues, and a
Russian autocracy threatens the world we all want, wherever we are.
Pussy Riot was a sexy way to arouse opinion against Russia for very
different reasons, starting with the U.S. effort to change the regime in Syria.
At a so-called Friends of Syria (meaning supporters of Syrian rebels)
meeting in Geneva on July 6, 2012, Hillary Clinton lashed out against Russia

and China for blocking US-sponsored Syrian regime change initiatives in the
United Nations. I do not believe that Russia and China are paying any price at
all -- nothing at all -- for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only
way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently
makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price, Clinton warned.
So here is smart power in action. Hillary says Russia must pay a price
and that human rights NGOs need to get to work to exact that price in the
area of public relations. Western media enthusiastically went along with this
gambit.
Avaaz concluded: Lets join together now to show Putin that the world will
hold him to account and push for change until Russia is set free.
Now think about this. We, the signers of Avaaz petitions, aspire to show
Putin that despite being legally elected President of Russia, the outside world
is going to push for change until Russia is set free. Set free by and for whom?
Pussy Riot? When did they, when could they, win an election? So how is Russia
to be set free? By a no-fly zone? By U.S. drones?
Russia must pay a price for obstructing U.S. designs on Syria. Was Pussy
Riot part of the price to be paid?
The chorus of Western media, pop stars and other assorted self-styled
humanitarians all echoed the allegation that the Pussy Riot women were jailed
by Putin because of an innocent song they sang against him in a church. But
where is the evidence that they were arrested by Putin? It seems they were
arrested by police on a complaint by the Orthodox Church, which did not
appreciate their hijinks on the high altar. Churches tend to consider that their
space is reserved for their own rites and ceremonies. The Catholic Cathedral in
Cologne called the police to arrest Pussy Riot copy cats. It was not the irst
time the Pussy Riot group had invaded an Orthodox church. This time the
offended ecclesiastics were fed up. The group had demonstrated against
Putin several times previously without being arrested. So where is the proof
that they were jailed by Putin as part of a crackdown on dissent?
Putin is on record, and on video, as saying he thinks the women should not
be harshly punished for their stunt. But, hey, Russia has a judicial system. The
law is the law. Once the women were arrested on a complaint by the church,
the wheels turned, a trial was held; they were convicted and sentenced by a
judge on the basis of complaints by offended Christians. It is an interesting
detail that the witnesses at their trial heard no mention of Putin they were
simply offended by the cavorting and the dirty words uttered by the masked
performers. YouTube videos show that the song, if that is what it was, and
the anti-Putin lyrics, if one can call them that, were added later to the video put
on line by the group.
So why was this a crackdown by Putin? Because, once the West labels a

disobedient leader of a foreign state a dictator, his state no longer has a

judicial system of its own, free elections, independent media, freedom of
expression, contented citizens no, none of that, because in the collective
groupthink of the West, every dictator is Hitler/Stalin combined, and every
ill or accident in his country is never anything but the direct result of his own
wicked will.
Of course, it would be absurd to imagine that citizens of Russia, or any other
country, are all contented with their leaders, even if they elected them by an
overwhelming majority. Even democratic countries offer only a limited choice
of presidential candidates to their voters. But after centuries of Tsarist
autocracy, invasion by Mongols, Napoleon, and Hitler, Bolshevik revolution,
Communist single-party dictatorship, and then the economic and social
collapse of the Yeltsin years, Russia has nevertheless now largely adopted its
own version of Western capitalist democracy, complete with respect for
religion.
And here is an oddity: the West, which used to aim its intercontinental
ballistic missiles at atheistic communism, does not seem at all satis ied that
the Orthodox Christian Church has re-emerged as a respected component of
Russian society. And yet, like it or not, there is nothing surprising that after the
collapse of a communist ideology which had in many ways been a sort of state
religion, many people in Russia returned to their traditional Christian faith.
The Pussy Riot case appears to send a message that the Western criterion
for a free society has changed. It is no longer freedom to practice a religion, but
freedom to practice various forms of sexual exhibitionism. Now, it can be
argued that this may be an important improvement, but since it has taken the
Christian West two thousand years to arrive at this level of wisdom, it should
be a little bit patient with other societies who lag a decade or so behind.
The Pussy Riot uproar took place on Hillarys beat, with Hillarys backstage
encouragement. Appropriately, Suzanne Nossel ran the Amnesty International
campaign as a model of smart power, aimed at turning public opinion
against Vladimir Putin. The portrayal of the Russian President as a persecutor
of innocent girls who merely sang a song in a church dominated U.S.-Russian
relations during Hillary Clintons last year as Secretary of State. Later, when
asked which women in the world inspired her, Hillary cited Pussy Riot. On
April 7, 2014, after the two imprisoned women, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina,
had been released early by Putin and were visiting New York, Hillary
distributed a photo of herself with the two Rioters, with the tweet message:
Great to meet the strong & brave young women from #PussyRiot, who refuse
to let their voices be silenced in #Russia.
Hillary makes much of the fact that she is a woman of faith any faith, in
fact. Hillary expressed perfect understanding of Muslims who rioted against

U.S. embassies all over the Middle East because of a vulgar video made in
Hollywood that slandered the Prophet. As a person of faith myself, I
understand how hurtful it can be when your beliefs are insulted. But never did
she utter a murmur of understanding for Orthodox Christians offended by the
obscene antics of Pussy Riot in their place of worship.
This can only be seen as yet another example of the of icial United States
readiness to ally with the worst elements in any society they aim to
undermine.

Moral Chaos
Another group of exhibitionist women on the front lines of U.S.-led culture
wars is the Ukrainian group Femen, which shares with Pussy Riot an
exhibitionist hatred of Putin, if not indeed of Russia. They claim to be the new
feminism, attacking patriarchy in three forms: sexual exploitation of women,
dictatorship and religion.
The message against sexual exploitation of women is particularly blurred,
since the group itself uses the womens exposed breasts to attract media
attention, just like any sexist advertiser. Indeed, bare breasts are their
trademark, and it naturally leads them to select members according to the
sexist criteria used to hire show girls at the Crazy Horse night club.
As for dictators, you guessed it: they focus mainly on a dictator who is
not a dictator but an elected head of state, the President of Russia, Vladimir
Putin.
Their religious targets tend to be Christian or Muslim. The women waste
little time on theoretical discussions. Their attacks on religion seem to be
based primarily on aspects of sexual mores.
In August 2012, Femen leader Inna Shevchenko, after chopping down a giant
wooden cross in Kiev, led alleged death threats in Ukraine and demanded
political asylum in France, which was granted with uncommon speed.
Moreover, her group was rapidly granted headquarters in a social center in the
middle of the most heavily Muslim neighborhood in Paris. The women
proceeded to make their presence known to their neighbors by marching barebreasted through the narrow streets, shouting obscenities in English, to the
wonderment of the locals. If this was intended to provoke sexist reactions
from the Arab and African Muslim men in the street, it failed.
Installed in Paris, Inna Shevchenkos group recruited French women to train
for actions against the Catholic Church. Their militants disrupted a
conservative demonstration of families opposed to gay marriage by spraying
baby carriages containing babies. On December 20, as singers practiced a
chorale in the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, a Femen acted out the
abortion of Jesus in front of the altar, using a piece of calf liver as a fetus,

shouted Christmas is cancelled, urinated on the steps of the altar, and left the
Church.
Ordinary French postage stamps bear the portrait of Marianne, symbol of
the Republic, but the face changes regularly, frequently using the image of a
famous actress. In the summer of 2013 a new stamp was unveiled, chosen by
President Franois Hollande, with Inna Shevchenko as Marianne. The artist,
Olivier Ciappa, explained that Inna perfectly represents my values of libert,
galit and fraternit. It is paradoxical that this new symbol of French values
speaks only English in her role as militant.
While Vladimir Putin was in France for D-Day celebrations in 2014, a Femen
accompanied by photographers managed to enter Madame Tussauds wax
gallery and assassinate the figure of the Russian president with a knife.
Femen have also announced that they are close to the Ukrainian far-right
nationalist party Svoboda and they were present in support of the right-wing
attack on federalist activists in Odessa on May 2, 2014, when at least 38 people
were burned to death in the subsequent inferno.
Being a Femen is a full-time job, involving physical training and discipline.
The group is said to be inanced by businessmen. One of them is Jed Sunden,
an American who showed up in Ukraine after the Soviet Union fell apart to
found the capitals main English-language newspaper, the Kyiv Post (it was
later sold to another foreign businessman). The main editorial line of the
newspaper was to play up the anti-Russian feeling of Western Ukrainians that
has been stimulated for centuries by Western Empires to weaken Russia.

Women Against Women

For much of the world, the fact that Western governments welcome Pussy
Riot and Femen as heroines, if not martyrs and role models, can only con irm a
growing belief that the liberal West is sinking into total decadence. Even in the
West, there is a growing rejection of the values of the Enlightenment, of liberal
society and individualism. When freedom is reduced to meaning vulgar
exhibitionism it will ind few ardent defenders. In reality, these exhibitionist
groups are a reductio ad absurdum of both feminism and freedom, discrediting
both and strengthening the very traditional attitudes they pretend to attack.
These performances can only con irm the most misogynist notions of
liberated women as hysterical banshees. It is hard to understand what their
Western backers intend to gain from this agitation, other than to sharpen the
con lict of civilizations. If Femen have contributed to any trend, it is the
return to conservative tradition. Groups of Muslim women have responded by
reaf irming their attachment to the veil as true liberation. Even in Western
countries, hundreds of young people are converting to Islam and heading to
the Middle East to join a fanatical Holy War in revolt against a West that

flaunts its decadence.

Millions of women in the world are struggling for the most basic rights. What
can they think of Western human rights organizations that spend millions to
promote a few privileged women performing mere temper tantrums in public?
Not only women, but all those who have serious reasons to rebel against
genuine injustice suffer from the spotlight focused on these carefully
choreographed and secretly inanced protests. In the United States, while
Pussy Riot was exalted, the Occupy Wall Street movement was crushed. One
represents a few individuals; the other represents the 99 percent. Western
powers nurse their claim to be the sponsors of world freedom by extolling
Pussy Riot and Femen, while genuine social protest is increasingly spied on,
repressed, marginalized and ignored. Americas dominance of popular images
creates a parallel universe which mimes our values, values which
increasingly resemble a vast insane asylum and contribute to a deepening
moral chaos.

Chapter 4
Yugoslavia: the Clinton War Cycle
It all began in Yugoslavia.
Although the failure of the war in Afghanistan is increasingly acknowledged,
the disaster of the Libyan war is hard to ignore and the catastrophe of the
2003 invasion of Iraq is now notorious, the war that began this deadly cycle,
the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, known as the Kosovo war, is still widely
considered to have been a success. It is cited as the good example of
humanitarian war and used as an argument in favor of still more armed
interventions. As long as the historic signi icance of that war remains largely
unrecognized, it can be considered a perfect crime: it worked and the culprits
got away with it.
The Kosovo war marked the end of a pause following the end of the Cold War
and the great truce sought by Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet elite who
fancied that the moment had come to make peace in the world. That pause was
the moment when American policy makers, surprised, skeptical and even
frustrated by the sudden disappearance of their enemy number one, tried to
catch their breath. What would happen to the military-industrial complex, all
those juicy Pentagon contracts, those military bases all over the world, and
those prestigious organic intellectuals busily dissecting the permanent threat
of the communist Empire of Evil? President Reagan was happy with his
success, but it left much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment in a temporary
limbo.
Gorbachev seemed to dream of a sort of historic compromise between the
two systems that had opposed each other during the Cold War. In Europe,
people imagined a gentle social-democratic world, combining the social of
socialism with the democracy of the West. Two decades later, both principles
are wounded, perhaps mortally. Social measures turned out to be revocable
once the capitalist world was no longer in competition with communism for
workers loyalty. Without the social aspect, democracy, especially in the United
States, was reduced to a casino for billionaires. Without the Soviet adversary,
there was no powerful obstacle to what the irst President Bush called the
new world order, otherwise known as globalization.
The pause was over when the Clinton administration seized the opportunity
to save NATO from the risk of obsolescence by transforming it into an
international police force. The preservation and strengthening of NATO was
necessary to maintain Washingtons post-World War II control of Western
Europe. NATO was also the nucleus of an expandable instrument of U.S.
military domination. The opportunity for its use was provided by the crisis in

Yugoslavia. The Clintons certainly did not create this crisis, but it was the
Clinton presidency that managed to spin the NATO bombing campaign in the
spring of 1999 as something entirely new: a totally humanitarian war.
In the 1980s, compliance with IMF demands concerning debt had fed
tensions between the governments of the Republics that made up the Yugoslav
federation. The Republics corresponded roughly, but unevenly, to the ethnic
identities in this multicultural nation. Yugoslavias internal dif iculties were
irst internationalized when the Federal Republic of Germany, fresh from
having achieved its longstanding goal of taking over East Germany,
aggressively championed the unilateral secession of Croatia and Slovenia from
Yugoslavia. Both were former provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that
had been merged with the Kingdom of Serbia at the end of the First World War
to become Yugoslavia, land of the Southern Slavs. Breaking up Yugoslavia was
an historic revenge of the Germanic world over the Slavic, as well as a way to
ensure German in luence over desirable Mediterranean coastal real estate.
France and Great Britain, historic allies of Serbia who had originally sponsored
the creation of Yugoslavia, more or less reluctantly aligned themselves with
German anti-Serb policy for the sake of European unity under pressure from a
coordinated propaganda campaign. Serbias other historic ally, Russia,
staggering under the U.S.-backed presidency of Boris Yeltsin, was too weak and
too confused to matter.
A massive Western media campaign, begun in Germany and soon fueled by
the biased press releases of hired public relations irms, played on far-fetched
analogies to portray Serbia as a ledgling Nazi Germany and its president
Slobodan Milosevic as a new Hitler. Milosevics uncertain efforts to hold
Yugoslavia together, or at least to protect the rights of Serbs living in parts of
Yugoslavia outside the Serbian Republic, were absurdly likened to the Third
Reichs campaign to conquer Europe. The con licting territorial claims that
resulted from the non-negotiated secession of Republics composing the
Yugoslav Federation were portrayed as naked Serb aggression. When the civil
war spread from Croatia to tri-national Bosnia-Herzegovina, temporary
prisoner camps set up by the Bosnian Serbs were compared to Nazi
concentration camps by Western media, while similar camps set up by
Bosnian Muslims and Croats were ignored.
The success of the analogy with the Second World war in demonizing the
Serbs was all the more remarkable in that the breakup of Yugoslavia was in
some ways a continuation of the two World Wars, when Serbia had been a
victim of German invasion. The Croatian secession was largely engineered by
successors of the fascist Ustasha movement which had massacred Serbs in
order to carve an ethnically-pure independent Croatian State out of Yugoslavia
in Nazi-dominated Europe. The leader of the Muslim party in power in

Sarajevo, Alija Izetbegovic, had been a Nazi sympathizer in his youth.

Fifty years after the Nazi defeat, a generation was in power that had been
raised on a mythical simpli ication of World War II, with little or no knowledge
of the historic origins of con lict in the Balkans. The reversal of wartime roles
passed unnoticed. A generation that had known peace seemed almost eager
for the drama of living in exciting times and the challenge of condemning
new Nazis. The Hitler analogy dictated the response: the free world must
be ready to use force against the threat, so as not to repeat Munich. That
analogy always serves to rule out any search for compromise, stigmatized in
advance as giving a green light to dictators.
Yet this was a case of a purely local con lict where unbiased international
mediation might well have been effective in working out a compromise to
avoid bloodshed. Rather than attempting to mediate, or urging unbiased
United Nations mediation, the Clinton administration (which took of ice in
January 1993) rapidly chose sides. An initial territorial compromise between
leaders of the Muslim, Serb and Croat communities in Bosnia-Hercegovina,
sponsored by the European Community 23, which would have avoided civil
war, fell apart when it was rejected by Alija Izetbegovic, after the U.S.
ambassador told him he could get a better deal without it.
The Bosnian war ended in 1995 on terms quite similar to the deal rejected
by Izetbegovic in 1993. Twenty years later, all that remains from two years of
slaughter is bitter resentment, grief, hatred and distrust emotions that block
reconciliation and maintain the dependency of enemy-brothers on their
respective foreign sponsors.

Hillary Goes to War

When voters elected Bill Clinton president of the United States in 1992, they
were also electing his wife. Bill announced the fact himself, but after the failure
of her health reform plan, Hillarys only political success was her excellent
performance in the role of a faithful wife who stands by her man. Her brave
defense of her frivolous husband was widely appreciated, but as a quali ication
for the highest of ice in the land, it seems a bit skimpy. Having played a part in
wars in the former Yugoslavia might seem more presidential.
During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, Hillary evoked the foreign
policy experience she had gained as First Lady by repeatedly regaling
audiences with an exciting account of her trip to the Bosnian city of Tuzla in
1996:
I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, she told audiences. There was
a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too
dangerous, the president couldnt go, so send the First Lady. I remember
landing under sniper ire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting

ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get
into the vehicles to get to our base.
As word got around of what she was telling audiences, Hillarys story was
rapidly denied by numerous eyewitnesses to the event, as well as by television
footage showing Ms. Clinton arriving in Tuzla with her daughter Chelsea and
being greeted by little children offering flowers.
Cornered by the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board during an interview
in late March, 2008, Hillary Clinton was forced to acknowledge that there were
no snipers, but eased her way out: I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said
something that, you know, I say a lot of things millions of words a day so if I
misspoke it was just a misstatement, she said.
She never had to dodge sniper ire, but she does know how to dodge
embarrassing questions. The fact that she utters millions of words per day is
supposed to give her a generous quota of possible misstatements, or to put
it more simply, lies.
The claim to have run from snipers was historically absurd and morally
pretentious, in addition to being blatantly false. Four months before her visit,
the hostilities in Bosnia had been decisively brought to a halt by the Dayton
peace accords, signed on November 21, 1995. She could not fail to know that.
Indeed, far from being sent to a place that was too dangerous for the
President, the visit by the First Lady and her daughter was intended precisely
to emphasize that the White House had not lost interest in Bosnia even though
peace had been restored. Hillarys spokesman Howard Wolfson had also added
to the misstatements by claiming that she was on the front lines of a
potential combat zone. Aside from the fact that there could be no front lines
or combat zone when the war was over, Tuzla had never been either one.
Tuzla was a largely Muslim-inhabited industrial center which had been
selected as a U.S. military base, probably in part because it was a particularly
safe environment.
Lying about Bosnia was nothing unusual, but this was a particularly silly,
self-aggrandizing lie. Hillary evidently assumed that a brush with gun ire
would be considered by the masses as adding to her quali ications to become
Commander in Chief. It also showed a persistent tendency to view con licts as
occasions to display personal toughness, instead of as challenges calling for
intelligent understanding of political complexities. Hillarys claim to have
braved sniper ire is not so far removed from Sarah Palins claim to understand
Russia because she could see it from Alaska.
Hillarys recorded statements concerning the former Yugoslavia revealed
the same tendency to play to the galleries in matters of foreign policy that
would mark her subsequent term as Secretary of State.

The Holocaust Pretext

In her star-struck biography of the First Lady, Hillarys Choice, Gail Sheehy
reported Hillarys plea in favor of bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 as a major point
in her favor. According to Sheehys book, Hillary convinced her reluctant
husband to unleash the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against the Serbs
with the argument that: You cant let this ethnic cleansing go on at the end of
the century that has seen the Holocaust.
This line is theatrical and totally irrelevant to the con lict in the Balkans. As a
matter of fact, there was no ethnic cleansing going on in Kosovo at that time.
It was the NATO bombing that soon led people to lee in all directions a
reaction that NATO leaders interpreted as the very ethnic cleansing they
claimed to prevent by bombing. But Hillarys remark illustrates the fact that
Yugoslavia marks the start of using reference to the Holocaust as the most
emotionally-potent argument in favor of war.
It was not always so. At the end of World War II, both the long-suffering
survivors and those who discovered the horrors of the Nazi concentration
camps wanted only to draw the conclusion that this was yet another powerful
reason never again to go to war. But as time passed, by the strange chemistry
of the Zeitgeist, the memory of the Holocaust has now become the strongest
rhetorical argument for war. It is a sort of imaginary revisionism of past
history that gets in the way of facing the present. Hillarys sentence is a way of
saying, I would have said no to Hitler at Munich, or I would have bombed
Auschwitz. The history of World War II, and even world history itself, has been
totally overshadowed in recent decades by the tragedy of the Holocaust to
such an extent that even Western heads of State may ind themselves acting
out the dramas of the past instead of facing the realities of the present. The
con lict in Kosovo was so obscure, so unfamiliar to Americans and so distorted
by deception and self-deception 24, that the easiest way to think of it was by
analogy with a con lict everyone knew about, or thought they knew about. The
moral reward seemed immense, especially in consideration of the low cost,
since it entailed bombing a country with inadequate air defenses, with no
great risk to our side.
It is worth noting that Hillary urged Bill to bomb the Serbs via telephone,
while she was in North Africa, touring Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Her guide
on that trip was her new assistant, Huma Abedin, the young daughter of
Muslim scholars and her trusted expert on the Muslim world. Many secular
Arab nationalists in North Africa sympathized with the Serbs, due to past good
relations with Yugoslavia during the days of the Non-Aligned Movement.
However, Hillary had become an apprentice in learning to appreciate the
fundamentalist Muslim outlook, and the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo

enjoyed widespread, even fanatical support, in the Islamic world at this point.
Did Huma assure Hillary that Muslims everywhere would applaud the Clinton
administration for bombing Serbs?
Nevertheless, there are strong reasons to doubt that Hillarys moralistic
urging was the sole cause of the NATO bombing of what remained of the
former Yugoslavia in 1999. Strategists were concerned with less sentimental
geopolitical reasons, brie ly alluded to above. But there is much less reason to
doubt that Hillary did indeed urge Bill to bomb. And there is no reason at all to
doubt that she boasted of this to her awed biographer, as a way of proving her
resolve to use U.S. military power on a humanitarian mission. It its her
chosen image as tough and caring.

Crime Pays
What was really at stake in Kosovo?
The Holocaust analogy favors regarding every ethnic con lict in dualistic
terms, with diabolical racists on one side who plan genocide against angelic
victims on the other. The world is rarely like that. In reality, there were human
beings on both sides of the Kosovo con lict, with their reasons and their faults.
The Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo were sharply divided by language and
customs, making coexistence dif icult. The Serbs were, in their own
estimation, state builders, yearning for modern institutions. The Albanians
were still attached to their medieval code of honor, and cared little for law and
order. There were prominent individuals on both sides willing to
compromise. Why not let them work things out? Indeed, why not help them
work it out? At least they knew each other and understood what was at stake.
But when strangers barge in, they not only change the relationship of forces:
they change the story. The Americans picked a small group of armed
Kosovars engaged in criminal activities that called themselves the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) to be the good guys, and gave of icial approval to a
version of the story that lattered their protgs. As a result, the of icial
Western story of Kosovo is a tissue of lies.
Incidentally, calling themselves Kosovars was a public relations device
used by ethnic Albanian separatists, making it sound as if there were a country
called Kosovo whose indigenous inhabitants were Kosovars, implying that the
Serbs didnt really belong there. The word Kosovo comes from the Serbian
expression kosovo polje meaning ield of blackbirds, with Kosovo meaning
of blackbirds. It is an historic Serbian heartland where the Albanian-speaking
population had grown sharply in recent decades, due to immigration from
neighboring Albania and having the highest birthrate in Europe. The
Kosovars were Albanian nationalists who waved the Albanian lag, strongly
supported by their cousins just across the border in Albania.

The general public in the West readily believed that the Kosovo war was a
humanitarian rescue operation and a successful one as well, since it cost no
lives on our side. Thus the irst geopolitical purpose of this little war was
achieved: it served as an advertisement for war itself. The operation proved
that a strong propaganda campaign with an emphasis on alleged victims of
potential genocide could successfully lout the United Nations peacekeeping
system established at the end of World War II. NATO simply proceeded
without Security Council authorization, in blatant violation of international
law, and the in luence of its leading members led to the creation of a special
International Tribunal, with the United Nations stamp of approval, whose
main task was to prosecute Serbians for war crimes. Thus, the main object of
the Kosovo war was to put the United States and NATO above the law, where
they remain to this day.
The bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 10, destroying much of
Serbias infrastructure and industry, as well as killing, wounding and
demoralizing countless civilians. Casualty igures remain uncertain, but a
study published by the medical journal The Lancet estimated that 12,000
deaths in the total population could be attributed to the war in one way or
another.
During the bombing, spokesmen for the participating NATO powers accused
the Serbs of slaughtering innocent Kosovars by the tens to hundreds of
thousands, and the Western media eagerly spread false stories of mass rape
and mass graves. German propaganda loated a report on Operation
Horseshoe, an action designed to empty the province of its entire Albanian
population. All of this was invented. After the war, international investigators
found no evidence of the alleged atrocities. But negative reports of no
massacres can never undo earlier reports of genocidal massacres
trumpeted during the bombing campaign. War propaganda makes its real
impression at the moment when people are interested. Refutations come
when people have lost interest. The same old lies continue to be repeated to
this day.
Despite the bitterness of the combat between Serbs defending their country
and KLA separatists (who were supported both by NATO air strikes and by
forces in iltrated across the mountains from neighboring Albania),
investigators found evidence of somewhere between two to four thousand
deaths in Kosovo during the war, co unting all sides and all manner of fatalities.
There may have been more, but in any case, it was not enough to enable the
NATO-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to
indict Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for genocide, as planned. To
compensate, it inally accused him instead of crimes in Bosnia that he could
not have committed, and had actually tried in vain to forestall. He died in a

Dutch prison in March 2006, apparently from medical neglect, before having
completed his defense. Meanwhile, crimes committed by the KLA during the
con lict were ignored by the media and by ICTY. A request to examine crimes
by the NATO aggressors was, of course, rejected as groundless.
Yugoslavia had no air defenses capable of repelling NATOs deluge of bombs
and missiles. Nevertheless, the bombing failed completely to defeat or to even
seriously damage the Serbian army, which had remained virtually intact and
prepared to repel a land invasion. Putting U.S. boots on the ground in Serbia
against well-trained Serbian soldiers defending their homeland would have
spoiled the fun by causing American casualties. But the heavy damage to
Serbias civilian infrastructure, bridges, factories, schools and hospitals, and
the threats of total destruction relayed by international mediators, induced
President Milosevic to consent to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and
allow international forces led by NATO to occupy the province. The conditions
for this withdrawal were spelled out in a June 9, 1999 agreement reached in
the Macedonian town of Kumanovo and formalized as U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1244. This agreement allowed foreign forces to enter Kosovo as
KFOR (Kosovo forces). In return, it gave certain guarantees to Yugoslavia
and Serbia which the United States and NATO failed to respect.
Resolution 1244 stipulated that Kosovo would enjoy substantial selfgovernment and substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, taking into account the principles of sovereignty and territorial
integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It also called for
demilitarization of the KLA.
This was in reality a conditional surrender. The Americans almost
immediately undertook to treat it as an unconditional surrender. Serb forces
withdrew as agreed, but the commitment to allow Serbian forces to man key
border points, which would have prevented the uncontrolled in lux of
Albanians from Albania into Kosovo, was not respected. Russian forces, which
were supposed to participate in the occupation of Kosovo, were pushed aside
and finally out.
On June 30, 1999, ten days after the cease ire agreement, Chris Hedges
reported to the New York Times that the KLA had taken sweeping control of
Kosovo, establishing a network of self-appointed ministries and local
councils, seizing businesses and apartments, and collecting taxes and customs
payments in the absence of a strong international police presence. Despite a
peace agreement that called for an administration appointed by the United
Nations and the fact that the KLA militants had no legal standing, they have
created a fait accompli.
The chief U.N. administrator for Kosovo, French humanitarian
interventionist Bernard Kouchner, shrugged and said: It is always like this

after wars of liberation.

The KLA, instead of being demilitarized, as promised in Resolution 1244,
was gradually transformed into a police force and then into an army allied to
NATO. Washingtons chosen client, KLA leader Hashim Thaci, was installed in
power for a long time to come. Ibrahim Rugova, the leader whom Kosovo
Albanians had chosen for themselves in 1992 and who had been willing to seek
compromise with Milosevic, was marginalized by the KLA and died of lung
cancer in 2006.
Immediately after moving their occupation forces into Kosovo, the United
States set about building a thousand-acre U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel,
on stolen farmland. There was nothing in any international agreement
authorizing this huge U.S. base, which is still there.
A genuine ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians took place under NATO
occupation. But Albanians themselves were also victims of Hashim Thacis
takeover. On June 25, a front page article in the New York Times entitled
Kosovos Rebels Accused of Executions in the Ranks reported that senior
KLA commanders carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their
ranks to thwart potential rivals, according to rebel army members and
Western diplomats. The campaign, in which as many as half a dozen top rebel
commanders were shot dead, was directed by Hashim Thaci and two of his
lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhabit Haliti. In his takeover, Thaci appointed Syla
as Kosovos defense minister.
Thaci was involved, along with Haliti, in arms smuggling from Switzerland
in the years before the 1998 uprising, the New York Times continued.
Violence has long swirled around Thaci, whose nom de guerre was Snake. In
June 1997, a Kosovar Albanian reporter, Ali Uka, was found dead in the
apartment he shared with Thaci, his face dis igured by repeated stabbings
with a screwdriver and the butt end of a broken bottle, the newspaper added.
A famous photo taken on July 29, 1999, shows Madeleine Albright being
fondly embraced by the photogenic Hashim Thaci as part of her welcome to
Pristina. Yes sir, thats my baby.
That very day, the Wall Street Journal speculated that: In coming years, the
risk is that the guerillas will turn against the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization if their demands for an independent Kosovo remain unful illed.
But U.S. of icials say the courting of Mr. Thaci is one guarantee against that
danger.
Indeed. That is because Thaci was sure to get what he wanted.
In March 2004, when tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians rampaged
against Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries, the main Western
response was to show understanding for their vandalism by attributing it to
impatience at not achieving full independence. Negotiations with Belgrade

to decide the future of Kosovo according to Resolution 1244 got nowhere. In

the knowledge that they enjoyed full support from the United States, the
Albanians had no motivation to make even the slightest concession. When
Hashim Thacis KLA regime unilaterally declared Kosovos independence in
February 2008, in blatant de iance of the Resolution 1244 pledge to respect
the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the United States and
most (but not all) EU Member States quickly gave their approval. (Spain,
Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus declined to recognize the independence
of Kosovo.)

A Criminal State
Although Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008, it
was still far from independent. Not only was a chunk of its territory
transformed into a massive U.S. military base, but the country was still
occupied by foreign KFOR troops protecting the remaining Serb enclaves, and
its administration was still under the supervision of the U.N. Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK). By this time, it was obvious to all the occupiers that one
principal attribute of a sovereign state was drastically missing in Kosovo: a
justice system capable of enforcing the law. When the Serbs left, they took law
and order with them.
The main obstacle to law and order in Kosovo irst became obvious when
the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) attempted to
put the notorious KLA clan leader Ramush Haradinaj on trial. While prime
minister of Kosovo, Haradinaj was indicted in February 2005 on 37 counts of
atrocities, including murder, torture and rape, committed against Serbs and
suspected Albanian sympathizers in 1998. Prosecution witnesses refused to
testify, citing fear of retribution. Acquitted in April 2008, Haradinaj was retried
on a prosecution appeal and acquitted a second time in November 2012 for
lack of credible witness testimony. Whenever a KLA big shot went on trial,
witnesses for the prosecution melted away murdered, retracted,
disappeared, suicided. And every indictment of an important KLA igure would
lead to street demonstrations in Pristina with the complaint that Kosovo was
being slandered.
The obstacle to law and order in Kosovo comes down to one word: omerta.
The Albanian population is so disciplined, or so intimidated, that conviction of
their criminal clan leaders is virtually impossible. Moreover, according to
Albanian custom, justice is a personal or family matter, not a matter it for
public accusation and legal institution. Cooperation with police often takes the
form of bribing them.
This was all far enough away from the United States not to bother American
of icials, who still seemed fond of their clients. But many Europeans were

disturbed by the activities of this little criminal statelet on their doorstep.

Therefore, on December 9, 2008, the European Union launched its most
ambitious civilian operation abroad, the E.U. mission for justice in Kosovo,
known as EULEX. The mission also involved the United States, Turkey,
Switzerland and Norway, as well as other E.U. Member States.
It has not been a great success. True, in three years, EULEX handed down
just over two hundred verdicts in criminal cases involving organized crime,
corruption, traf icking of women and drugs, and murder. But this must be
considered disappointing for a mission with nearly three thousand employees
and many more crimes to investigate. Crowds continue to demonstrate
against any indictment of one of their own, and prosecution witnesses
continue to evaporate. Instead of having cured local corruption, EULEX
members find themselves accused of having been corrupted themselves.
The biggest scandal implicating Kosovos KLA leaders concerns pro iteering
from the illegal traf ic of human organs. The accusation has been tossed
around like a hot potato between the ICTY, the Council of Europe and EULEX. It
began in 2008, when the former ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte published a
book of memoirs in Italian entitled The Hunt, alleging that because NATO
collaborated with the KLA during the war, investigations into KLA crimes were
nipped in the bud. In particular, she wrote that she was not allowed to pursue
an inquiry into the alleged KLA sales of human organs extracted from civilian
prisoners (killed in the process). Witnesses had reported that the prisoners
were held in a yellow house across the border in Albania.
When asked about the yellow house by a Serb reporter, the irst UNMIK
chief, French humanitarian intervention advocate Bernard Kouchner,
snorted in loud fake laughter and told the reporter that he should have his
head examined.25
However, on January 25, 2011, the Council of Europe endorsed a report from
its Parliamentary Assembly, made up of elected representatives from 47
countries, by Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty, which indeed con irmed the
existence of credible, convergent indications of illegal trade in human organs
going back over a decade. The victims included Albanian civilians who
opposed the KLA, as well as a small number of Serb prisoners, killed for this
purpose. However, as the report lacked any judicial weight, Marty called for the
case to be tried in a legitimate court.
Meanwhile, police uncovered an active organ traf icking ring operating in
the Medicus clinic in Pristina. On October 15, 2010, a EULEX court indicted
several people, including a former Kosovo government Health Secretary, for
non-lethal kidney transplants. The organ traf ic was allegedly organized to
bene it Israeli patients. Other prosecutions followed, but no legal action was
taken concerning transplants from prisoners held in Albania at the end of the

war.
EULEX passed the hot potato on to John Clint Williamson, an American
prosecutor who had worked as an ICTY trial attorney and as an expert at the
trials of Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia. On July 29, 2014, in Brussels,
Williamson issued a progress report of the EU Special Investigative Task Force
con irming Martys allegations. Williamson accused senior of icials of the
KLA of unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal
detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, other forms of
inhumane treatment, forced displacements of individuals from their homes
and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other
religious sites. Williamson said that these crimes were conducted in an
organized fashion and were sanctioned by certain individuals in the top levels
of the KLA leadership and resulted in the ethnic cleansing of large portions of
the Serb and Roma population from those areas in Kosovo south of the Ibar
River, with the exception of a few scattered minority enclaves.
But Williamson saw little chance that the perpetrators of the lethal organ
transplants would ever be prosecuted. Fifteen years down the line, we have
solid information that these things happened, but no physical evidence. There
are no bodies, no names of victims, Williamson told The Guardian.
Otherwise, this disclosure was almost entirely ignored by mainstream
media. Information about the ghastly crime of cutting open prisoners to steal
their organs has seeped out in such small doses, over such a long period of
time, that the whole affair is likely to fade away almost unnoticed.
Referring to the impact of witness intimidation, Williamsons report said
that: There is probably no single thing that poses more of a threat to rule of
law in Kosovo and of its progress toward a European future than this
pervasive practice.
In July 2011, Der Spiegel interviewed an unidenti ied German policeman who
had worked in Kosovo for over ten years, and who said that we have achieved
almost nothing because of the traditional clan structure. Nobody dares be a
whistleblower. The only thing thats clear is that Kosovo is irmly in the grip
of organized crime, he said. Kosovo is a country in which centuries-old
traditions live on, and blood feuds are part of the culture. We Central
Europeans have not been able to convince the Kosovars of the bene its of
adopting a new legal and value system like the one we have in the West.
Wasnt that perhaps precisely the main problem that the Serbs had with
Kosovo?
However, unlike the multinational EULEX, the Serb police spoke Albanian,
understood the Albanians, and could probably do a better job of combating
crime than strangers from some thirty countries who are forced to rely on
Albanian interpreters vetted by the very same gangsters under suspicion.

Liberated from Serbia, Kosovos economic situation is worse than ever. It is

an impoverished backwater where many people suffer from disappointment
that independence has not brought about an anticipated golden age. Without
employment, education or security, more and more Kosovars are trying
desperately to emigrate to E.U. countries. Seven years after Kosovo declared
independence, Hungary, Austria and Germany moved to speed up procedures
for rejecting the growing lood of fake asylum seekers who lee Kosovo in
search of some way to make a living. Nevertheless, some Albanian nationalists
still aspire to create what they call Natural Albania by acquiring more pieces
of southern Serbia, a swath of Montenegro, a piece of Greece and about half of
Macedonia. Resentment is growing at the European Unions wavering effort to
introduce legal order from outside.
Kosovo is neither fully independent nor a real state. It remains under foreign
occupation, has no functioning judiciary branch of its own, and its economy is
dependent on crime. Instead of ensuring regional peace, Kosovo has whetted
the appetite of frustrated Albanian nationalists for still more territory to be
carved out of neighboring countries. Money from the Gulf States promotes
Islamic extremism, and threats persist against the remaining Serbian
monasteries, even when they are of icial United Nations Heritage Sites.
Kosovo is a small, but still boiling, pot.

The Kosovo Experiment

During the 1993-2000 Clinton Presidency, Yugoslavia was used by the
foreign policy establishment as an experimental laboratory to test techniques
of U.S. control, subversion and regime change that would subsequently be
practiced elsewhere. Viewing Yugoslavia as a mini-USSR, with Serbia in the
role of Russia, breaking up Yugoslavia and subsequently Serbia itself (by
detaching Kosovo) was a rehearsal for the process we have recently seen
unfolding in Ukraine, with Russia as the target.
The same techniques are recognizable:
Hitlerization. The aggression begins as a propaganda war, waged by
mainstream media organically linked to leading government policy makers
and think tanks. In the irst stage, the targeted country virtually disappears
under the shadow of its leader, labeled a dictator (even if fairly elected), who
is portrayed as the embodiment of evil on earth and must go. Personalities
as diverse as Slobodan Miloevi, Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadda i, Bachar
al-Assad and now Vladimir Putin have been cast in the role of the new Hitler.
Sanctions. Economic sanctions against the Hitler of the day serve to
stigmatize the evil one, destabilize relations and rally internal allies who still
hesitate to have recourse to arms but are willing to go along with the
supposedly peaceful method of making him change his ways. When

sanctions fail, public opinion has been prepared to consider military force
necessary.
Local clients. The United States has a long record of supporting the worst
elements in the targeted state, forces that will stop at nothing. In Serbia, the
United States gave political and military support to ruthless criminals. In
Muslim countries, the U.S. has supported and armed Islamic fanatics. In
Ukraine, the anti-Russian campaign relies on unrepentant Nazi militias to rule
the streets.
Human Rights NGOs. So-called Non-Governmental Organizations, in reality
closely linked to or even inanced directly by the U.S. government (most
notably the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiaries), play a
central role in claiming to incarnate a genuine democracy which is being
strangled by the targeted Hitler when police intervene against the disorder
provoked by genuine democrats. Scenarios adapted by political scientist
Gene Sharp from the experiences of revolutionary or progressive movements
are used as the training manual for actions designed to win sympathy by
provoking state repression, with no political content beyond opposition to the
present ruler. The agitation of the Otpor youth group in Serbia, trained by
U.S. specialists in Budapest, was the model adapted later for subsequent color
revolutions.
Sabotaging diplomacy. To prepare the Kosovo war, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright stage-managed false negotiations between the Yugoslav
government and Albanian nationalists from Kosovo at the Rambouillet
chateau, keeping them apart, replacing professor Ibrahim Rugova as the head
of the Albanian delegation with her criminal client Hashim Thaci, and
introducing an ultimatum (total military occupation of Serbia) that obliged the
Serbs to refuse and thus take blame for refusing to negotiate. It has become
customary for U.S. representatives in the United Nations to sabotage
negotiations by moralizing tirades, insults and lies.
Criminalization. In regard to the Yugoslav con lict, the overwhelming
in luence of the United States enabled Washington to initiate the practice of
using international tribunals to treat the enemy as common criminals rather
than as political adversaries. The concept of joint criminal enterprise, used
in U.S. criminal law against ma ia gangs, was imported into the ad hoc
International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia to apply to the Serbs,
with the implication that the mere defense of Serbian interests was criminal.
Subsequently, the United States has succeeded in in luencing the International
Criminal Court (to which the United States itself does not adhere) to indict
enemies such as Moammar Gadda i on the basis of unsubstantiated
accusations. This procedure helps to rule out peace negotiations, since it is
claimed that one cannot negotiate with an indicted criminal.

Scare Word Genocide. Whenever the United States takes sides in an ethnic
or political con lict somewhere, the usual procedure is to accuse the other side
of planning to commit genocide. This rules out consideration that both sides
may be ighting for speci ic territorial or political gains which, if properly
understood, might be mediated.
Media and propaganda. The key to the whole system of aggression is the
U.S. mastery of a vast propaganda machine, centered on mainstream media.
Background music is provided by the entertainment industry, Hollywood in
particular, which churns out glori ications of the use of violence to smash an
enemy. Video games are a powerful new factor in normalizing killer instincts.
Fact and iction blend together in the visual imagination of endless battles
between Good and Evil, packaged and sold to the American public.
Bombing. This is the inal argument, the sword of Damocles hanging over
every dispute.
For the Pentagon, NATO, the CIA, the NED, mainstream media, and the U.S.
foreign policy establishment, the Kosovo War was an excellent learning
experience, a training ground, a preparation for future adventures. It was the
war to start wars.
For the Clintons, Kosovo was a distraction from personal scandals and an
opportunity to step onto the big stage of world affairs. Bill Clinton is
worshiped in Kosovo as the founding father of this little U.S. protectorate
wrested from Serbia. A ten-foot high gilded statue of the Arkansas benefactor
waves from Bill Clinton Boulevard, with a clothing boutique named Hillary
nearby. While the United States is increasingly hated around the world for its
military interventions and constant bullying, this intervention has created an
enclave of fanatic pro-Americans. On her visit to Pristina in 2010, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton was able to bask in adulation. It says a lot about U.S.
decline in the eyes of the world that Kosovo and Albania are today the most
enthusiastically pro-American places on earth. It is nothing to be proud of.

Chapter 5
Libya: a War of Her Own
As mounting chaos engulfed the Middle East and Ukraine in 2014, a visibly
disoriented President Obama characterized his foreign policy caution by a
caveat: Dont do stupid shit. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for The
Atlantic, Hillary Clinton stepped up to the plate to show she had sterner
presidential iber: Great nations need organizing principles, and Dont do
stupid stuff is not an organizing principle.
She did not make clear what her organizing principles would be, but one of
her favorite principles has been the right, or responsibility to protect,
shortened to the catchy English tag R2P. This principle has turned out to be a
disorganizing principle, used to destroy whatever order may have existed in
the protected region. In the wake of the Kosovo war, Washington strongly
promoted R2P as a potential principle of the United Nations, to be invoked in
any future Kosovo-type situation as the perfect excuse to undermine the
principle of national sovereignty.
R2P was the principle behind Hillarys very own war, the 2011 assault on
Libya, which turned out to be some of the most stupid shit ever dumped on a
defenseless country.
The pretext for this war was the series of mass protest demonstrations that
began in Tunisia on December 18, 2010, labeled the Arab spring by the
media. This label turned out to be unduly optimistic, implying that the whole
region was blossoming into something bright, happy and of course
democratic, in the Western sense.
Most of the leaders targeted by the Arab Spring protests were longtime
friends of the West and clients of the United States. Washington, Paris and
London were embarrassed. But there was one striking exception: In February
2011, crowds in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi demonstrated against the
countrys leader Moammar Gadda i. Eureka! Here was an opportunity to put
R2P into practice against a man who had been solidly detested by the West
ever since he took power over forty years ago.
Colonel Gadda i irst came on the scene in 1969 as a sincere revolutionary in
a revolutionary period. He was a Bedouin who had become an army of icer in a
country that hardly existed.
Once a thriving grain producer for the Roman Empire, the region irst known
as Africa declined into a distant backwater for well over a thousand years,
made up of sand, Arabized Berber tribes, a few cities and the impressive ruins
of a rich past. After centuries under the Ottoman Empire, the region was
conquered by Italy in the irst part of the twentieth century, and divided

between Cyrenaica in the East and Tripolitania in the West. In 1934, Italy gave
the colony the of icial name of Libya. By losing World War II, Italy also lost its
colonies and in 1951, the United Nations recognized the British-sponsored
Emir of Cyrenaica, Idris al-Mahdi as-Senussi, who had led armed anti-Italian
resistance, as King Idris the irst of Libya. The United States took over Italys
air base near Tripoli and renamed it the Wheelus Air Base. Major oil resources
were discovered in 1959 and King Idris followed the common pattern of
keeping the oil wealth for himself and his entourage.
As a young of icer inspired by the Arab nationalism of Egyptian president
Gamel Abdel Nasser, Moammer Gadda i led a bloodless coup against King Idris
in 1969. When the king was deposed, the United States was compelled to give
up Wheelus Air Base. Gadda i undertook to build an original system called the
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya based on a hybrid of moderate Muslim morality,
welfare state socialism, direct democracy and local customs. The opposition
loyal to King Idris and his traditional Islam were repressed, while great strides
were made in education, womens rights and social welfare. The General
Peoples Congress chose the government, while Gadda i retained power as a
sort of spiritual Guide.
The early Gadda i lavished support on foreign revolutionaries: the Palestine
Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army, the African National
Congress, and the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara. This largesse won
him the lasting gratitude of Nelson Mandela, but also a wide range of bitter
enemies. As his revolutionary protgs came to terms with their enemies, the
Libyan leader apparently felt left behind, and inally gave up similar support in
his effort to make peace with the West.
As the Nasserian dream of Arab unity faded, Gadda i turned away from the
Arab world, which he openly condemned as hypocritical, corrupt and
treacherous. He redirected his generous ambitions of anti-imperialist unity
toward Africa, rede ining Libya as African rather than Arab, and inancing
major projects to help develop the continent and provide it with inancial
independence.
On the memorable date of the ninth day of the ninth month in 1999, African
leaders assembled in the central Libyan coastal city of Sirte, Gadda is home
town, and formally replaced the Organization of African Unity (UAO) with the
African Union (AU). The Sirte Declaration, issued on that occasion, claimed
to have been inspired by Colonel Gadda is vision of a strong and united
Africa, capable of meeting global challenges and shouldering its responsibility
to harness the human and natural resources of the continent in order to
improve the living conditions of its peoples.
In Ethiopia in February 2009, Gadda i was elected chairman of the 53-nation
African Union, pledging that he would continue to insist that our sovereign

countries work to achieve the United States of Africa. He envisioned a single

African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans to
move freely around the continent.
During Gadda is reign, the old ishing town of Sirte was greatly modernized
and beauti ied as the potential capital of an eventual United Africa. At the end
of NATOs war to save Benghazi, Sirte was in ruins.
Gadda is reputation in the West was so bad that it was easy to blame him
for any unsolved crime. The prime example is the explosion that brought down
Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing 270
people. Initial and persisting suspicions attributed the attack to a terrorist
group hired for the task by Iran, as revenge for the downing of an Iranian
civilian airliner by a U.S. Navy cruiser over the Persian Gulf the previous July. 26
The United States had never even apologized for having shot down a regularlyscheduled Iran Air light from Tehran to Dubai on July 3, 1988, killing 290
civilians. Blaming Gadda i because he does that sort of thing was no doubt
less embarrassing to Washington than calling attention to Irans revenge
scenario.
The United States accused two Libyans of planting a time bomb in a suitcase
that was transferred from a light from Malta at Frankfurt and London airports
before it exploded over Scotland. Evidence emerged after the trial that the
Swiss timing device discovered by U.S. agents at the crash scene was a
demonstration model which could not have been sold to Libya, as alleged by
the prosecution, and must have been planted by the agents who found it. In
the hope of getting the West to lift sanctions punishing Libya for Lockerbie,
Gadda i inally agreed to let two accused Libyans be put on trial by a special
Scottish court meeting in the Netherlands. Under heavy U.S. pressure for a
conviction, one Libyan was found guilty and the other was acquitted.
Interviewed by the author in Tripoli in 2007, lawyers for the convicted Libyan
believed that evidence of a frame-up was so compelling that the pending
appeal would lead to a second acquittal. Suffering from cancer, the convicted
man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was persuaded to drop his appeal in order to be
allowed to go home and spend his last days with his family. Thus the appeal
court avoided having to deal with the evidence showing that U.S. agents had
framed the Libyans.27
Even though he maintained Libyas innocence, Gadda i paid compensation
to the Lockerbie victims, ostentatiously gave up weapons of mass
destruction (which perhaps never quite existed), and made every effort to
overcome his bad reputation and normalize relations with the West. These
concessions were made largely to satisfy the desire of much of the Libyan elite
to inally belong to a normal country. His most politically ambitious son, Saif
al Islam Gadda i, studied in London and was pressing for Westernization and

democratic reforms. This appeared to be the natural direction that Libyas

evolution would take.
By 2011, Gadda i had done what he could to make peace with enemies who
evidently no longer considered him a threat. He was doing business with the
United States and Europe, and receiving high-level diplomatic visits. He had
even secretly given money to the campaign fund of French president Nicolas
Sarkozy, possibly in order to induce Sarkozy to help solve the Bulgarian
Nurses Affair the last scandal that was damaging to Libyas reputation in the
West.
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor had been sentenced to death
for poisoning over 400 children found to be infected with the HIV virus in the
El Fatih childrens hospital in Benghazi. Disclosure of this baf ling epidemic in
1999 caused an understandable public outcry and demand for the perpetrators
to be found and punished. Suspicion turned to nurses recruited by a Bulgarian
state-owned company, Expomed, to work in Benghazi for better wages than
they would get in Bulgaria. This led to their arrests and conviction.
In Europe it was taken for granted that the charges were trumped up and
false, and the assumption was that this was another criminal act by Moammer
Gadda i. Thus, when I was in Tripoli in 2007 to attend a conference on the
International Criminal Court, I was surprised to learn that even Westernized
jurists, critical of Gadda i, believed that the Bulgarian nurses were guilty. This
assumption seemed to be based primarily on analogy with other cases,
unfamiliar to most Westerners, where Americans or Europeans had used
Africans as unsuspecting guinea pigs in medical experiments.
Clearly, the Libyan public irmly believed in the nurses guilt. This meant that
it was politically dif icult to release them and allow them to go home, as
European governments demanded. But Saif al-Islam, who had publicly
criticized the trial of the nurses, evidently wanted to put an end to the medical
workers ordeal and hasten Libyas acceptance by the West. The problem was
to do so without enraging public opinion in Libya.
The solution was a scenario involving French President Sarkozy and above
all, his estranged wife, Cecilia, who made a highly publicized trip to Libya in
July 2007 to rescue the nurses from the Dictator. This show was
accompanied by payments of nine and a half million euros from the European
Union to improve conditions in the Benghazi hospital. Shortly afterwards,
Gadda i paid a visit to Paris, greatly annoying his hosts by camping on the
presidential palace lawn in his Bedouin tent. This was intended to impress
folks back home in Libya that their Guide was now persona grata in Europe.
Moammar Gadda i was no longer an active demon, but he was still seen as
wildly eccentric.
Then came the Arab spring.

Opposition to Gadda i was endemic in Benghazi, the center of traditional

support for King Idris and for radical Islamists. Just as he was adored in his
native city of Sirte, he was hated in Benghazi. Taking their cue from the
Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, anti-Gadda i militants decided to stage their
own day of rage against the regime on February 17, 2011. The day was
chosen in commemoration of fourteen people who died on the same day in
2006 in clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against
disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Riots spread, but what spread much farther, and more dangerously, were
hugely exaggerated and downright false reports of what was happening.
Libya, with the highest living standard on the African continent, did not
suffer the dire economic problems that led a young Tunisian to set ire to
himself, setting off the Arab spring, nor the mass poverty of Egypt. The
Benghazi revolt was political and religious, and nothing new.
As the crisis unfolded, Gadda is claims that he was combating Islamic
extremism, including al Qaeda, in Benghazi, were dismissed in the West as farfetched. And yet, on April 15, 1998, Libya had been the irst government to
denounce Osama bin Laden to Interpol for the murder of a top German expert
on the Arab world and his wife in Sirte in 1994. Gadda i was always in a life and
death struggle against Islamic extremists for the future of Libya, and of Africa
itself. His complaint to Interpol was ignored. In this case, as in others, Western
powers found themselves more or less de facto on the side of the Islamic
extremists.
The lamboyant French agitator, Bernard-Henri Lvy, rushed to Benghazi to
champion the revolution, whisking a senior Libyan of icial, Mahmoud el
Jibril, off to Paris to convince French President Nicolas Sarkozy to go to war in
Libya. Jibril had been in charge of economic liberalization and privatization in
the Libyan government, before defecting to become a leader of the National
Transitional Council that used the Benghazi troubles to declare itself the new
legitimate government of Libya. With a Ph.D. in political science from the
University of Pittsburgh, Jibril was presentable in the West as leader of a
democratic revolution. The ardently pro-Israel Bernard-Henri Lvy openly
boasted of intervening in Libyan affairs as a Jew, giving the impression that
he thought getting rid of Gaddafi would be good for Israel. Before the television
cameras, BHL scornfully denied reports that Islamists were among the
Benghazi protesters. He had been there, he said, insisting there were no
Islamists, but only citizens yearning for Western democracy.
No Islamists? On February 22, Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yussef al
Qaradawi issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Gadda i by his own soldiers:
Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Gadda i should do so,
he told Al Jazeera television.

The United States had used Gadda is opening to the West to cultivate
relations with high ranking of icials such as Mustafa Abdul Jalil. As Minister of
Justice, Jalil had twice con irmed the death sentence for the Bulgarian nurses,
but he nevertheless quickly won Western support as the head of the National
Transitional Council. The defection of several highly-placed members of the
Gadda i regime, such as Jalil and Jibril, gave the impression that the Benghazi
riots could be used by an organized pro-West faction to carry out a fairly neat
palace coup, with a little military help from their U.S. and European friends.
Reality was not so simple.
Libyan internal political con licts became invisible as soon as the uprising
against Gadda i in Benghazi was classi ied as a human rights issue, an effort to
stop a dictator who was killing his own people. Gadda is orders to rebels to
lay down their arms were mistranslated as a threat to wipe out the entire
population of Benghazi and denounced as an imminent genocide. In reality,
Gadda i offered amnesty to rebels who laid down their arms and the
possibility of withdrawal to Egypt.
Much later, Amnesty International con irmed that in clashes with armed
rebels in Benghazi, no more than 110 people were killed on all sides, far fewer
than in the Cairo protests. But at the time, the version of events that prevailed
was based on emotional claims made by the Secretary-General of the Libyan
League for Human Rights (LLHR), Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, at a meeting of proWestern NGOs in Geneva on February 21. A letter calling for action against
Libya, made of totally unproven assertions asserted as facts by Dr.
Bouchuiguir, an expert on oil politics with close ties to the United States, was
signed by seventy NGOs and sent to President Obama, E.U. High
Representative Catherine Ashton, and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon.
The letter called on the United Nations and the international community to
take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by
the Libyan government against its own people. Without demanding evidence,
the NGOs signed onto Dr. Bouchuiguirs claims by unidenti ied witnesses
that a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and regime
loyalists have attacked demonstrators with knives, assault ri les and heavycaliber weapons. The alarmist letter went on: Snipers are shooting peaceful
protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of
demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in
their homes. Hospital of icials report numerous victims shot in the head and
chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are
reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses
report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and
from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana
Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting

the water, while others were drowned.

Listing just about every conceivable atrocity as widespread and systematic,
the letter appealed to the newly fashionable Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
doctrine which authorizes collective action, through the Security Council
including Chapter VII. In short, military action.
Signatories included Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment
for Democracy, Hillel C. Neuer of the pro-Israel United Nations Watch, and
others whose main stock in trade is harsh criticism of governments outside
the U.S/E.U./Israeli sphere of influence.
Without investigation, mainstream media spread the sensational
accusations that Gadda i was using African mercenaries and jet plane attacks
on civilians to kill his own people. No visual or documentary proof of the air
attacks ever emerged, and reliable witnesses on the spot denied they ever
existed. The accusation of employing African mercenaries was even more
sinister. It was not only false; it was the tip of the racist iceberg that underlay
the whole anti-Gadda i operation. The deplorable fact is that Gadda is turn
toward Africa alienated an important sector of the Libyan population who did
not want to identify with Africa, and who believed that Libya would be better
off following the model of oil-rich Gulf emirates, like Qatar, whose wealth is
monopolized by an Arab elite while labor is performed by ill-paid, semienslaved foreign workers with no civil rights. They were enraged by Gaddafis
proposals to distribute the countrys oil wealth among the entire population. It
was no accident that Qatars popular television channel Al Jazeera led the
media attack on Gadda i, and Qatari soldiers took part secretly in operations
on the ground.
Gadda is Libya was seen as an Eldorado by its sub-Saharan neighbor
countries. Libyas own black population, as well as immigrant African workers,
were treated decently. Gadda i had also made agreements with European
governments to prevent Libya from being a passage for clandestine African
immigration to Europe. This accord was vehemently condemned by European
leftists whose main humanitarian cause is now open borders and defense of
undocumented workers. However, stopping African mass migration toward
Europe was consistent with Gadda is long-range policy of inancing
development so as to enable Africans to stay and prosper in their own
countries. Now that he is gone, illegal immigration across the Mediterranean is
increasingly out of control.
Gadda i was a hero to most of black Africa. The black mercenary tale was a
way of twisting this reality into something malign, and also a way of covering
up the grim fact that the anti-Gadda i rebellion was marked by genuine
pogroms against blacks. Whether they were Libyan citizens or guest
workers, whole towns were emptied of their black inhabitants and thousands

were compelled into exile. By destroying Gadda is plans for inancing

independent African development, and by its brutal treatment of black people,
the anti-Gaddafi revolt was a major blow to black Africa.
Hillary Clinton, who claims that her irst youthful political awakening came
from listening to Martin Luther King, Jr. denounce racism, eagerly supported
using U.S. military force to support an uprising that was racist at its core and
devastating to the black people of the region. On March 24 she proclaimed:
When the Libyan people sought to realize their democratic aspirations, they
were met by extreme violence from their own government. This is the sort of
ordinary falsehood at which Hillary is adept, based on the con idence that
Americans will easily swallow a totally meaningless clich such as the Libyan
peoples democratic aspirations.
Three days later, when asked about the bombing of Libya on Meet the
Press, she replied: lets be fair here. They didnt attack us, but what they
were doing and Gadda is history and the potential for the disruption and
instability was very much in our interests and seen by our European friends
and our Arab partners as very vital to their interests.
In short, bombing the hell out of a sovereign country that did us no harm is
perfectly okay if we consider it to be in our interests, or in the interests of
our European friends and our Arab partners. Not only that, but bombing a
country, arming rebels and overthrowing its government is the way to prevent
disruption and instability. And this woman longs to become President of
the United States.
In an interview four months later with independent French investigative
journalist Julien Teil, Dr. Bouchuiguir, by then the new Libyan ambassador to
Switzerland, acknowledged candidly that there was never any proof of the
charges he made in Geneva. Pressed by Teil to provide evidence, Dr.
Bouchuiguir answered frankly, There was no evidence. He did not seem at all
embarrassed, perhaps because he is a man who can count on his connections.
What mattered was that on the basis of his claims, the of icial representatives
of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya were expelled from U.N. bodies and Libya was
sanctioned without being able to defend itself. Libyan embassies were shut
down in Western countries. Indeed, when the Libyan government mandated
former Nicaraguan foreign minister Miguel DEscoto Brockman, a Catholic
priest, to present its brief to the United Nations on March 31, he was blocked
by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice on the grounds of an inadequate visa. No
defense was allowed for the accused.
The Western human rights community is a network of organizations that
thrive on leveling accusations against the countries that Western donors want
to embarrass. They readily endorse each others reports, apparently on the
principle I scratch your back and you scratch mine.

Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir had friends in Washington. His thesis at George

Washington University was published in 1979 as a book, The Use of Oil as a
Political Weapon: A Case Study of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. His thesis advisor
was Bernard Reich, a political scientist who has worked for the U.S. Defense
Intelligence College, the United States Air Force Special Operations School, the
Marine Corps War College, and the Shiloah Center at Tel Aviv University and
has written extensively on Israel and the Arab world. It is reasonable to
assume that Bouchuiguirs work was in harmony with Reichs own devotion to
the U.S.-Israeli partnership in managing Middle East policy. In short, he was
not so much a humanitarian as a strategic theorist, subscribing to the
Washington view that economic warfare is necessary to prevent rival powers
from becoming threats.
There was signi icant overlap between Dr. Bouchuiguirs Libyan League for
Human Rights (LLHR) and the National Transitional Council that rapidly
declared itself the legitimate government of the country. LLHR members
included Mahmoud Jibril, mentioned earlier, and Ali Tarhouni, a Washington
protg who was put in charge of oil and inances and given the task of
privatizing Libyas oil resources and handing them over to the NATO
liberators.
At the end of February, on the basis of Dr. Bouchuiguirs accusations, the U.N.
Security Council imposed sanctions on the Gadda i family and forwarded
charges against them to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Hillary Clinton
herself went to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to announce that: It
is time for Gaddafi to go.
Regime change was in the air from the start; it was always the not-sohidden agenda behind the no- ly zone U. N. Resolution. The Russians and
Chinese abstained from the vote, rather than defeating it with their veto, and
thereby gave the Americans the rope with which to hang themselves. The
outcome of the Libyan operation served to discredit R2P for most of the world.
On March 17, the U.N. Security Council took its fateful decision authorizing a
no- ly zone over Libya. Hillary was delighted that the resolution included the
expression all necessary measures, which supposedly meant measures to
protect civilian lives. The phrase actually meant use of NATO military force,
and she boasts that twisting Security Council arms in order to get those words
into the resolution was her own diplomatic accomplishment. Gadda i must
go, she declared again, leaving no doubt that regime change was on her
agenda. Gadda i, she claimed, was a ruthless dictator that has no conscience
and will destroy anyone or anything in his way. If Gadda i does not go, he will
just make trouble. That is just his nature. There are some creatures that are
like that.
Hillary was finally about to have a war of her own.

Well, not entirely her own. There were numerous accomplices. But she was
very proud to have played a decisive role in orchestrating the massacre.
Hillarys ingerprints are all over the Libyan crime. To start with, in the
divided Obama administration, she was enthusiastically in favor of going after
Gadda i, along with Susan Rice and Samantha Power, who all cited the need to
stop an imaginary genocide. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral
Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were opposed to taking
action. The reluctance of the Pentagon (and possibly Obama himself) to launch
yet another war in the Middle East explains why Washington chose to lead
from behind, and let France appear to start the war. Nevertheless, the war
relied heavily on U.S. logistics, fire power, and espionage.
Hillary brags of having used American clout to put together a coalition of
the willing to get rid of the Libyan leader. On March 12, the Arab League voted
to request a no- ly zone in Libya. As Hillary saw it, their active participation in
any military operation would provide legitimacy in the region.
Quite simply, Hillary needed the Arabs for cover. After Iraq and Afghanistan,
we werent going to risk looking like wed launched another Western
intervention in a Muslim country. With Bernard-Henri Lvy and the Arab
League out in front, the United States could lead from behind.
Arab participation was supposed to show that Gadda i was rejected even by
his peers. This would perhaps make the murderous operation look virtuous,
consensual and democratic. But what peers! A gang of treacherous scheming
autocrats who hated Gadda is guts for all the wrong reasons. And Gadda i
hated them so much that he had in effect turned his back on the Arab world to
join Africa.
I n Hard Choices, Hillary described Gadda i as one of the most eccentric,
cruel, and unpredictable autocrats in the world. He cut a bizarre and
sometimes chilling igure on the world stage, with his colorful out its,
Amazonian bodyguards, and over-the-top rhetoric. That is what you get in a
multicultural world: colorful costumes, strange rhetoric. But Gadda is rhetoric
could sometimes be revealing, as in his remarkable speech to the Arab League
summit held in Damascus in March 2008. 28
Gadda i began his speech by ironically reminding the Arab leaders of their
own hypocritical betrayal of the Palestinian cause. He then told them that if
they wanted to contest Iranian ownership of islands in the Persian Gulf, they
should frankly refer the issue to the International Court of Justice and accept
its ruling. Then he turned to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
What is the reason for the invasion and destruction of Iraq? Let our
American friends answer this question: Why Iraq? What is the reason? Is Bin
Laden an Iraqi? No, he is not. Were those who attacked New York Iraqis? No,
they were not. Were those who attacked the Pentagon Iraqis? No, they were

not. Were there WMDs in Iraq? No, there were not.

Even if Iraq did have WMDs, Pakistan and India have nuclear bombs. And so
do China, Russia, Britain, France and America. Should all these countries be
destroyed? Fine, lets destroy all the countries that have WMDs.
In Iraq, Gadda i continued, an entire Arab leadership was executed by
hanging. Yet we all sat on the sidelines, laughing. Saddam Hussein was a
prisoner of war, the president of an Arab country and a member of the Arab
League, and when he was hanged the Arab leaders did nothing. Im not talking
about the policies of Saddam Hussein, or the disagreements we had with him.
We all had political disagreements with him. And we have such disagreements
among ourselves here. We share nothing beyond this hall.
Then he warned: Any one of you might be next. Yes. America fought
alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini. He was their friend. Cheney was
a friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary at the time
Iraq was destroyed, was a close friend of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, they
sold him out and hanged him. You are friends of America lets say that we
are, not you. But one of these days, America may hang any of us.
And he concluded: We are the enemies of one another, Im sad to say. We all
hate one another, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one
another and we conspire against one another.
In Hard Choices, Hillary boasts in detail of her great achievement in lining up
Arab leaders to go to war to oust Gadda i. In reality, it was a feat similar to
getting children to eat ice cream. Indeed, the Arab leaders that Hillary boasts of
having united in order to attack Libya all hated Gadda i with a passion, and not
out of love for democracy, but because Gadda i had told them what they really
were.
To let us know just how hard her job was, in Hard Choices, Hillary recounts an
exceptionally complicated aspect of her Arab coalition building. At this
crucial moment, the Emirate of Bahrain, home base for the U.S. Navy in the
Persian Gulf, was actively repressing a truly peaceful Arab Spring protest
movement of its own. On March 15, Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain to
help quell the popular uprising. Dear me! Washingtons main Arab allies were
actually doing the same thing that we were going to bomb Libya for doing! And
they were doing it in plain sight, for all to see.
At that very moment we were deep into diplomatic negotiations to build an
international coalition to protect Libyan civilians from an impending
massacre, and were counting on the Gulf Arab states to play key roles, she
recalled.
Hillary saw clearly that: Our values and conscience demanded that the
United States condemn the violence against civilians we were seeing in
Bahrain, but on the other hand, Arab leadership in the air campaign against

Libya was crucial. Hillary was faced with a moral dilemma: or rather, the
appearance of a moral dilemma. But empty words would take care of this
problem.
Hillary drafted a statement (with help from her spokeswoman, Victoria
Nuland, who will later emerge from the shadows in her own right): Violence is
not and cannot be the answer. A political process is. But in Bahrain, violence
continued to be the answer and no political process was ever allowed as the
American moralists fully expected. However, Hillary felt comfortable that we
had not sacrificed our values or credibility
Now that the values were safely stashed away, the bombing could begin.
Soon the Arab jets were flying over Libya, she rejoiced.
Enlisting Arabs for the anti-Gadda i lynch mob was no great
accomplishment. It was a useful device to hide the fact that other far more
democratic leaders, notably in Africa and Latin America, were offering to
mediate the Libyan crisis.
As the military assault on Libya got underway, Hillarys role became more
crucial: blocking all efforts to negotiate peace. Like her friend Madeleine
Albright, Hillary used the State Department to prevent diplomacy from
functioning. Ironically, while some at the Pentagon did seek a negotiated
solution, Hillary at the State Department sabotaged negotiations.
Gadda i was willing to compromise even before the NATO assault began. As
early as March 10, an African Union mediation committee headed by South
African president Jacob Zuma had drafted a peace accord, including a
democratic transition of power, which Gadda i was ready to discuss with the
opposition. But, as former South African president Thabo Mbeki said later, the
U.N. Security Council rejected this peace plan with absolute contempt.
Independent investigation, mediation, negotiation such were the steps
that the United Nations should have taken, if it were still able to act as a peacekeeping organization. If in the early twentieth century, the United States killed
the League of Nations by failing to join it, in this century, Washington is killing
the United Nations through its deadly embrace. Mediation is what the United
Nations should be promoting in crisis situations, but under the overwhelming
in luence of the United States, the organization has evolved into a rubber
stamp for Washingtons bellicose actions. Calls for peaceful mediation from
leaders such as Venezuelas democratically- elected President Hugo Chavez
were denounced as support for dictators, as if only a country bearing the
Washington label of pure democracy had the right to ask not to be bombed.
On March 18, Gadda i called for a cease- ire. The next day, as French
bombers began to strike Libya, Gadda is offer was dismissed by Hillary as
some talk from Tripoli of a cease- ire. In Paris, she justi ied the attacks by
claiming that Colonel Gadda i continues to defy the world by attacking

civilians.
In reality, throughout the assault on Libya, efforts were being made to
establish the truth and bring an end to the destruction. Gadda is son, Seif al
Islam Gadda i, was in contact with American of icials, pleading with them to
send a fact- inding mission to see for themselves what was happening. The
Pentagon had its own informants who denied the melodramatic reports
spread as pretext for violent regime change.29
Only one day after the NATO bombing began, the Libyan leadership was
asking for a 72-hour cease- ire in order to work out terms of a settlement.
They offered to withdraw all Libyan forces from Benghazi and Misrata the
two rebel-held cities under the monitor of the African Union. Gadda i stated
that he was willing to retire and accept a transitional government, but on two
conditions: that Libya be allowed to retain forces to resist al Qaeda, and that
his family and those loyal to him would be protected. Retired U.S. Navy
Admiral Charles Kubic, then working as a business consultant in Libya, was
informed of these conditions and passed them through the military hierarchy
to U.S. Army General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The
terms sounded reasonable to the military men, and General Ham began secret
negotiations. But two days later, General Ham was given an order to stand
down from outside the Pentagon. Sources inside the military consider that
this order to cut off peace negotiations could only have come from Hillary
Clintons State Department. 30
In a telephone conversation in May, Seif al Islam Gadda i told Democratic
Congressman Dennis Kucinich that the accusations of potential genocide were
being used like the false reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He
warned the Americans that the armed rebels were not freedom ighters but
jihadists, gangsters and terrorists.
In August, Kucinich wrote to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, informing them
that he had been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who indicated that
President Moammar Gadda i was willing to negotiate an end to the con lict
under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy. He
received no answer.
Gadda i had ruled for forty years and was visibly tired. Gadda is Jamahiriya
was a peculiar experiment precisely because it was a type of modernization
that was meant to it the peculiarities of a sparsely-inhabited desert country
imbued with Muslim traditions. It included a form of direct democracy, and a
General Peoples Congress, which could (and did) reject proposals coming
directly from Gadda i. Moammar Gadda i was indeed a Guide and not a
dictator; his guidance was often rejected by the government, perhaps
increasingly so. The Jamahiriya was a product of the revolutionary Zeitgeist at
the end of the Vietnam War. It was characterized by a radical redistribution of

wealth that dramatically raised the standard of living for the general
population, but irritated elites who wanted a greater share of the oil spoils for
themselves. Given the radical change in the Zeitgeist, without the 2011 NATO
onslaught, Libya would have evolved, probably in the direction of Western
capitalism, under the in luence of its foreign-educated elites. But instead of
evolution, the United States increasingly prefers what it calls revolution,
which in the case of Libya was actually a counter-revolution. It was a drastic
regression, conceived to undo and reverse the social bene its of Gadda is
revolution and turn the place over to the usual suspects: local pawns and
Western players, not only oil companies but also the big construction irm
Bechtel and AFRICOM, the new U.S. African command designed to police Africa.
But even this failed.
A U.S.-backed revolution can only be destructive, a way to get rid of what is
in place. We smash it all, and count on our guys to rise to the top of the
wreck, with a little help from mercenaries and Special Forces. And if this fails,
U.S. leaders shrug and insist they meant well. If the natives cant put together
what we broke, then thats their problem.
Libyas armed forces were in fact weak, since Gadda i distrusted a strong
military that he feared might try to take power in a coup. Had he been as
universally hated as his enemies claimed, a genuine popular revolt
representing a majority of Libyans could have easily forced his resignation.
But in the midst of the NATO bombing, on July irst, about a million people
around a ifth of the countrys population turned out in Tripoli to
demonstrate their support for their Guide. Gadda i was a genuine populist, still
supported by many ordinary Libyans. They had no bombers on their side, and
they lost. The jealous elite, who hated his populism, had the bombers on their
side, but they did not really win either. The winner was chaos.

We came
An unknown number of civilians had been killed by NATO missiles and
bombs, including Gadda is youngest son, Saif al-Arab Gadda i, 29, on a visit
home from his studies at Munich technical university. Along with three of
Moammer Gadda is baby grandchildren, he died in a May 30 air strike on his
home in a residential area of Tripoli. Saif had been a target before, when he
was four years old, and was wounded in a U.S. bombing raid on his family in
1986. Following that raid, the Bishop of Tripoli, Mgr. Martinelli made an
appeal: I ask, please, a gesture of humanity toward Colonel Gadda i, who has
protected the Christians of Libya. He is a great friend. The Colonel would be
missed. In mid-February 2015, twenty-one Coptic Christians who had come
from Egypt to work in Libya were beheaded by Islamist fanatics.
On October 18, 2011, Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Tripoli for her irst

of icial visit to a country which she did not understand and which she was
rapidly transforming into something no one would recognize.
While waiting for Secretary of State Clinton to arrive, a senior State
Department of icial (unidenti ied, as is the custom) told reporters that the
Americans would be talking to the Libyans on how to integrate Libya fully
into the 21st-century world economy in transparent ways where Libyas oil
wealth is used for the bene it of all of Libyas citizens. A rich joke, considering
that Gadda is insistence on spreading Libyas oil wealth among the citizenry,
by providing free education, housing and health care, was surely a central
reason that leaders of the United States, Qatar and the Arab League sought
regime change. The United States, it was announced, was planning to help the
Libyans learn English, as if the language were unknown to them.
Hillary Clinton, as usual, had not come to Libya to learn about the country,
but to tell people what to do. Women in Libya should have equal rights, she
said, true to her usual feminist persona. This was another rich joke, since
thanks to the NATO bombing, women in Libya were about to lose the rights
they had gained thanks to Gadda i, not only the right to appear in public
unveiled, or to hold signi icant jobs, but simply to walk down the street in
safety, or simply to stay alive.
Perhaps to illustrate American values and interests, Hillary chose the
occasion in Tripoli to express her satisfaction at the liberation of Israeli
soldier Gilad Shalit. The fact that this much-publicized Franco-Israeli prisoner
of Hamas was released in a prisoner exchange can hardly have been of burning
interest to the people of Libya.
Before heading off to Oman, Hillary had a inal word for Moammar Gadda i,
who, although this was not publicly known, was still ighting to defend his
home town of Sirte, alongside his son Mutassim.
We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you dont have to fear
him any longer, Hillary told a selected gathering in Tripoli.
Two days later, Gadda i was both captured and killed. Video footage shows
that the Libyan leader and his son were captured alive, atrociously abused and
then murdered.
When informed of Gadda is death, Hillary had her moment of lasting fame,
the moment that will de ine her in history. Told by her aide Huma Abedin that
Gadda i had been killed, Hillary uttered a girlish, Wow, before paraphrasing
the original imperialist, Julius Caesar: We came, we saw, he died!, then she
broke out into peels of happy laughter.
Thus, the world may see this product of the frantic scramble up the
contemporary American power structure for what she really is. Riding the
tiger of the military-industrial complex had transformed a near-sighted
teachers pet from the Chicago suburbs, the girl most likely to succeed in her

class at Wellesley, into a gloating murderess, lacking even a shadow of the

remorse of Lady Macbeth.

Postscript to Murder
When a man taken prisoner is brutally murdered, it doesnt bother Hillary
Clinton that the act was cruel, or illegal, or simply embarrassing. It was a
success. If the prisoner is a bad guy, she is as gleeful as a high school
cheerleader when her team wins. When the prisoner is a member of her own
team, she is devastated. It is a terrible human tragedy, and it might even harm
her career. It was a failure, although she doesnt quite admit that it was her
failure.
In Hard Choices, Hillary fails to mention her reaction to the death of Gadda i,
apparently having been warned that it would not make the good impression
she anticipated. But she devotes a chapter of over thirty pages to the death of
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and two CIA of icers, Glen Doherty and Tyrone
Woods, in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. As Secretary I was the one
ultimately responsible for my peoples safety, and I never felt that
responsibility more deeply than I did that day, she wrote.
No doubt. But then the lawyer gets to work, the one who knows that you can
talk your way out of anything. Rationalization begins. Diplomacy, by its very
nature, must often be practiced in dangerous places where Americas national
security hangs in the balance. Wait a minute. Americas national security
hangs in the balance in Benghazi? How is that? And whatever Ambassador
Chris Stevens was doing there on September 11, 2014, it was not, strictly
speaking, diplomacy. According to the most plausible accounts, Chris
Stevens and his colleagues were in Benghazi to facilitate arms transfers via
Turkey to Islamic rebels in Syria. Arms smuggled from Libya, along with
Islamic militants, aided by the United States, have gone on to massacre
Shiites, Alawites and Christians all across the ancient cradle of civilization in
Mesopotamia. Stevens was never practicing diplomacy, he was practicing
imperial regime change, an exercise of state rebuilding that has failed
completely. He was working in the context of the dream world of Hillary
Rodham Clinton, where this world is to be remade to align with Americas
universal values and interests.
When America is absent, she argues in her brief for herself, extremism
takes root, our interests suffer, and our security at home is threatened. This,
of course, is just diversionary lawyer talk. Extremism has taken root in the
Middle East almost entirely because America was all too present, along with its
three-billion-dollar-a- year spoiled brat, Israel. Everybody knows this, but
retreat, pursues Hillary, is just not in our countrys DNA, since Americans
have always worked harder and smarter. Working harder and smarter is what

millions of people do all over the world, but all human virtues must be
identi ied as particularly American. This is the sort of meaningless rhetoric
developed by the girl most likely to succeed. It is t he rhetoric of ambition. In
her long explanation of why Chris Stevens, Glenn Doherty and Tryone Woods
were killed, she never actually explains anything. She leans toward the results
of an investigation by the New York Times , which concluded that Contrary to
claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an
American-made video denigrating Islam. She is not sure of this and ends on a
pragmatic note: after all, now that the damage is done, it is less important to
know why they did it than to find them and bring them to justice.
Find them and bring them to justice without knowing why they did it?
The United States barged into a country that only a few specialists knew
much about, thanks to intelligence gathering. But policy-makers did not really
understand it at all, yet were certain it could be made over in their own image
a godlike task, which created an inferno.
It never seems to occur to Hillary that the murder of Stevens, Doherty and
Woods was the natural and entirely predictable outcome of a murderous
enterprise that should never have been undertaken. Those who put their hand
in a hornets nest will get stung.
Christopher Stevens did know a lot about Libya. His cables to the State
Department, published by Wikileaks, show that Stevens knew that Gadda i was
not a dictator and that the Colonel had been at war with Islamic terrorism
and al Qaeda far more vigorously and for far longer than the United States had
been. But, like China, Gadda i was trying to contribute to independent African
development. This was bad news for the West which, despite having neglected
Africa for decades, still wanted to have privileged access to the continents
resources. In an August 2008 cable to Washington, Christopher Stevens
reported that: Moammar al-Qadha i recently brokered a widely publicized
agreement with Tuareg tribal leaders from Libya, Chad, Niger, Mali and Algeria
in which they would abandon separatist aspirations and smuggling (of
weapons and trans-national extremists) in exchange for development
assistance and financial support. 31
In short, Gadda i was using Libyas oil wealth to keep peace in the region.
With his death, that peace ended, and war spread to neighboring Mali, while
law and order broke down completely in Libya itself. A peaceful and
prosperous country descended into chaos.
Perhaps the over the top rhetoric and the bizarre costumes, as well as the
authoritarianism of the Guide, were useful in the beginning phase of creating a
modern nation out of a vast region of sparsely-inhabited desert and its rival
tribes. Something original might have evolved out of the Jamahiriya, just as
something interesting might have evolved out of Yugoslavia diverse systems

for a diverse world. But for America, there is only one model.
In his masterful, very revealing book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATOs War on
Libya and Africa (p.73), Maximilian Forte makes this judgment:
Indeed, Gaddafi was a remarkable and unique exception among the whole range of modern
Arab leaders, for being doggedly altruistic, for funding development programs in dozens of needy
nations, for supporting national liberation struggles that had nothing to do with Islam or the Arab
world, for pursuing an ideology that was original and not simply the product of received tradition or
mimesis of exogenous sources, and for making Libya a presence on the world stage in a way
that was completely out of proportion with its population size (for example most of the larger
Caribbean nations have larger populations). One could be a fierce critic of Gaddafi, and still have
the honest capability to recognize these objective realities or, if preferring to maintain the
narrative of demonization, to give the devil his due.

Such an honest capability to recognize the virtues of ones adversaries is

something Americas leaders lack entirely, whether it is the half-African Barack
Obama, or the all-American Hillary Rodham Clinton. Throughout history, that
peace of the brave which requires this capability, which calls on the capacity
of human beings to see themselves in the distorted mirror of others, has been
a mark of nobility of soul. It is totally lacking in todays Western leaders.
The story of Moammer Gadda i was an epic tragedy. The man was a tragic
hero, able to inspire both pity and terror, like one of the protagonists of great
literature in times past. He was lawed, like all great heroes. He could be cruel;
he could be generous. He was human; he was ridiculous. He had great faults
and great virtues, and even comic aspects. His aspirations surpassed his
capacity of realization. His inal catastrophe was due less to his faults than to
his virtues: above all, his dogged altruism, which cut him off from the critical
chorus of his own most prominent people. In his own way, he was as blind as
Oedipus. His ghost still needs a future Sophocles, a future Shakespeare.
But is that any longer still possible? The America that aspires to command
the world today is killing not only nations; it is killing all nobility of spirit. It is
killing tragedy, that ability to grasp the truth of the human condition in its
defeat, that ability to bury the dead with honor and to respect the de iance of
the brave fool who imagined he could save the world.
In Libya, weighing our interests, we Americans came; we saw nothing. Our
human conscience was already dead.

Chapter 6
Not Understanding Russia
I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across that huge pond, in America, people sit in a
lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of
what they are doing.

Vladimir Putin, 4 March 2014.

Every nation has its own values and interests. Peaceful international
relations should be a matter of respecting values and balancing interests.
Looking at U.S.-Russian relations over the past two and a half decades, it is
clear that for the Washington foreign policy establishment, such tri les as
Russian values and interests are not considered worth respecting, noticing, or
understanding at all.
Curiously, to be a Russian expert in Washington today, a prime requirement
seems to be an inability to understand the country in question. Autism is the
preferred outlook.
Americans seem unable to understand why a nation that in modern times
has twice been the object of massive, devastating invasions from the West
should mind seeing the United States extend the greatest military machine in
history right up to its doorstep. If Russian leaders express objections, the
American response is to suggest that they must be paranoid.
U.S. leaders have managed to forget all about the 1990 promise not to extend
NATO eastwards in return for allowing a newly-reunited Germany to join the
Atlantic Alliance. This promise was accepted by Gorbachev, who did not even
demand that it be put in writing, since he naively thought that keeping
Germany within U.S.-led NATO would protect Russia by preventing any revival
of an aggressive German Drang nach Osten. It was the smiling Clinton
administration that began the process of violating the spirit of that promise
(by joining with Germany in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia), and then the
letter (by expanding NATO to the East). The Czech Republic, Hungary and
Poland were taken into NATO on the eve of the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
The unraveling of the partnership that Russian leaders had hoped to
establish with Washington had begun.
Rather than respond to multiple Russian overtures for peaceful partnership,
the Clinton administration chose to treat Russia as a defeated enemy. The
implications of this choice only emerged fully in 2014. The lesson for Russia
was that instead of enhancing the prospects for world peace, the dissolution of
the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had simply given carte blanche to the
United States to proceed from the destruction of the USSR to destruction of
Russia itself.

Not long after the humiliation of Russia in the Kosovo War, Vladimir Putin
succeeded Boris Yeltsin as President of the Russian Federation in 2000, the
last year of the Clinton presidency. Russia was in a state of drastic social,
economic and demographic decline, largely due to a shock-treatment
transition to capitalism that reduced both the living standards and the morale
of the population. Putin had spent most of his life as an intelligence of icer, and
was selected by Yeltsin as an adviser and then successor. Intelligence agencies
often provide a superior education in international political and strategic
realities. Following the usual rule of double standards, the U.S. propaganda
chorus denounced Putins KGB background as proof of per idy, conveniently
ignoring that President George Bush the First had been head of the CIA. From
the start, the Wests problem with Putin was doubtless that he knew too much
and understood all too well what Washington was up to under the veneer of
nice guys and gals just trying to be friendly. The trouble with Putin was that he
grasped what was going on much more acutely than the pathetic Boris Yeltsin.
Yet Yeltsin may have been vaguely aware of having been hoodwinked by his
American friends. He may even have brought Putin in as his successor for
precisely that reason.
Vladimir Putin would not have failed to read the 1997 bible of U.S. Eurasian
strategy, The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. As President Jimmy
Carters National Security Adviser, Brzezinski was the guru behind the strategy
that lured the USSR into the Afghan quagmire in 1979. He remained the most
prominent strategist linked to the Democratic Party.
Brzezinski claims that the ultimate objective of American policy should be
benign and visionary: to shape a truly cooperative global community, in
keeping with long-range trends and with the fundamental interests of
humankind. In short, the United States is supposed to shape the whole world,
certain that this will ultimately be good for humankind. But in the
meantime, he adds, dealing with the here and now, it is imperative that no
Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of
challenging America. This amounts to the preventive weakening of any
emerging power, not for what that power does, but simply because it is there.
Russia, simply by its size and location, is bound to be seen as a potential
challenger and thus, an adversary. The conclusion is that the proclaimed
Russian hope for revival as a peaceful and prosperous partner of the West is a
non-starter for U.S. policy makers.
To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of
ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to
prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to
keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming
together. ( The Grand Chessboard, p.40) In other words, this means reviving

the classical divide et impera for our own brutal age. The vassals and
tributaries are our dear European allies: dependent, pliant and protected by
NATO, kept in a state of permanent indecisiveness by membership in a Union
of 28 highly diverse nations able to veto and paralyze each other. The
barbarians are, of course, just about everybody else, and not least the
Russians. The collusion that must be prevented is any stable and peaceful
relationship between the European Union (especially Germany) and Russia.
The trouble with Putin is that he understood this, considered it
unacceptable, and dared to say so.
The Grand Chessboard was published during the second term of the Clinton
presidency. It is the most important book on U.S. strategy of the period. It must
surely have been read by the President and his wife, perhaps more attentively
by Hillary than by Bill.
Indeed, before deciding to run for the Senate, Hillary con ided to her good
friend Diane Blair that she would like to be in a think tank. She wanted to be a
policy woman. By that she meant foreign policy, a ield in which Bill was
weak, but she felt she could be strong.
Carl Bernsteins detailed biography of Hillary, A Woman in Charge, written
before she became Secretary of State, largely ignores foreign policy. But inally,
on page 550, concerning HRC as junior Senator from New York, her
transformation is clarified:
It is clear from conversations with her advisers that Hillarys membership
on the Armed Services Committee was intended to be the centerpiece of her
new credentials for the presidency. She meant to become a defense
intellectual, muscular in her approach, a master of the arcana of policy,
weaponry, and strategy that would both serve her if elected, and help her get
there by eliminating voters fears about a woman being commander in chief.
Hillary was keenly aware of Bill Clintons weak credentials in this area and
meant to do better. She assumed from the start that she could count on the
liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the pocket of her pants suits, and so
her job was to get votes from other constituencies.
Indeed, this is the all too common path of left-liberal politicians. First, she
found that in the current system her ambition to enact some great progressive
reform, such as health care, was blocked by the nature of the capitalist pro it
system and the resulting relationship of forces. On the domestic front, almost
nothing is possible other than small tweaks. But on the world stage, U.S.
military power offers enormous prospects for doing something: from
rousing speeches against dictators to bullying whole countries, punishing
them with sanctions, overthrowing their governments all the way to great
big wars. History can be made here.
Hillary showed her nationalist colors in 2005 by co-sponsoring a bill to make

it a federal crime to burn the U.S. lag, con ident that her liberal fans would look
the other way at this gesture designed to impress the chauvinist crowd. Once a
politician has the helpless left-liberals in her pocket, their feelings and
convictions can be safely ignored. They are sure to vote for her as the lesser
evil, whatever she does.

For a World of Equals

In February 2007, Vladimir Putin committed an offense far more meaningful
than lag burning by speaking truth to power. At the annual international
security conference in Munich, Putin spoke out frankly against the model of a
unipolar world, meaning a world with one master, one sovereign, a world
that has nothing in common with democracy. The unipolar model is not
only unacceptable but also impossible in todays world, he said.
Putins point was that the extreme use of military force in international
relations, plunging the world into an abyss of permanent con licts, and the
greater and greater disdain for basic principles of international law by the
United States makes everybody feel unsafe and stimulates a dangerous arms
race.
In contrast, he said, Russia was in favor of all sorts of peace-promoting
measures: conventional disarmament in Europe, reduction of nuclear
weapons, initiatives to prevent the use of weapons in outer space, and United
Nations authority over the use of force. To solve the Iranian nuclear question,
Russia proposed establishing international centers for enriching uranium,
under strict IAEA supervision, to enable the legitimate development of civil
nuclear energy.
Implicitly responding to U.S. treatment of Russia as a defeated country,
Putin recalled that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to an historic
choice one that was made by our people, the people of Russia a choice in
favor of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all the
members of the big European family. Russia was never defeated militarily,
but decided freely to end the Cold War and seek partnership with the West.
Above all, he concluded, Russia seeks to work together with responsible and
independent partners in constructing a fair and democratic world order that
would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.
Putins speech was met with shock, anger and rejection, and murmurs of a
new Cold War because he had dared to openly criticize the United States.
NATO rallied around Washington, as usual. NATO Secretary General Jaap de
Hoop Scheffer echoed the dominant Washington reaction that the speech was
disappointing and not helpful.
Senator John McCain retorted that the world was not unipolar, and at the
same time demanded that Russia adopt Western values implying that if it

wasnt unipolar, it should be. Moscow must understand that it cannot enjoy a
genuine partnership with the West so long as its actions at home and abroad
con lict so fundamentally with the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies,
he said, dismissing Putins speech as needless confrontation.
While in the Senate, Hillary had found a foreign policy ally in Senator McCain,
the hawkish Republican whom Obama had defeated in the 2008 elections.
Senators McCain and Clinton were both particularly eager to unify the world
according to the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies. As chairman of
the International Republican Institute (IRI), a subsidiary of the Congressfunded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), McCain travels around the
world lavishing encouragement, advice and U.S. dollars on individuals or
discontented minorities eager to bring their countries into the American orbit.
Like McCain, Hillarys language on foreign policy abounds in references to
principles that essentially concern the internal affairs of other countries,
rather than relations between States, especially regarding democracy and
human rights. Thus, U.S. foreign policy has increasingly come to mean
interference in the domestic policy of countries the United States wants to
change and control. Mainstream media act as a reliable agent of this policy, by
issuing reports that are often distorted, inaccurate or widely out of context.
Constant lecturing con irms the impression that the job of the U.S. State
Department is not to smooth relations between States, but to interfere in
relations within foreign States.
In Hard Choices, Hillary boasted of having been a frequent critic of Putins
rule while in the Senate. She has never ceased to launt her antipathy to Putin.
At a meeting in January 2015 in Winnipeg, when asked whether she had
decided to be President, she turned the question around and clumsily
mimicked Putin deciding to be President, adding with a gloating selfrighteousness that: We have a process as if being the second Clinton to run
for President, backed by billionaires, was a more virtuous process than
Russian elections. While a candidate for the Democratic nomination for
President in January 2008, she told a rally in Hampton, Massachusetts that
President George W. Bush was mistaken to develop a friendly relationship with
Vladimir Putin. Referring to Bushs claim that he had looked into Putins eyes
and seen his soul, Hillary retorted: I could have told him, he was a KGB agent,
by definition he doesnt have a soul.
When Hillary took of ice in January 2009 as Obamas Secretary of State,
Dmitry Medvedev was President. In a superficial gesture designed to get media
attention, at her meeting that year with Russias Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov (a genuine irst-rate diplomat), Hillary pulled out what she described
as a reset button and got Lavrov to join her in pressing it in front of
photographers. We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think

we got it? She asked proudly. No, came the reply. The gadget actually read
overcharge, rather than reset. This clumsy photo-op stunt did not, in fact,
indicate any real effort to improve mutual understanding. The reset, as Hillary
wrote later, was a matter of opportunism. It enabled the United States to pick
off the low-hanging fruit in terms of bilateral cooperation another way of
saying that Washington bullied Moscow into making some signi icant
concessions, such as granting the Pentagon the right to transport deadly
weapons across Russia to Afghanistan, approving heavy sanctions against Iran
and North Korea, that sort of thing
But Russia got no credit for being plucked. Moscows concessions masked
another agenda, she wrote. So even as Russia allowed U.S. cargo to move
through its territory, it worked to expand its own military footprint across
Central Asia It was like a modern-day version of the Great Game, the
elaborate 19th century diplomatic contest between Russia and Britain for
supremacy in Central Asia except that America had a narrowly focused
interest in the region and was not seeking dominance.
What fun to play Great Power games! Oh, but America could not be doing
naughty things like seeking dominance! What Russia was actually doing to
expand its military footprint remains a mystery.
In 2012 Putin was back in the Presidency, and Hillary approached Russia as
if she were a therapist treating the soulless President. American policy
toward Russia had to be based on amateur psychoanalysis, rather than on an
understanding of Russias basic interests and genuine policy aims.
Secretary of State Clinton sent a warning memo to President Obama. He was
no longer dealing with the meek Medvedev and needed to be ready to take a
harder line. Putin, she said, was deeply resentful of the U.S. and suspicious of
our actions, without noting any reason for such a strange attitude. Putin
might call his project of creating a customs union regional integration,
Hillary warned, but that was code for rebuilding a lost empire. Needless to
say, the customs unions that the United States never ceases creating and
extending have nothing to do with empire-building, heaven forbid. But a
Russian-sponsored customs union might be a irst step toward growth of that
old Brzezinski taboo: an emerging power in Eurasia.
Bargain hard, Hillary advised Obama.
In Hard Choices, Hillary displays her capacity to read the mind of the Russian
President. Putins worldview is shaped by his admiration for the powerful
czars of Russian history, Russias long-standing interest in controlling the
nations on its borders, and his personal determination that his country never
again appears weak or at the mercy of the West, as he believes it was after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. He wants to reassert Russias power by
dominating its neighbors and controlling their access to energy. He also wants

to play a larger role in the Middle East to increase Moscows in luence in that
region and reduce the threat from restive Muslims within and beyond Russias
southern borders. To achieve these goals, he seeks to reduce the in luence of
the United States in Central and Eastern Europe and other areas that he
considers part of Russias sphere, and to counter or at least mute our efforts in
the countries ruled by the Arab Spring.
This supposed analysis is nothing but a mixture of projection and
groundless supposition. The aspiring defense intellectual thinks in
stereotypes. Russias repeated offers to cooperate with the United States on
disarmament, on Iran, on combating Islamic terrorism, on economic
development, are simply ignored.
Putin sees geopolitics as a zero-sum game in which, if someone is winning,
then someone else has to be losing. Thats an outdated but still dangerous
concept, one that requires the United States to show both strength and
patience.
If Russian advisers also go in for psychoanalysis, they could warn Putin that
Hillarys biographer Carl Bernstein stresses her tendency to focus on an
enemy to demonize. On the international scene, she seems to have chosen
Putin for the role.
During the Soviet Union, American commentary on Moscow policy tended to
concentrate on efforts to igure out the mysterious hierarchy of the Russian
power elite. This exercise was called Kremlinology. It was quite useless, but
always served to distract from genuine issues by reducing everything to
obscure power struggles. It upheld the notion of the enemy capital as a dark
and sinister fortress held by strange creatures motivated solely by power. The
focus on Putins alleged personality is a holdover from Cold War Kremlinology.
The fact that Vladimir Putin is very open and frank makes no difference. The
enemy must be sinister and inscrutable. The Pentagon paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to a group of so-called movement pattern analysis
experts who concluded in a con idential 2008 report that Vladimir Putin was
suffering from Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism. There was no
evidence for this, but the experts had surmised from studying Putins
movement pattern that the Russian Presidents neurological development
was signi icantly interrupted in infancy. The chief expert, Brenda Connors,
claimed that the dif iculty in getting accurate real-time information about
Russia and its leaders made the use of movement pattern analysis critical for
U.S. of icials. The Pentagon expected to learn more about Putins thinking
processes from the body signature of his posture/gesture mergers, than
from paying close attention to what he actually said.32
This seems to lend support to Putins suggestion that United States leaders
treat the rest of the world as if they were experimenting with laboratory rats.

U.S. policy toward Russia up until the crisis of 2014 was so contradictory
that it might seem that there was no clear strategy. It was friendly whenever it
came to plucking the low-hanging fruit and unfriendly the rest of the time. On
the whole, the policy can be summed up as a combination of intimidation and
subversion, which is applied not only to Russia, but to just about everybody, in
varying degrees and proportions.
During the Cold War, Americans accused Moscow of supporting internal
subversion by Communists allegedly seeking to overthrow the government of
the United States by force and violence which in reality was far beyond the
wildest dreams of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Today Russia does not advocate
any alien political doctrine and has adopted a free market economy and multiparty elections, while the United States actively promotes groups eager to
overthrow the elected President of Russia. The irony of this reversal of roles
goes largely unnoticed.
While gratuitously accusing the extremely popular elected President of
Russia of being a dictator and treating every eccentric oppositionist as the
embodiment of genuine democracy, the United States is also treating Russia as
a potential military target. It advances its NATO pawns ever closer, carries out
military maneuvers on Russias borders and is building a missile shield whose
only plausible use would be to give the United States a nuclear irst-strike
capacity against Russia by shielding the West from retaliation. It should be
recalled that contrary to Moscow, Washington has always proclaimed its own
special right to resort irst to nuclear weapons. The transparent pretext that
the missile shield was intended solely to defend the West from Iran was
dropped in 2014, when the Ukrainian crisis gave Washington the reason it
needed for an openly hostile military buildup against Russia.
Most Americans are surely unaware of the U.S. military threat to Russia,
given that national leaders regularly deny it and pretend that only paranoia
could make Russians feel threatened by nice America. To know about the
almost daily provocative military exercises held by various combinations of
NATO forces and their partners (such as Georgia and Sweden) around Russian
borders, one must turn to an internet site such as Rick Rozoffs Stop NATO.
Mass media ignore these martial operations, clearly designed as exercises to
prepare for war against Russia. When, eventually, Russia reacts to these
constant threats, mainstream media will report this reaction as an
unprovoked gesture of paranoid hostility.
The recklessness with which the United States launts its military alliance on
Russias doorstep can create the impression that Washington is actually
planning to go to war against Russia. In practice, however, since the defeat in
Vietnam, the United States has always chosen to attack much weaker
countries, with no signi icant means to defend themselves against the air

assaults that are a U.S. specialty. Even so, the results have not been impressive.
It is preposterous to think that a United States military, which has been unable
to pacify Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan, could do any better than Napoleons
mighty armies or the erstwhile invincible Wehrmacht in conquering Russia.
Historically, the Russians, essentially prudent and defensive, are reluctant to
start wars, even though they tend to be good at winning them. It is highly
probable that U.S. leaders count on Russian prudence to allow them to get
away with their provocations, and to back down rather than risk a nuclear war.
Perhaps the military threats and intimidation are intended to have a
psychological effect by embarrassing and weakening Russias current leaders,
thus lending support to subversion, the primary weapon in the smart power
arsenal. However, the evident threat has incited the Russians to take defensive
military steps; this now raises the possibility of a fatal incident that will trigger
war.
Clearly the United States seeks regime change in the form of a movement
to overthrow Putin and replace him by more pliable leaders. But to what end?
Russia under Putin had already sought to cooperate as a partner with the
West. The inal aim, if there is one, may be to use con lict on the edges of
Russia to destabilize rather than to conquer; in short, to create chaos leading
to disintegration, just as in other countries targeted by U.S. aggression. The
hope may be that a weaker leader would leave Russia open to stimulated
disintegration along ethnic lines, on the model of Yugoslavia. Then this vast
territory would be easier to dominate and its vast resources easier to
appropriate. In reality, it is likely that any successor would be far more hostile
to the West than the essentially liberal Putin. The Western threat is almost
certain to strengthen nationalist and authoritarian tendencies.

Russia and the Middle East

Russia is currently the preferred target of two powerful strains in the U.S.
foreign policy establishment: the Brzezinski school and the neoconservatives.
They come from very different places, but their strategies have recently
dovetailed. Born in Warsaw in 1928, Zbigniew Brzezinskis background is
traditional Russophobic Polish nationalism. His aristocratic paternal family
came from a shifting region that used to be part of Poland and is now part of
Ukraine. An outspoken critic of the Israel lobbys in luence on Congress,
Brzezinski has said that he sees no implicit obligation for the United States to
follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. On the other hand, the
neocons attachment to Israel is profound; many of them hold dual U.S.-Israeli
citizenship.
What the two strategic schools have in common is a readiness to exploit
Sunni Islamic extremism as a lesser evil, against Russia for Brzezinski, against

Arab nationalism or Iran for Israel. Many neocons harbor an ancestral

hostility to Tsarist Russia as the land of pogroms. 33
Brzezinski has long looked forward to the growth of militant Islam along the
soft underbelly of the USSR, in the vast region he has called the Eurasian
Balkans, as the perfect way to weaken Russia. In fact, an Islamic revival
already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia is
likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new
nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and
hence infidel - control. 34
As Carters house strategist, Brzezinski acted as midwife to the birth of
Osama bin Ladens al Qaeda. The CIA supported the Islamic Mujahideen as
essential allies in Brzezinskis strategy to lure the Soviet Union deeper into
Afghanistan in order to drive it out. The worse things get, the better, could
have been the slogan for a policy that began with arming the Mujahideen with
Stinger missiles to shoot down Soviet aircraft.
Afghanistan was left far worse off than it would have been under Soviet
in luence, most notably in an area that was of such primary importance to U.S.
leaders that they used it to justify their own Afghan invasion a few years: the
rights of women. The Soviets supported education and social liberation for
women one of the main reasons that Brzezinskis local protgs wanted to
boot them out. Hillarys feminism has never stretched far enough to appreciate
that facet of Soviet policy.
Brzezinski saw Afghanistan as linked to the Muslim soft underbelly of the
Russian empire, a potential source of chaos that might spread northward and
inally destabilize Moscow. When the communist empire collapsed, the target
remained the same but had the old label once again: Russia.
For the neoconservatives, on the other hand, the primary task was to merge
Israeli and U.S. interests into a single strategy. Israels historic enemy was Arab
nationalism, which aimed to unite the Arab nations including Palestine.
Originally, Washington was not hostile to Arab nationalism. In May 1948,
President Truman recognized the State of Israel, thanks to domestic pressure,
but the foreign policy establishment saw good relations with the oil-rich Arab
world as far more essential to U.S. interests.35 It took a long time for Israels
friends in the United States to impose the view that defense of Israel was the
top U.S. priority in the region, based largely on cultural and ideological
identi ication. Narratives such as the 1960 movie Exodus stressed the
implicit parallel between the founding of the United States and of Israel.
Alliance with Israel was a matter of our ideals outweighing our interests.
More recently, the neoconservative in luence in Washington pretended to
unite U.S. and Israeli ideals and interests around the grandiose project of
bringing democracy to the world by getting rid of dictators who just

happened to be supporters of the Palestinian cause. Veteran neocon Richard

Perles 1996 report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled A
Clean Break, called for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as the irst in a
series of regime changes that would eliminate Israels perceived main enemies
in the Middle East.
Although the neoconservatives are generally associated with the George W.
Bush administration because they managed to steer it openly into the invasion
of Iraq, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) launched its program
during the Clinton administration with its Statement of Principles on June 3,
1997. It called on the United States to shape a new century favorable to
American principles and interests. These principles boiled down to an
extremely aggressive interpretation of American exceptionalism: Americas
unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our
security, our prosperity, and our principles. This required increased defense
spending, tightened military alliances, and regime change to promote
political and economic freedom abroad. The PNAC followed up in 1998 by
calling on President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein. This amounted to
calling on the United States to eliminate Israels enemies, for they were also
portrayed as enemies of the United States and of the whole world.
As Senator, Hillary Clinton adopted the neocon line by voting in favor of the
2003 invasion of Iraq. After the war had become drastically unpopular, she
expressed regrets, but these second thoughts have never inspired her to
disapprove of subsequent U.S. aggression in the Middle East. On the contrary,
after playing a key role in bringing about the destruction of Libya, she boasts
of having urged Obama to increase support to rebels trying to overthrow the
government of Syria.
The Middle East regime change wars have targeted precisely the secular
nationalist governments that Israel wanted to get rid of. The only conceivable
bene it to the United States of this policy would have been to gain control of
those countries oil resources. This is an explanation favored by various
economic determinists. However, the chaos resulting from these wars has
made any orderly exploitation of petroleum resources all but impossible. Our
supposed values have trumped our interests.
The civil war in Syria brought together the pro-Israeli and anti-Russian
strains of U.S. foreign policy, since Russia stood in the way of direct U.S.
intervention. Russia has a longstanding relationship with Syria, including a
naval base, as well as many social and inancial ties. After the supposedly
defensive no ly zone over Libya was used to achieve violent regime change,
Russia and China made it clear that when it came to Syria, any attempt to use
the R2P pretext to get Security Council approval for U.S. military intervention
would be blocked. Their joint veto in February 2012 caused the warrior

women to fume and rage in very undiplomatic terms.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called the veto disgusting
and shameful. Russia and China, she declared, chose to align themselves with
a dictator who is on his last legs rather than the people of Syria, rather than the
people of the Middle East, rather than the principled views of the rest of the
international community. She warned that both countries would later regret
their actions and that the veto would be remembered by a democratic Syria.
At a meeting of the Western interventionist Friends of Syria In February
2012, Hillary Clinton called the double veto despicable.
Its quite distressing to see two permanent members of the Security Council
using their veto while people are being murdered women, children, brave
young men houses are being destroyed. It is just despicable and I ask whose
side are they on? They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people.
Which Syrian people? From the start, the armed rebels that the Syrian
government was combating were predominantly Islamists opposed to Assads
secular regime. These forces steadily tightened their control of the rebellion. If
Bashar al Assad did not have strong popular support among the Syrian people,
he could not have stayed in power so long, given the internationalized war
being waged against him with increasingly powerful outside support.

Whose Zero Sum Game?

For years, Russian leaders have sought to cooperate with the West against
Islamic terrorism. Such cooperation would have to start with an honest
de inition of the term and an examination of its real causes and variations. If
Washington had accepted such cooperation, it might have prevented the 2013
Boston Marathon bombing: Russia had information on the perpetrators that
they were eager to share. Russia has itself been the target of some particularly
horri ic massacres, such as the 2004 seizure by Chechen terrorists of a school
in the Northern Ossetian city of Beslan, which cost the lives of 186 children, as
well as 148 adults, most of them parents and teachers. After the United States
acknowledged that the armed Syrian opposition organization, al Nusra, was
made up of jihadists, Vladimir Putin tried to caution the West against arming
such groups. Who knows where arms delivered to the Syrian opposition will
end up? , he asked. Or how they will inally be used? If Assad goes today, a
political vacuum emerges who will ill it? Maybe those terrorist
organizations, Putin warned at a June 2013 press conference. How can it be
avoided? After all, they are armed and aggressive.
Far from seeing everything as a zero sum game, as Hillary claimed, Putin
urged the United States to cooperate with Russia in seeking a peaceful
solution. A short time later, Russian efforts to bring about a mutually beneficial
halt in the killing were so successful that many people in the world believed

that they were seeing the beginning of a genuine diplomatic process to end the
war that was devastating Syria.
On August 21, 2013, mysterious chemical attacks on the rebel-held suburbs
of eastern Damascus caused many deaths among civilians. As usual, Western
politicians and media immediately blamed Assads forces. Over time, a number
of serious independent investigations have provided convincing evidence that
the Sarin gas attacks were perpetrated by al Nusra rebels, who had both the
capability and the motivation to carry out a false lag chemical attack that
would be blamed on Assad at the very moment when international inspectors
were arriving in Damascus. Since Obama had earlier spoken of the use of
chemical weapons as a red line which Assad must not cross, or else,
attributing the attack to the Syrian government put Obama in a position where
he would feel obliged to retaliate. The United States, Britain and France
prepared to carry out air strikes to punish the Syrian government.
Mere lack of solid evidence, of icial denials from Damascus, or even evidence
implicating the rebels were not enough to head off the bombing by the
Western allies.
However, for once Western public opinion reacted strongly against plans to
get into yet another war in the Middle East. On August 30, after a lively debate,
the British House of Commons rejected a government motion authorizing air
strikes.
When Obama turned to Congress for such authorization, Congress members
were looded with calls and messages from their constituents demanding that
they vote no. Obama continued to proclaim that we know Assad was
responsible and that we must act to prevent further chemical attacks. Yet
the public reaction indicated that, like British Prime Minister David Cameron,
the U.S. President could be heading for a damaging defeat in Congress.
At the time, the of ice of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a
statement supporting Obamas effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a
strong and targeted response to the Assad regimes horri ic use of chemical
weapons. Hillary had quickly forgotten her public statement months earlier
that Assads chemical weapons might easily fall into the hands of rebel groups.
At this point, like the branch a drowning man can clutch to escape from the
torrent, the Russians seized on an of hand remark by Hillarys successor,
Secretary of State John Kerry. Asked what Bashar al Assad could do to prevent
Western air strikes, Kerry replied rhetorically that the Syrian leader could turn
over his entire stock of chemical weapons to the international community,
adding that he isnt about to do it and it cant be done.
Russian diplomats rapidly contacted the Syrians who retorted that it could
indeed be done. And it was. After rapid and smooth negotiations in the midst
of a war, the Syrian government actually handed over its entire arsenal of

chemical weapons to international inspectors in record time. This showed

what could be done by Russian-American cooperation.
The U.S. decision to join Russia in ridding Syria of chemical weapons, instead
of bombing the countrys government as punishment for allegedly having
used them, raised hopes that the worst was over and peace was on the
horizon.
Vladimir Putin took advantage of this happy moment to indulge in his habit
of speaking rather too honestly about U.S. power. Perhaps he believed that this
time he would be understood.
On September 11, 2013, the New York Times published a Putin Op-ed under
the title, A Plea for Caution from Russia. The Russian President warned that
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed con lict between
government and opposition in a multi-religious country. There are few
champions of democracy in Syria.
Mercenaries from Arab countries ighting there, and hundreds of militants
from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern.
Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After
all, after ighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
By the time Putins warning was verified by the emergence of the decapitationloving Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or the January 7, 2015 terrorist murder
of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris, it had been forgotten and Putin was being
demonized more ferociously than Assad.
Putin insisted that Russia was not protecting a particular Syrian
government, but international law. It is alarming that military intervention in
internal con licts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United
States. Is it in Americas long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the
world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying
solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan youre
either with us or against us. Countries react by seeking to acquire weapons of
mass destruction in self-defense. To strengthen non-proliferation, it would be
necessary to stop using the language of force and return to the path of
civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
Putin predicted that a shared success on the chemical weapons issue could
open the door to cooperation for other critical issues. He welcomed what he
felt was growing trust in his relationship with President Obama, but then
dared to differ with Obamas statement that U.S. policy is what makes
America different. Its what makes us exceptional.
It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation, the Russian President concluded.
There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long
democratic traditions and those still inding their way to democracy. Their

policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lords
blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
This plea for equality was greeted with outrage in the U.S. political class.
Putin was much too optimistic. The Russian proposal to eliminate Syrias
chemical weapons was a total success. It prevented Western bombing of Syria
in 2013. It had indeed opened the door to real international cooperation to end
the bloodshed in Syria. But nobody among Western leaders chose to go
through that door. On the contrary.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize to
the intergovernmental Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,
for having de ined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under
international law. This was a neat way to avoid giving Russian diplomacy
credit for what it had accomplished in Syria.
In September 2013, as Russia saved Obama from potential political defeat in
Congress and showed the way to fruitful diplomacy, the Western elite was
planning a major blow against Russia itself. The Economist wrote that the
future of Ukraine and Europe today was being decided in real time at a
meeting being held in the very Palace in Yalta, Crimea, where Roosevelt, Stalin
and Churchill met to decide the future of Europe in 1945. Bill and Hillary
Clinton, former CIA head General David Petraeus, former U.S. Treasury
secretary Lawrence Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick,
Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Gerhard
Schrder, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mario Monti, and Polands in luential
foreign minister Radek Sikorski were among the attending dignitaries. On
September 20, their host Viktor Pinchuk, considered Ukraines second richest
man and founder of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, introduced
Hillary for her dinner speech on leadership by telling Bill Clinton: Mr.
President, you are really a super star, but Secretary Clinton, she is a real, real
mega star. Hillary used the occasion to claim that Ukraines products,
including its wonderful chocolate, will ind ready markets anywhere in the
world. This was a nod toward the candy oligarch and future U.S.-backed
President Petro Poroshenko, who was attending along with Viktor
Yanukovych. Yanukovich, President of Ukraine at the time, could not know that
this conference was part of a process that would force him from of ice ive
months later.
Of particular signi icance was the presence of former U.S. energy secretary
Bill Richardson, who was there to talk about the shale-gas revolution which the
United States hoped to use to weaken Russia by substituting fracking for
Russias natural gas reserves.
The center of discussion was the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade
Agreement (DCFTA) between Ukraine and the European Union, and the

prospect of Ukraines integration with the West. The general tone was
euphoria over the prospect of breaking Ukraines ties with Russia in favor of
the West.
However, Putin adviser Sergei Glazyev was also present, warning that the
projected Trade Agreement would have a negative impact on the Ukrainian
economy. Glazyev noted that Ukraine was running an enormous foreign
accounts de icit, funded with foreign borrowing, and that the substantial
increase in Western imports resulting from the DCFTA could only swell this
de icit. Ukraine will either default on its debts or require a sizable bailout, he
observed. The Forbes reporter concluded that the Russian position is far
closer to the truth than the happy talk coming from Brussels and Kiev.
Glazyev also warned of the internal political consequences of Western
integration. The Russian-speaking population of the Donbass (Donetsk River
basin) region in Eastern Ukraine, the industrial heartland of the country, owed
its ongoing prosperity to trade with Russia. Since this trade would be
threatened by DCFTA terms, the Donbas population might move to secede,
rather than cutting its particularly close ties with Russia.
American interventionists knew full well that their plans to integrate
Ukraine into the West would cause trouble, but trouble was evidently exactly
what they wanted trouble for Vladimir Putin. Carl Gershman, whose role as
president of the NED is ostensibly to promote democracy around the world,
rejoiced that absorbing Ukraine into the Western camp would be a blow to
Russias elected President. In a September 26, 2013 Op-ed piece in the
Washington Post, Gershman wrote that Ukraines choice to join Europe will
accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin
represents. ... Putin may ind himself on the losing end not just in the near
abroad, but within Russia itself, implying that the loss of Ukraine would
undermine Putins domestic standing and political popularity.
Yanukovychs prime minister Mycola Azarov described Ukraine as a
battering ram to be used against Russia. The Brzezinski doctrine holds that
Russia cannot be a signi icant empire without Ukraine. Detaching it from
Russian in luence has been a long-term goal; it could then be brought into
NATO, in order to gain control of Russias Black Sea naval base in Sebastopol,
Crimea. Traditional hostility to Russia in Western Ukraine had been a political
asset used by U.S. agencies since the Cold War.

Understanding Ukraine
Ukraine, a term meaning borderland, is a country without clearly ixed
historical border, stretched too far to the East and too far to the West.
It was extended too far East, incorporating territory that had been Russian,
apparently in order to distinguish the USSR from the Tsarist empire and

demonstrate that the Soviet Union was really a union among equal socialist
republics. As long as the whole Soviet Union was under Communist leadership,
these borders didnt matter too much.
Ukraine was extended too far West at the end of World War II. The victorious
Soviet Union extended Ukraines border to include the western regions,
dominated by the city which has been variously named Lviv, Lwow, Lemberg
or Lvov, depending on whether it belonged to Lithuania, Poland, the Habsburg
Empire or the USSR. The region was a hotbed of anti-Russian sentiment,
markedly expressed in the religious rivalry between the Uniate Church, which
recognizes the authority of the Vatican, and the Eastern Orthodox Church,
which does not. No doubt conceived as a defensive move to neutralize hostile
elements, this extension created a fundamentally divided nation that
constitutes such perfect troubled waters for hostile fishing today.
Ukraine is a cleft country with two distinct cultures. The civilizational fault
line between the West and Orthodoxy runs through its heart and has done so
for centuries. This deep cultural divide between Eastern and Western Ukraine
can hardly have been a secret to U.S. policy-makers. It was spelled out in those
terms by top foreign policy advisor Samuel P. Huntington in The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, his 1996 landmark book,
considered absolute required reading in the Washington policy establishment.
Ukraines east-west split was dramatically evident in the July 1994
presidential elections, Huntington wrote. At that time, Ukraine had been
independent of the Soviet Union for only two and a half years. Leonid
Kravchuk, a self-styled Ukrainian nationalist, carried the thirteen provinces of
Western Ukraine with majorities ranging up to over 90 percent. His opponent
Leonid Kuchma carried the thirteen Eastern provinces with similarly lopsided
majorities. Kuchma won by a deceptively-balanced margin of an overall 52
percent of a drastically divided country. This has been the situation of Ukraine
ever since.
Particularly significant is what Huntington wrote about Crimea. In May 1992,
only months after Ukraines independence from the Soviet Union, the Crimean
parliament voted to declare independence from Ukraine and then, under
Ukrainian pressure, rescinded that vote. Meanwhile, the Russian parliament
voted to cancel the 1954 cession of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine, ordered by
Khrushchev without consulting the people of Crimea.
In short, the question of Crimea leaving Ukraine and returning to Russia had
come up repeatedly ever since Ukraine gained its independence. That Crimea
would go ahead with its long-contemplated plan to leave Ukraine and return to
Russia once an anti-Russian putsch seized power in Kiev could not have been a
surprise to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the region.
Huntington went on to make some interesting predictions. He believed that

violence between Ukrainians and Russians is unlikely since these are two
Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships for
centuries and between whom intermarriage is common. He was wrong about
that. However, Huntington thought it somewhat more likely that Ukraine
could split along its fault line into two separate entities, the eastern of which
would merge with Russia. He evidently imagined this happening peacefully.
In the light of these well-known facts, it is preposterous to claim that
Crimeas 2014 referendum on returning to Russia was the irst step in a
master plan by Vladimir Putin to invade Russias Western neighbors, Poland
and the Baltic States. Yet this is the wild tale that NATO has been telling, and it
claims that its military build-up in those countries is to defend them from
Russian aggression. All those within the Western power structure who
repeat this tale are either bald-faced liars or too ignorant to qualify for their
present positions.
As soon as Ukraine gained independence with the 1991 dissolution of the
USSR, the East-West division of the country showed up in electoral results.
Presidential elections inevitably became contests between the candidate of
the East and the candidate of the West. In late 2004, the results of the
Presidential election between Viktor Yushchenko, whose votes were
concentrated in the West, and Viktor Yanukovych, whose votes were
concentrated in the East, was so close that a second vote was held. When
Yanukovych was declared winner, accusations of electoral fraud led to
demonstrations calling for a third vote, which was won by Yushchenko. The
United States invested heavily in these demonstrations, known as the Orange
Revolution because of the color of equipment furnished by American
agencies. The presidency of Yushchenko was disappointing, marked by con lict
with his political ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, a corrupt businesswoman famous for
her folkloric arti icial blond braid, later convicted and jailed for embezzlement
and abuse of power. Yushchenkos popularity plummeted while he was in
of ice, and in 2010 his rival Yanukovych was elected President by a
comfortable majority.
What is signi icant is that U.S. intervention in the Orange Revolution was
never on behalf of democracy against dictatorship. Whoever was elected,
Ukraine was essentially run by oligarchs, the hugely rich businessmen who
took over main chunks of the countrys economy when state ownership
collapsed. The U.S. intervention was always, and remains today, on behalf of
the West end of the country against the East end. Precisely because Ukraine is
fundamentally so divided, the Ukrainian nationalists in the West insist
vehemently on forcing an arti icial uni ication that demonizes and excludes
the Russian part of the population. Ukrainian nationalists glorify the Ukrainian
language and promote a mythical anti-Russian version of history that feeds

antagonism.
In the last few years, Ukrainian nationalists have vigorously constructed a
new myth on the basis of the tragic famine that struck the rural population in
the Soviet Union in 1932-33 as a result of forced requisitions of crops to feed
rapid industrialization. Historians consider that about two million Ukrainians
perished in this brutal campaign directed against successful small farmers
(kulaks), which also affected Russian agricultural regions. In recent years
Ukrainian nationalists have asserted that the deaths were part of a deliberate
plan to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, commemorated as the Holomodor.
In open competition with the Holocaust, Ukrainian nationalists claim that up
to ten million victims were deliberately starved in the Holomodor, which
would make Ukraine the victim of the greatest genocide in history. The large
Ukrainian diaspora in Canada numbers about 1.2 million, making it the largest
Ukrainian population outside Ukraine and Russia, and is particularly zealous in
commemorating this genocide. It is able to put political pressure on the
government in Ottawa to join the anti-Putin campaign (although Putin
obviously had nothing to do with the famine).
A man of modest origins whose votes mostly came from the predominantly
Russian industrial East, Yanukovych was branded a Moscow puppet in the
West. In reality, the deal with the European Union confronted Ukraine with a
genuine dilemma. Yanukovych seemed to want both the trade deal with the
European Union and the existing trade deals with Russia, but this would
require negotiating trade terms and standards with Russia, which the
Europeans refused to do. Russia could not allow the Europeans to export their
goods and services duty-free into Russia by the back gate (as Putin later put
it) via Ukraine. Yanukovych was also obliged to take into account the worries
of his Eastern constituents, especially since the Party of Regions, his main
political support, rejected a half dozen pieces of legislation demanded by the
E.U., including permission for Yulia Tymoshenko to leave prison and move to
Germany. Moreover, the IMF was demanding austerity measures so unpopular
that Yanukovych would surely lose the scheduled 2015 elections if he
complied.
In late November 2013, Prime Minister Mycola Azarov concluded that the
country needed more time to deal with the con licting economic pressures.
President Yanukovych abruptly suspended the DCFTA, to the great
disappointment of Ukrainians who aspired to be part of Europe. The
protests in Kievs Independence Square, labeled Euro-Maidan, grew
throughout the winter, feeding on a range of grievances in a country where bad
government is chronic. U.S. of icials openly encouraged the movements antiYanukovych and anti-Russian potential. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, IRI sugar-daddy Senator John

McCain and French agitator Bernard-Henri Lvy all visited the Maidan scene to
exhort the Ukrainians to defy Vladimir Putin.
As stated earlier, Victoria Nuland had been a close member of Hillarys team
at the State Department. Toria Nuland, my intrepid spokeswoman, as Hillary
called her, wrote the talking points email memo which had blamed the
Benghazi attack that killed U. S. Ambassador Chris Stevens on a mob angered
by an American-made movie insulting the Prophet Mohammed. Ambassador
to the United Nations Susan Rice took the heat for expressing this rather
evasive explanation on television.
Victoria Nulands promotion to take charge of Washingtons aggressive
Ukraine operation is proof of the durable role of the neoconservatives in U.S.
foreign policy. From July 2003 to May 2005, Toria had served as deputy
national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. In his memoir, Duty,
former Defense Secretary Robert Gates described Cheneys view of Russia,
which could well be that of Nuland, then and now: When the Soviet Union was
collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the
Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never
again be a threat to the rest of the world.
Victoria Nuland is the wife of Robert Kagan, who is probably the most active
and in luential neoconservative today. Kagan was a founder both of PNAC and
of its current successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative. He began his mischief in
the State Department Policy Planning staff in the mid-1980s, when he was,
according to the New York Times, deeply involved in the Reagan
Administrations policy on the rebels in Nicaragua. In case there is any doubt
about the bipartisan nature of Americas neoconservative foreign policy,
Kagan also served as foreign policy advisor to John McCain when McCain ran
as the Republican candidate for President in 2008, before being taken onto the
State Department Foreign Affairs Policy Board by Hillary Clinton.
Robert Kagan has made the now-famous comparison: Americans are from
Mars and Europeans are from Venus, alluding to the fact that Europeans, after
suffering through devastating recent wars on their own territory, have lost
enthusiasm for the martial exercise, in contrast to Americans, who are used to
waging wars on other peoples territory.
Her husbands assessment of trans-Atlantic relations seems to be re lected
in the three words that brought Victoria Nuland to public attention: Fuck the
E.U. The context was her February 6, 2014 telephone call to the U.S.
ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, during a discussion of who should be
put in power in Kiev. German Chancellor Angela Merkels political party had
been promoting former boxer Vitaly Klitschko as its candidate. Nulands
remark meant that the United States, not Germany or the E.U., was to choose
the next leader, who was not to be Klitschko but the man she called Yats,

Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Indeed, Yats was soon to get the job of Prime Minister.
With a sinister lack of charisma, the American-trained Yats was clearly chosen
for his devotion to IMF austerity policies, his desire to join NATO, and an
almost pathological hatred of Russia, re lected in his astonishing statement on
January 7, 2015, that: All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of
Ukraine and Germany. Born in 1974, Yats obviously does not remember any
such thing, but apparently belongs to a school of Ukrainian nationalists whose
hatred of Russians leads them to overlook the massive invasion of the Soviet
Union by the Wehrmacht in June of 1941, which devastated Ukraine, and to
blame the war on those who fought back and finally won: the Red Army.
A signi icant detail of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation was her mention of the
fact that she had just spoken to Ban-Ki Moons Under Secretary General for
Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, who was taking steps to bring the United
Nations into the game, obviously on the side of the United States. She thought
this would help glue this thing and to have the U.N. help glue it and, you know,
fuck the E.U. Feltman had recently been Nulands colleague in Hillary Clintons
State Department team. As Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern
Affairs, he had worked with Hillary, twisting appropriate arms to put together
a coalition of the willing Arabs to smash Libyas Gadda i. On July 2, 2012,
Jeffrey Feltman went on to become the U.N. Secretary Generals main political
adviser, after a thirty-year career in the United States Foreign Service. This
meant that a United States of icial was henceforth in charge of analyzing
crises, advising Ban-Ki Moon and brie ing the U.N. Security Council on Syria,
Israel and Palestine, and, of course, Ukraine. So everything was put in place to
steer international reaction to events in Ukraine and isolate Russia.

Fabricating the Russian Enemy

For an outsider, it is impossible to say precisely when, how and by whom the
decision was made to use the Ukrainian battering ram to destabilize Putin and
Russia. Back from her multiple visits to Kiev, Victoria Nuland told an
international business conference sponsored by the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation
in Washington on December 13, 2013, that since the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the United States had invested over ive billion dollars to ensure
Ukraine the future it deserves. That meant pulling it into the Western camp.
The hefty sum no doubt included the expenses of the Orange Revolution, as
well as other less conspicuous operations. The relentless pursuit of the 2014
regime change operation, the unanimity of the NATO-land chorus (notably in
diffusing a wildly biased version of events), makes it clear that some sort of a
game plan was being pursued. The whole operation was prepared for public
opinion by months of anti-Putin propaganda centered on sexy topics such as
Pussy Riot and gay rights.

The American approach all along was to ignore the economic problems
posed by the DCFTA, which might be the object of negotiations and
compromise, and instead to interpret the con lict as a clash between the
good West and the bad Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. By February 2014,
the pro-European demonstrations in Kiev, cheered on with snacks handed out
to the protestors by Victoria Nuland, support from John McCain and oratory
from Bernard-Henri Lvy, were joined by the militant fascistic and even
outright neo-Nazi groups that lourish in Western Ukraine to demand regime
change.
Throughout the winter, the Maidan protests had been increasingly
militarized by far right groups. Andriy Parubiy of the Svoboda party, disciples
of the fascist hero Stepan Bandera, became the commander of Maidan,
responsible for security. Violence grew and on February 18, rightists attacked
and set fire to the office of the Party of Regions, causing two deaths.
On February 20, all hell broke loose in central Kiev, bringing the crisis to a
head. The morning began with shots ired between advancing protesters and
members of the Interior Ministry security unit, Berkut. Finding themselves the
target of hidden snipers, with three dead and several wounded, the Berkut
police withdrew. Ordered by the Maidan command to continue advancing
down a broad street just off Maidan square, protesters carrying shields and
sticks were shot one after the other by unidenti ied snipers iring from
surrounding buildings, mainly the Hotel Ukraina, used as a headquarters by
the Maidan protest movement itself. According to con licting claims, between
ifty and a hundred protesters were killed, and many more wounded, in this
weird massacre. Opposition leaders hastened to accuse President Yanukovych
of having ordered his security forces to ire on the protesters. This accusation
was the basis for his overthrow within hours.
The next day, in the resulting atmosphere of hysteria, the foreign ministers
of three E.U. countries, Germany, France and Poland, with Russian agreement,
sponsored a deal with opposition leaders whereby Yanukovych, destabilized
by the violence, agreed to step down for early elections in 2014, following
constitutional changes.
But the next day, February 22, Yanukovych led for his life, no doubt for good
reason. As he left, he ordered police to withdraw, which enabled the fascist
militia, Right Sector and Svoboda, to take control of key buildings. Many
members of the pro-government parties either disappeared or were
persuaded to join the opposition. Far right nationalist groups violently
attacked members of the Communist Party. Those who remained in the
parliament divested Yanukovych of the presidency and proclaimed a
transitional government, headed by Washingtons choice for Prime Minister,
Arseniy Yatsenyuk. From then on, Washingtons protgs were in charge of

organizing free and fair elections that the West was bound to win, given that
the heavily populated Donbass region in the East went into open revolt when
the government they had helped to elect was overthrown.
This was a perfectly executed regime change. The crowds of protesters,
whose precise demands were never clarified and so could not be met, provided
the democratic excuse for overthrowing an elected government, while the
mysterious snipers provided the veil of confusion needed to enable an illegal,
unconstitutional coup dtat to take place.
The February 20 sniper attack that set the stage for overthrowing
Yanukovych has subsequently been shown to have been a clear false lag
operation, organized by far right militias precisely in order to accuse the
hapless Yanukovych of having ordered the killings. The truth irst emerged a
few days after the attack, in a leaked telephone conversation between Estonian
Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Paet told Ashton that he had learned from reliable sources in Kiev that the
snipers had not been sent by Yanukovychs government but by groups active in
the Maidan protests. On April 10, this was con irmed by the German
documentary program Monitor, which found that the snipers did not ire
from government buildings, as the putschists alleged, but from the Hotel
Ukraina, which was fully under the control of the Svoboda fascist party and the
Right Sector militia. The irst detailed academic study of the incident, by Ivan
Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa, concluded that certain elements of
the Maidan opposition, notably Dmytro Yaroshs the Right Sector militia,
organized the massacre in order to seize power.36
False lag operations are especially successful when the public they are
meant to impress refuse to believe that such operations even exist. Although
false lag operations have been a standard facet of warfare throughout the
ages, many people seem loath to believe that anybody could be so wicked as to
target their own people. However, especially when outside powers act as
mediators, a false lag operation can break a deadlock by giving ones own side
the moral advantage of victim status. False lags seem to have been used
more than once by Ukrainian nationalists.
Many eye-witnesses corroborated Katchanovskis conclusions, notably Ina
Kirsch, a German Social Democrat who from 2011 to 2014 was the director of
the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, set up to smooth rapprochement
between Ukraine and the E.U. In a February 19, 2015 interview with the
Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung 37, Ina Kirsch implied that the Maidan
commander, Andriy Parubiy, was involved in organizing the massacre. Ms
Kirsch claimed that U.S. billionaire George Soros who supported Maidan, paid
people there in two weeks on Maidan they earned more than in four work
weeks in West Ukraine. Ms Kirsch said she knew of people who were paid to

take part in both pro- and anti-Maidan demonstrations. Thats nothing

unusual in Ukraine, she observed. Ukrainian oligarchs pay militia to protect
their property and harass their competitors, she noted.
Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine had remained calm during the Maidan
uproar. But the region rebelled at the unconstitutional change of government
in Kiev that brought to power individuals and groups whose hatred of
Russians is pathological. Speakers at rallies or on television in Western
Ukraine could be heard calling for war to kill all Russians, or to drive the
Russians out of Eastern Ukraine and take its resources, or to ban the Russian
language. The latter measure was actually undertaken by the new government,
but was rapidly rescinded under pressure from their E.U. sponsors. A modern
art gallery in Kiev mounted a bizarre exhibit displaying two drunk and
degenerate Russians (played by actors) in a cage as in a zoo, hung with signs
such as keep away, and do not feed.
The Eastern Ukraine rebels demanded constitutional changes that provided
for local self-government; they were instantly stigmatized as terrorists by
the new authorities in Kiev. This was to lead to civil war.
The historic Russian-speaking, multicultural Black Sea port city of Odessa
was a center of federalist demands. In the spring, activists set up tents in a
square opposite the trade union building to collect signatures for a
referendum calling for a constitution that would allow regions to elect their
own governments. On May 2, Right Sector militia violently attacked the
federalists, who led into the building which was then set on ire by their
assailants. Some perished in the lames; others, who managed to jump out of
windows, were beaten to death by nationalist militants. There were forty-eight
con irmed dead, yet Kiev has tended to blame the victims. The Odessa
massacre was played down by Western media. It aroused only mild concern
among those Western human rights organizations that had previously gone
all-out in their campaign to defend Pussy Riot.
On May 25, the American-backed oligarch Petro Poroshenko, with a fortune
made in chocolate and funeral parlors, was elected President. With Eastern
Ukraine under siege, the victory of the anti-Russian West was assured. The
American sponsors were happy: the people (at least those who mattered) had
voted, so the new Ukraine was democratic. Many observers think
Poroshenko a transitional igure who has more fanatical successors waiting in
the wings.

Crimea Goes Home

The February coup turned the government in Kiev over to right-wing
Ukrainian nationalists eager to take Ukraine into NATO. This posed an
immediate strategic threat to Russia, whose warm-water leet was based in

the Crimean port of Sebastopol. When Khrushchev arbitrarily gave Crimea to

Ukraine in 1954, this purely administrative decision didnt seem to matter,
since Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union. When they split,
Ukraine leased the Sebastopol port to Russia, but this would become a
vulnerable position should Ukraine join NATO. The U.S. Navy was already
patrolling the Black Sea and it is notorious for its appetite for military bases in
foreign lands. By supporting the takeover of Ukraine by virulent anti-Russians,
the United States and European leaders were consciously provoking Russia to
react defensively, one way or another. This was not a mere matter of a sphere
of in luence in Russias near abroad, but a matter of life and death for the
Russian Navy as well as a grave national security threat right on Russias
border.
They could not be sure exactly how President Putin would react, but he was
certain to respond somehow. A trap was thereby set for Putin: he was damned
if he did and damned if he didnt. He could underreact, betraying Russias basic
national interests by allowing NATO to advance its hostile forces to an ideal
position for attack. This would destroy his prestige at home and perhaps lead
to his early downfall. Or he could overreact, sending Russian forces to invade
Ukraine. The West was ready for this and would scream out that Putin was the
new Hitler, poised to overrun poor, helpless Europe, which could only be
saved (again) by the intervention of generous Americans.
In reality, the Russian defensive move was a very reasonable middle course.
But the West screamed as loudly as if Russia had treated Ukraine in the way
the United States had, not so long ago, treated Panama or the tiny island of
Grenada by armed invasion.
Thanks to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans had always
considered themselves Russian and felt threatened by the anti-Russian putsch
in Kiev, a peaceful and democratic solution was rapidly found. The Crimean
Parliament called for a referendum to leave Ukraine and return to Russia. This
was a project that had been in the air ever since the Soviet Union
disintegrated, severing Crimea from Russia. However, the Western powers
refused to recognize the referendum, but volunteer international observers
found the proceedings free and fair. On March 16, with 82% turnout, 96% of
Crimeans voted to return to Russia.
As part of its Sebastopol lease, Russia already had troops stationed in
Crimea. As a protective measure, Russia sent in reinforcements, without,
however, exceeding the legal level of 25,000 troops. Not a shot was ired, nor
was the vote marred by any violence.
Nevertheless, the West denounced this democratic process as a Russian
invasion. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry led the chorus of self-righteous
indignation, accusing Russia of the sort of thing his own government is in the

habit of doing: You just dont invade another country on phony pretexts in
order to assert your interests. This is an act of aggression that is completely
trumped up in terms of its pretext, Kerry ponti icated. Its really 19 th century
behavior in the 21st century. Instead of laughing at this hypocrisy, U.S. media,
politicians and punditry zealously took up the theme of Putins unacceptable
expansionist aggression. The Europeans followed with an obedient echo.
To justify Crimeas secession from Ukraine, Russia cited the July 2010 ruling
by the International Court of Justice that general international law contains
no applicable prohibition of declarations of independence. This was ironic,
considering that the ruling was in response to a complaint by Serbia, which
hoped for a ruling against Kosovos unilateral declaration, but had lost.
Speaking in Brussels on March 26, President Obama took it upon himself to
refute the Russian argument by declaring that: Kosovo only left Serbia after a
referendum was organized, not outside the boundaries of international law,
but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovos
neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea. In reality,
none of what he mentioned even came close to happening in Kosovo. The
breakaway Serbian province declared independence with no referendum and
no cooperation with anybody else except probably, con identially, with
Washington. It owed its independence to NATO bombing and occupation,
whereas Crimeas change of status was peaceful.
Crimeas decision to secede from Ukraine apparently did violate the
Ukrainian constitution yet the constitution itself had just been violated by
the putsch in Kiev, which created an entirely new situation. But there is no
legal basis for the accusation that the Crimean referendum violated
international law.
From the sidelines, Hillary Clinton had already resorted to the indispensable
Hitler analogy. Now if this sounds familiar, its what Hitler did back in the
thirties, she claimed, likening the Russian leaders concern for ethnic
Russians in Ukraine to Hitlers bellicose claims on Germanys eastern
neighbors. This was only the start of a crescendo of vituperation using the
Hitler analogy that was soon to rival even what was said about the Nazi Fhrer
himself in his lifetime.
President Putin, in his March 18 speech to the Russian Duma justifying the
Crimean referendum, came up with another analogy. Putin hoped Germans
would recall that Moscow had fully endorsed the 1990 reuni ication of East
and West Germany, and would see Crimeas choice as a comparable
reuni ication. He insisted that things would stop there: We do not want to
divide Ukraine; we do not need that. While politically obliged to support the
Russophone rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, Putins constant position has been
to urge both sides to hold Ukraine together by agreeing to a federal system

which provides for various measures of local government. When neither side
agrees to this, Putin gets the blame.
As a matter of fact, so many people in Germany do indeed understand the
Russian point of view that Putinversteher (Putin-understander) has
become a common semi-ironic term in political arguments. Many Germans,
including leading businessmen, consider the anti-Russian policy being
imposed on Europe by the United States to be unrealistic, unjusti ied and
contrary to German interests. But to the evident surprise and disappointment
of Russian leaders, the German political class and media have almost
unanimously adopted the hostile NATO line set by Washington. Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov has admitted that Russia overestimated Europes
independence from the United States.

The New Iron Curtain

In 1945, the Soviet Union liberated Eastern Europe. It stayed there too long,
but inally left voluntarily nearly ifty years later. The United States liberated
Western Europe and never left. At some point, a permanent liberation needs
to be renamed as a conquest.
To justify the endless presence of U.S. military bases, not to mention NSA
spying and the control of Europes defense forces by NATO, it is a good idea for
Washington to keep reminding Europeans that they need to be protected.
At the same time, the European Union is in growing need of an emotional
element to enforce its internal cohesion. Common enemies might do the trick:
Islamic terrorists on one side, the Russian bear on the other.
Ukraine is not the only entity that has been overextended. So has the
European Union. With 28 members of diverse language, culture, history and
mentality, the E.U. is unable to agree on any foreign policy other than the one
imposed upon it by Washington. Meanwhile, the great uni ier, the Euro, and
the austerity policies mandated by Brussels have caused economic hardship
and dissension. The May 25, 2014 European Parliament elections revealed a
large measure of disaffection with the European Union among voters. The
eastward extension of the Union to former Soviet satellites has totally broken
whatever deep consensus might have been possible among the countries of
the original Economic Community: France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux
states. Poland and the Baltic States see E.U. membership as useful, but their
hearts are in America where many of their most in luential leaders have been
educated and trained.
Washington is able to exploit the anti-communist, anti-Russian and even
pro-Nazi nostalgia of northeastern Europe to raise the old cry of the Russians
are coming! in order to obstruct the growing economic partnership between
Russia and the old E.U., most importantly Germany. Encouraged by the United

States and NATO, this endemic hostility rooted in the new northeastern edge
of the E.U. provides the psychological impetus for the new iron curtain
designed to achieve the aim spelled out in 1997 by Zbigniew Brzezinski in The
Grand Chessboard: keeping the Eurasian continent divided in order to
perpetuate U.S. world hegemony. The old Cold War served that purpose,
cementing U.S. military presence and political in luence in Western Europe. A
new Cold War can prevent U.S. in luence from being diluted by good relations
between Western Europe and Russia.
The United States has forced its European allies to impose economic
sanctions on Russia that are costly for both Russia and the European allies
themselves. European farmers, already in dif iculty, were the irst to be
punished by counter-measures taken by Russia banning E.U. agricultural
products. French and German manufacturers are losing pro itable markets.
The irst Iron Curtain was accompanied by an economic reward for Western
Europe in the form of Marshall Plan investments. This time, Western Europe
shares the punishment, with no reward.
For months, inancier George Soros has argued that the European Union can
save itself by saving Ukraine. 38 Soros criticizes Europeans for failing to
recognize that the Russian attack on Ukraine is indirectly an attack on the
European Union and its principles of governance. Thus the European Union
itself is indirectly at war, which makes a policy of iscal austerity
inappropriate. Instead: All available resources ought to be put to work in the
war effort even if that involves running up budget deficits.
By this proposal, Soros is attempting to play, for the European Union, the
same role Paul Nitze played for the United States in 1950: initiating a
Keynesian Cold War to boost the economy on the pretext of responding to
the Russian threat.
Sanctions against Russia are necessary but they are a necessary evil,
inasmuch as they have a depressive effect not only on Russia but also on the
European economies, including Germany. On the contrary, he argued,
assisting Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression would have a
stimulative effect not only on Ukraine but also on Europe. The parallel with
Nitzes NSC-68 policy paper is remarkable. Just as Nitzes Soviet scare justi ied
dropping Rooseveltian New Deal Keynesianism, which favored social projects
such as rural electri ication over military spending, Soros proposal would
justify the ongoing reduction of European social spending by shifting de icit
spending to pay for a Ukrainian war against Russia.
Just as Nitze exaggerated the Soviet military threat to Western Europe,
Soros goes overboard when he asserts that: it is unrealistic to expect that
Putin will stop pushing beyond Ukraine when the division of Europe and its
domination by Russia is in sight. Not only the survival of the new Ukraine but

the future of NATO and the European Union itself is at risk

There is method in such madness, since an of icial war scare gives big
investors something to invest in, with guaranteed profits.

The Fog of War

The majority Russian-speaking population in Southeastern Ukraine was as
disturbed by the regime change in Kiev as the Crimeans, but for them there
was no easy solution. Or rather, there could have been an easy solution, if the
new authorities in Kiev had been willing. Despite its sharp regional
differences, Ukraine is governed in a highly centralized way, with local
governors named in Kiev. The Southeast, in particular the Donbass industrial
center, had one clear demand: a constitutional change which would allow
regions to elect their own governments. From the start, this demand for
federalism was described by Western media as pro-Russian separatism,
while Kiev dismissed the federalists as terrorists. In mid-April, Kiev sent
armed forces to repress the Donbass; this violence effectively made the
federalists much more separatist. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of
Donbass, especially women and children, led to Russia a form of ethnic
cleansing which may have been one of the objectives of the Western assault.
Especially in Germany, the Putinversteher were hoping that behind the
scenes, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin were working out a peaceful
settlement to the crisis. There was even hope that the newly-elected President
Poroshenko would be amenable to a peaceful solution and would agree to a
federal system similar to that which exists in other countries (Germany itself
is an example).
Then, on July 17, Malaysian Airlines light 17 (MH17) from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur crashed in southeastern Ukraine near Donetsk, killing all 298
passengers and crew. It was assumed that the aircraft had been shot down by a
Russian-made radar-guided Buk surface-to-air missile. Kiev immediately
accused the separatist rebels. It was reported, and then denied, that the rebels
had stolen a Buk system from the Ukrainian Army. Later, evidence emerged
that the airliner had been approached by one or more ighter jets and holes in
the cabin suggested that one of them might have shot it down. Although the
culprit remained a mystery, this event succeeded in destroying all prospects of
peace negotiations. U.S. opposition to negotiations now enjoyed moral
support, fueled by indignation against the Russians who had allegedly shot
down a passenger airliner in cold blood.
To err is human, and no environment is more favorable to terrible mistakes
than war. War is also the perfect environment for propaganda and false
accusations. Who, if anybody, could have a motive to shoot down a passenger
jet over Eastern Ukraine?

That question was scarcely asked by U.S. leaders who knew automatically
where to place the blame.
That very evening, Hillary Clinton implied that Russia was to blame. In an
hour-long interview on the Charlie Rose Show, she went so far as to give
marching orders to Europeans as to how they must make Russia pay the
price.
If there is evidence linking Russia to this, that should inspire the Europeans
to do much more on three counts.
One, toughen their own sanctions. Make it very clear there has to be a price
to pay.
Number two, [] find alternatives to Gazprom.
And thirdly, do more in concert with us to support the Ukrainians.
With no hesitation, HRC seized on a tragedy (there was no conclusive
evidence yet as to the perpetrator) as a sort of Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify
European reprisals against Russia. There should be outrage in European
capitals over Russian aggression, she added, without missing the standard
clich that the only language [Putin] understands is toughness. HRC declared
that Putin is pushing the envelope as far as he thinks he can, implying that
the Russian President deliberately shot down an airliner in order to test
Western resolve.
By an odd coincidence, Putin himself was flying across that part of Ukraine at
about the same time that MH17 was shot down. He was returning to Moscow
from Brazil, where his efforts on behalf of equality among nations were
supported by fellow BRICS leaders Dilma Rousseff, Narendra Modi of India,
Chinas Xi Jinping and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. A wild but neglected
hypothesis was that Ukrainian nationalists might have shot down the
Malaysian airline by mistake, thinking it was Putins flight.
The day after the tragedy, Jeffrey Feltman, the American State Department
of icial on loan to the United Nations as Deputy Secretary General for Political
Affairs, expressed Ban-Ki Moons strong condemnation of this apparently
deliberate downing of a civilian aircraft.
If it was apparently deliberate, there must have been a motive. But what
could that be? For example, why would the Eastern rebels deliberately shoot
down a civilian airliner? It is easier to imagine a provocative motive on the
part of the anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists, yet another false lag operation
of monstrous proportions, but that too must remain mere speculation.
Fatal accidents happen in wars.
An example: on July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser
patrolling the Persian Gulf during the war between Iran and Iraq, shot down an
Iranian civilian airliner on a regularly scheduled light from Teheran to Dubai,
killing all 290 people aboard, including 66 children. Although ostensibly

neutral, the United States was then supporting Iraq. The guided missile shot
down Iran Air flight 655 in Iranian airspace, over Irans territorial waters.
The comparison with Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 is instructive. There was
no international outcry demanding that the United States pay the price for
this apparently deliberate downing of a civilian aircraft. The United States
never apologized, and George H.W. Bush, Vice President at the time, even
boasted at a presidential campaign rally a month later that he would never
apologize for the United States. I dont care what the facts are Im not an
apologize-for-America kind of guy. Although there was never any doubt about
their responsibility, the captain and crew of the Vincennes were all awarded
medals for their service.
Exceptionalism means: some can get away with murder; others cant even
get away with innocence.
Ten days after the Malaysian airline disaster, Hillary returned to the charge
on CNN: I think if there were any doubt it should be gone by now, that
Vladimir Putin, certainly indirectly through his support of the insurgents in
eastern Ukraine and the supply of advanced weapons and, frankly, the
presence of Russian Special Forces and intelligence agents bears
responsibility for what happened.
We have to up the sanctions that are required. The United States has
continued to move forward on that, Europe has been reluctant, she insisted.
They need to understand they must stand up to Vladimir Putin. Nagging the
Europeans to do more was the main point.
The chorus of unsubstantiated accusations distracted from the
indiscriminate military attacks on Eastern Ukraine. Far more people were
killed in those ongoing attacks than in the tragically doomed airliner, but it is
naturally much easier for anyone in the West to identify with an innocent
Dutch airline passenger than with a Russian-speaking Ukrainian grandmother
hiding in her cellar.
Cui bono? is a question that does not lead to all the answers in a world full of
mistakes and incompetence. We are all free to imagine more or less probable
hypotheses, false lags included, and we might even guess correctly. However,
real knowledge depends on expert forensic investigation. Unfortunately, there
is reason to believe that after months of unsubstantiated accusations,
conflicting evidence and above all, lengthy delays, no final explanation will ever
be totally convincing.
From the start, Western reaction to the disaster was so biased that doubts
must persist about whether the truth will ever be known, especially since
Western governments close to the United States took control of the of icial
inquiry early on.
Although the airliner was Malaysian, Malaysia was somehow excluded from

the initial inquiry. On grounds that the light had taken off from Amsterdam
and that the greatest number of victims were Dutch, the Netherlands took
charge at the start of the investigation, along with Ukraine, Belgium and
Australia two NATO Member States, plus two iercely anti-Russian
governments.
On August 8, 2014, those four governments reportedly signed a secret
agreement stipulating that results would not be published unless all four
countries were in agreement. This gave one of the prime suspects in the
atrocity, Ukraine, an effective veto over any investigation results that
attributed blame to them. This is an astonishing situation and probably
without precedent in modern air crash investigations, observed Australian
lawyer James ONeill, who has attempted in vain to procure a copy of the
agreement.39
It is interesting that Malaysias semi-of icial English language newspaper,
the New Straits Times, credits the theory that the airliner was shot down by a
Kiev government jet ighter. Does this relate to the fact that Malaysia was only
belatedly invited to take part in the Joint Inquiry, in December 2014?
It is odd indeed that not only was the Russian denial of involvement ignored
by the West, but also the Russian militarys disclosure to the press of its own
radar and satellite data which showed that MH17 had been diverted from its
scheduled route and was being shadowed by two ighter jets as it lew over the
war zone. The Russians stated that an American spy satellite was directly over
the scene at the time and asked the Americans to share their data in vain.
Above all, the Russian request to take part in a genuinely impartial
international investigation was ignored. It is also odd that the content of the
downed aircrafts black boxes was kept secret by Western governments, and
that Western spokesmen, who gradually dropped the whole subject after the
black boxes were found, began to issue statements suggesting that
unfortunately, the truth may never be known. However, the anti-Russian
accusations and the punishing sanctions persist.
On September 5, the prominent Russia expert Stephen Cohen observed that
the British and Dutch had had plenty of time to interpret the information in the
black boxes, but that there seems to be have been an agreement among the
major powers not to tell us who did it.
For these reasons, the inal results of the investigation are almost certain to
encounter skepticism, whatever its conclusions. In any case, the U.S. treatment
of the MH17 tragedy is a lesson in itself. Once Washington has focused on an
enemy, any incident may be seized upon as a pretext for denunciation,
sanctions, or war. Whatever the truth of the catastrophe, neither Hillary
Clinton nor the rest of the anti-Putin chorus knew that truth, nor could they
possibly have known it, when they hastened to accuse Russian President Putin.

Yet they not only rushed to claim to know who was guilty, they also used these
unproved assumptions to demand punishment and to force their allies to do
the same.
This is exactly the sort of premature judgment, Gulf of Tonkin-style, which
leads to major wars.

In the Mood For War

The MH17 tragedy was used to create a mood in which no kind word could
be uttered about Russia or its President.
Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor told CNN that: Mr. Putin
is clearly responsible for the problems were seeing in Ukraine and for the
shooting down of this airliner. Putin is a pariah at this point, he said. The
pro-Russian rebels are thugs, murderers, these are people that shot down this
aircraft.
U.S. deputy national security adviser Antony Blinken said that: We expect
the European Union to take signi icant additional steps this week, including in
key sectors of the Russian economy. Blinken claimed that sanctions were
intended not to punish Russia but to make clear that it must cease its support
for the separatists and stop destabilizing Ukraine.
The situation was actually clear enough. United States and the European
Union had excluded the heavily-populated Donbass provinces from the
political process by insisting that Ukraine as a whole join the Atlantic alliance
against Russia and by supporting a coup in Kiev that brought anti-Russophone
nationalists to power. The Donbass revolt was initially democratic: the
demand was for self-government within a federal Ukraine. When Kiev refused,
called them terrorists, and responded with armed force, a civil war broke out
over control of the Eastern region. This local con lict is drawing in support
from outside on both sides: Russia is surely supporting the Donbass ighters,
not by invading as the West alleges, but with equipment and volunteers,
while NATO is supporting Kiev. For example, there are Serb volunteers fighting
for Donbass and Croat volunteers on the Kiev/NATO side, in a disturbing echo
of the Yugoslav conflict.
The Western propaganda line is to blame this con lict entirely on Russian
aggression, and even to assert that this aggression in Donbass is
symptomatic of a larger Russian aggression which threatens European
members of NATO and the European Union itself a totally preposterous
assertion that is echoed without challenge by Western media. Since Russia
alone is to blame, the only solution is for Russia to stop its aggression. As
long as Ukraine is destabilized, Putin is to blame and Russia must be punished.
Watching Western media sometimes gives the impression that
commentators are competing to win a prize for the most utterly ridiculous

attack on Putin. So far, the imaginary prize lets call it The Soros Prize
should go to CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise. Wise actually wrote a book
claiming that Malaysian Airlines light MH370, which went missing on March 8,
2014 on a light from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was actually whisked off to
Kazakhstan by Vladimir Putinperhaps in a show of strength. But the
contest is still on
Not so long ago, Libya was destroyed as a functioning society supposedly to
protect a rebellion in Benghazi from theoretical government repression. Later,
the United States urged the Kiev government to continue using its armed
forces to suppress a rebellion in Donbass. Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko is not being accused of bombing his own people although that
is exactly what is happening.
A main purpose of the torrent of abuse leveled at Putin was to bully
European leaders into taking sanctions against Russia. The longer the
sanctions are maintained, the likelier they are to create a lasting barrier
between Americas Western European satellites and Russia. Meanwhile, secret
negotiations are underway to complete the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area
(TAFTA), which will cement U.S. domination of Europe, with the consent and
complicity of major European corporations primarily interested in access to
the U.S. market.
This domination has already been demonstrated by Europes reluctant
acceptance of sanctions against Russia. United States trade with Russia is
minimal, and sanctioning Russia costs America virtually nothing. The same is
not true for Europe.
It took heavy pressure from President Obama and British Prime Minister
David Cameron to persuade French president Franois Hollande to refuse
delivery to Russia of a Mistral helicopter carrier. The Russians had already
paid 1.2 billion euros for the ship, and had ordered another. Cancellation of the
order not only obliges France to return the payment and pay ines, it also
means the loss of hundreds of jobs at the Saint Nazaire shipyard and damage
to French industrys reputation for reliability.
Many German industrialists have openly protested against the loss of
markets resulting from anti-Russia sanctions. Labor unions, farmers and
businessmen complain of these blows to the economy, but the political class
pays more attention to Washington than to their own citizens.
Referring to the blocked Mistral delivery, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told
an audience at Harvard: It is true - they did not want to do that but again it
was Americas leadership and the President of the United States insisting,
oftentimes almost having to embarrass Europe to stand up and take economic
hits
Oddly enough, European leaders are praised for their courage for having

given in to U.S. pressure at the expense of their own economies.

Victoria Nuland declared: Implementing sanctions isnt easy and many
countries are paying a steep price. We know that. But history shows that the
cost of inaction and disunity in the face of a determined aggressor will be
higher.
History shows that history shows whatever you want it to show
especially if you are the one rewriting it. Today, it is being rewritten as it
happens, in real time. This instant rewriting of contemporary history is full of
contradictions: Russia is simultaneously accused of being the equivalent of
Hitlers mighty German war machine and of being too insigni icant to be
worthy of our attention
According to Senator McCain, Russia is a gas station posing as a country.
He is so proud of that description that he enjoys repeating it.
Russia is a declining nation, Obama told The Economist. Russia doesnt
make anything. Immigrants arent rushing to Moscow in search of
opportunity.
In his annual presidential speech to the United Nations, Obama listed Russia
as number two of the three main threats to the world, in between the Ebola
virus and the Islamic State fanatics in Iraq and Syria.
In another speech, Obama attributed to Putin a vision of the world in which
might makes right -- a world in which one nations borders can be redrawn by
another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their
loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for
something different. We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations
should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to
choose their own future.
On January 21, Obama gloated to Congress that: Last year, as we were doing
the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, some suggested
that Mr. Putins aggression was a masterful display of strategy and strength.
Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while
Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters.
U.S. leaders emphasize repeatedly that, unlike Russia and old-time
colonialists, we Americans do not invade countries for territory or
resources. For example, Obama has recalled that when invading Iraq the
United States had sought to work within the international system and did not
grab Iraqi territory or resources. It ended the war and left Iraq to its people.
If Iraq is an inspiring example of unsel ish American generosity, then
Ukraine must be another. In May 2014, Hunter Biden, son of the particularly
belligerent U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, joined the Board of Directors of
Ukraines largest gas producer, Burisma Holdings. Ukraine is believed to have
considerable shale oil reserves. It also has the richest soil outside of Iowa. The

U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill is particularly active in Ukraine, investing in

grain elevators, animal feed, egg production and agribusiness, as well as the
Black Sea port at Novorossiysk. The very active U.S.-Ukraine Business Council
includes executives of Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont, Eli Lilly and others.
Monsanto plans to build a big non-GMO corn seed plant in Ukraine, perhaps
targeting the GMO-shy European market, as well as GMO products. Now that
the new Ukraine has signed the deal with the European Union which allows
free entry to E.U. markets, low Ukrainian labor costs should make these
Ukraine-based U.S. enterprises highly competitive against European grain
producers.
Since they are in virtual control of the government in Kiev, the Americans
are in a good position to provide a favorable environment for U.S. business in
Ukraine. In December 2014, President Poroshenko swore in three foreigners
as cabinet ministers, all favorable to deregulation and privatization measures.
An American, Natalie Jaresko, is the new Finance Minister; a Lithuanian,
Aikvaras Abromavicius (who speaks Russian but not Ukrainian), is Economy
Minister and U.S.-educated Georgian Aleksandr Kvitashvili, who also does not
speak Ukrainian, is Health Minister. Another Georgian, Ekaterina Zguladze was
appointed a few days later to a senior role in the Interior Ministry.
Even stranger, in February 2015, Poroshenko named Georgias disgraced exPresident Mikheil Saakashvili as his top foreign advisor. Educated in the
United States on State Department fellowships, Saakashvili was elected
president thanks to the U.S.-sponsored Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003.
But after provoking an unsuccessful war with Russia over South Ossetia in
2008, his popularity plummeted. While dodging demands by Georgian
prosecutors for his extradition to answer charges on a whole range of criminal
offenses, most notably embezzlement of government funds and abuse of
power, Saakashvili began a new career as chairman of Poroshenkos
International Consulting Council for Reforms. Media speculated that
Saakashvili could use his position as Senator McCains pet protg to negotiate
the transfer of U.S. weapons to Ukraine. He remains best-known to millions of
Youtube viewers for chewing his red necktie while being ilmed by the BBC
during the South Ossetia crisis.
Three months later, on May 30, 2015, Poroshenko gave his old friend
Saakashvili an even more astonishing assignment: governor of the troubled
Odessa region. Nothing could better illustrate the reasons behind Odessans
demand for a federal system than this arbitrary imposition of a disgraced
foreign autocrat as their Governor. Poroshenko granted Saakashvili Ukrainian
citizenship minutes before he took up his new job. Anonymous protesters
posted red neckties for Misha (Mikhail) on trees and monuments in Odessa.
While accusing Putin of nefariously seeking to restore the Soviet Union,

U.S. of icials and their local puppets sometimes behave as though the Soviet
Union in some way still exists, but is now run by Washington. One way or
another, the United States is constructing its own little empire on the corrupt
Western edge of the defunct Soviet bloc.
Meanwhile, according to Ina Kirsch, corruption in Ukraine is far worse than
under Yanukovych. I dont know anyone who now wants to invest in Ukraine.
The planned big Ukraine investors conference keeps being postponed []
Logical: there are no investors. And frankly not only because there is war in
Ukraine, but because the system in Ukraine has become even more corrupt
and unreliable. Any potential investor will say, without credible guarantees we
wont invest there. This may cause Europeans to hesitate, but the Americans
dont seem to mind.
From a free market perspective, Russian gas exports to Western Europe
could be seen as an excellent example of supply meeting demand. However,
according to that great champion of free trade, the United States, Russian gas
exports are nothing but a sinister political weapon being wielded by Putin
for sinister, unspeci ied purposes. America proposes to rescue Europe from
this potential tyranny by substituting the products of the U.S. hydraulic
fracturing process. Well, not directly... Rather, the idea is that American
fracking, by meeting domestic U.S. needs, will free up alternative resources to
heat European homes in the winter. If this pig in the poke doesnt do the trick,
Europeans will be exhorted to sacri ice for the greater good of punishing
Russia for its alleged crimes.
While the United States was taking over Ukraine, U.S. representatives were
putting pressure on European countries to back out of the South Stream gas
pipeline project. The deal was signed in 2007 between Gazprom and the Italian
petrochemical company ENI, in order to ensure Russian gas deliveries to the
Balkans, Austria and Italy by bypassing Ukraine, whose unreliability as a
transit country had been demonstrated by repeated failure to pay its bills and
by siphoning off gas intended for Europe. Major German and French energy
companies were also investors.
The pipeline was destined to traverse the Black Sea and reach European
markets through Bulgaria. However, during the Ukrainian crisis, the
Americans started putting pressure on Bulgaria. The U.S. ambassador to So ia,
Marcie Ries, warned Bulgarian businessmen that they could suffer from doing
business with Russian companies under sanctions. The retiring president of
the European Commission, Jos Manuel Barroso from Portugal, who used to be
a Maoist back when Maoism was the cover for opposition to Soviet-backed
liberation movements in Portugals African colonies, threatened Bulgaria with
E.U. proceedings for alleged irregularities in South Stream contracts. Finally,
John McCain lew into So ia to browbeat Bulgarian Prime Minister Plamen

Oresharski into pulling out of the deal. The pressure succeeded. This is a
serious blow to countries that were counting on reliable natural gas
provisions. But never mind: anything is good that hurts Russia.
A major step toward all-out war against Russia was taken on December 4,
2014, when the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution
condemning Russia for imaginary armed aggression against United States
allies and partner countries. Resolution 758 combines a long list of blatant
lies with calls to arm Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. It amounts to
a potential declaration of war against Russia. The text was adopted without
debate by an overwhelming majority of 411 apparently indifferent
representatives who were leaving the chamber at the time, with only ten
voting against it. It is dismaying to observe that the most vigorous
denunciation of this shameful document came from two courageous men who
are no longer in Congress, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. 40
The reckless adoption of a resolution that could be used to justify going to
war against a major nuclear power is alarming evidence of the failure of the
intelligence, honesty and sense of responsibility of the political system that
Washington is trying to force on the entire world. Far from playing its
constitutional role as the place where policy can be seriously debated, where
foreign entanglements can be untangled and wars can be prevented, the U.S.
Congress has degenerated into an echo chamber for lobbies and special
interests, thoughtlessly endorsing the possibility of nuclear war with no more
re lection that a sports star endorsing a soft drink. This frivolity indicates that
the problem of Hillary Rodham Clinton goes far beyond a single individual and
reveals a far deeper crisis in the American political system.

Russian Reality
The combination of enormous military, economic and ideological power
with a profound disinterest in the rest of the world has led American leaders to
assume that their own illusions can erase the reality of others. You can swat a
bee thinking it is a giant poison mosquito, or crush a frog thinking its a
tarantula, and afterwards no one can tell the difference. Don Quixotes
windmills were only a mild illusion compared to the enemies that the United
States perpetually conjures up for itself.
As Washington proceeds on its endless crusade to eradicate Evil, it is treated
by its subservient allies like the Mad King whose fantasies must be taken
seriously. European leaders pretend to believe it all and hope that the damage
can be kept within bounds. Opportunists and con men from around the globe,
whether religious fanatics, fascists or just plain gangsters, approach the
deranged monarch with pledges of fealty and oaths of devotion to
democracy, and are rewarded with modern weapons and an appropriate U.N.

Security Council Resolution.

Ignoring the evidence, Washington has managed to go on claiming that it
fought to save medical students in Grenada, bombed a chemical weapons
factory in Sudan, prevented genocide in Kosovo, freed the women of
Afghanistan, eliminated weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and saved the
people of Libya from being eaten alive by a pitiless tyrant.
In choosing Vladimir Putin as the latest embodiment of Evil, however, the
United States has run up against a Russian reality that cannot so easily be
denied.
For many years, ever since Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War, Russian
leaders treated the United States with the deference required within the
respectable con ines of the international community. The response was rude
disdain. This might have gone on inde initely, if the United States had not
pushed farther and farther, and inally, in Ukraine, too far. The provocation,
intended to isolate and weaken a great nation wounded by its past, has
awakened Russia to its reality and its future. Essentially slow and defensive,
Russia is always at its best when under attack. To use the common image, the
United States has awakened the Bear from its hibernation.
Vladimir Putin, the contemporary personi ication of the little boy who
shouts that the Emperor has no clothes, made this particularly clear during an
informal speech on October 24, 2014 at the Valdai International Discussion
Club in Sochi, attended by such diverse personalities as former French Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin and former Federal Chancellor of Austria
Wolfgang Schuessel. In regard to sanctions, Putin observed that they were
interfering with the free trade that the West itself had promoted to its own
advantage. I think that our America friends are quite simply cutting off the
branch they are sitting on, he said, stressing that: Russia is not going to get
all worked up, get offended or come begging at anyones door. Russia is a selfsuf icient country. We shall work within the foreign economic environment
that has taken shape, develop our domestic production and technology and act
more decisively to carry out necessary transformations. Pressure from
outside, as has been the case on past occasions, will only consolidate our
society, keep us alert and make us concentrate on our main development
goals.
In international affairs, despite provocations, Russia would continue to seek
measures to prevent global anarchy, and to counter the risks that result when
other powers stimulate multiple arms races and endless ethnic, religious and
social con licts. For Putin the key word is Respect: a stable world must be
based on mutual respect, something that is lacking in the United States
approach to others. The United States, he observed, having declared itself the
winner of the Cold War, saw no need to construct a stable system. Pardon the

analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up
with a great fortune, in this case in the form of world leadership and
domination. Instead of managing their wealth wisely, for the bene it of
themselves and others, I think they have committed many follies. The effort
by the United States to impose its own models leads to the escalation of
con licts, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of
chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for dubious elements
ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.
The Bear, said Putin, is the master of the taiga, and I know for sure that he
does not intend to move to any other climate zone he would not be
comfortable there. However, he will not let anyone else take his taiga either.
Or in other words: We dont need to be a superpower; that would only be an
extra burden for us. I have already mentioned the taiga. It is immense,
limitless, and simply to develop our territories we need plenty of time, energy
and resources. We have no need to get involved in others business, to order
others around, but we want others to stay out of our affairs and to stop
pretending that they rule the world. That is all. If there is an area where Russia
could be a leader, it is in asserting the norms of international law.
U.S. mainstream media have been engaged in a massive propaganda
campaign to erase Russian reality by imposing a ictional version of the
Ukrainian crisis upon it, blaming the con lict on a hypothetic drive by Putin to
reconstitute the Soviet Union or the Tsarist Empire, or something even more
sinister. However, the Russian leaders plain talk is getting through to the rest
of the world and it is making sense. Even Washingtons European satellites are
going to find it harder and harder to ignore the Russian reality.
United States leaders, Hillary Clinton in the forefront, are setting out to
isolate the largest nation on the planet. Perhaps next on its fantasy agenda
would be to isolate the most populous, China. But in reality, who is isolated?
The big question is: can anything but devastating violence, such as nuclear
war, awaken America from its fantasy of being the unique and exceptional
nation that can and must lay down the law for all others?

Chapter 7
The War Party
Leadership in this world can be assured not by persuading oneself of ones exclusiveness and
God-given duty to be responsible for everyone, but only by the ability and craft in forming a
consensus.

Sergei Lavrov, November 22, 2014

The American people are prisoners of the illusion of being the exceptional
nation called upon to shape the world. This illusion is maintained by the
political branch of the entertainment industry: politicians, mass media news
coverage, defense intellectuals, commentators. The show is brought to us by
their sponsors.
To know who those sponsors are, take a look at the list of Clinton
Foundation donors who have contributed millions of dollars, supposedly for
charity the sort of charity that begins at home. These are philanthropists
who give in order to get. Eight digit donors include: Saudi Arabia, the proIsrael Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, and the Saban family. Pinchuk has
pledged millions to a branch of the Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative,
for a program to train future Ukrainian leaders according to European
values. Seven digit donors include: Kuwait, Exxon Mobil, Friends of Saudi
Arabia, James Murdoch, Qatar, Boeing, Dow, Goldman Sachs, Walmart and the
United Arab Emirates. Cheapskates paying their dues to the Clintons with
contributions above only half a million include: the Bank of America, Chevron,
Monsanto, Citigroup and the inevitable Soros Foundation. What is it about the
Clintons that makes them so popular, particularly with Saudi Arabia?
With friends like that, you need enemies. And Hillary knows where to ind
them in countries these friendly donors dont like.
In her driving ambition to be the First Woman President of the United
States, Hillary Rodham Clinton has made herself a igment of the collective
imagination by itting herself into the role of top salesperson for the ruling
oligarchy:
She has shifted her interest from childrens rights, a ield with no big
money backers, to promotion of military power (also known as the only
language they understand).
She has spread the message that U.S. interference in other countries is
motivated by the generous impulse to spread our ideals to the dark
corners of elsewhere.
She readily treats foreign heads of state with dehumanizing contempt,
declaring that they have no soul, or no conscience, and dismissing them
as lowly creatures that must go.

 She misspeaks, but sees nothing wrong with that. In politics, who doesnt
misspeak? She is not there to tell the truth, but to tell her story.
She can still pose as a woman whose only aspiration is to break the glass
ceiling for the bene it of all women, who will now be able to ill all the top
jobs in the country thanks to Hillary!
In short, she has used all the stereotypical clichs of the exceptional
America narrative as rungs in her ladder to the top.
Hillary Clintons performance as Secretary of State was a great success in
one respect: it has made her the favorite candidate of the War Party. This
appears to have been her primary objective.
But Hillary Clinton is far from being the whole problem. The fundamental
problem is the War Party and its tight grip on U.S. policy.
One reason there is so little public resistance is that the wars started by the
War Party hardly feel like real wars to the American people. Americans are not
seeing their homes blown up. The drone armada is removing the
inconvenience of boots on the ground veterans coming home with posttraumatic stress syndrome. War from the air is increasingly safe, distant,
invisible. For most Americans, U.S. wars are simply a branch of the
entertainment industry, something to hear about on television but rarely seen.
These wars give you a bit of serious entertainment in return for your tax
dollars. But they are not really a matter of life and death
In fact, it hardly seems to matter what happens in these wars. The United
States no longer even makes war in order to win, but rather to make sure that
the other side loses. Hillary Clinton accused Vladimir Putin, quite falsely, of
adhering to a zero-sum game in which, if someone is winning, then someone
else has to be losing. The United States is playing something even worse: a
no win, or a lose-lose, game in which the other side may lose, yet the
United States cannot be called the winner. These are essentially spoiler wars,
fought to get rid of real or imagined rivals; everyone is poorer as a result.
Americans are being taught to grow accustomed to these negative wars,
whose declared purpose is to get rid of something a dictator, or terrorism, or
human rights violations.
The United States is out to dominate the world by knocking out the other
players.
Our ideals are part of the collateral damage. With its wartime crackdown
on internal enemies and its Homeland Security and Patriot Acts, the United
States is not only sacri icing its own freedom, it is undermining the very belief
in progressive values: in democracy, in progress, in science and technology, in
reason itself. By loudly identifying itself with these values, the United States is
actually promoting their rejection. Such ideals increasingly resemble a mere
camou lage for aggression. What is the use of democratic and liberal ideals

when they are reduced to serving as pretexts for war?

And yet, opposition to the War Party is certainly shared by countless
Americans. It is probably much greater than the pro-war establishment
realizes. But those who are increasingly alarmed by the danger feel helpless to
do anything about it. This is because the War Party is irmly in control of the
two-party political system.
In February 2015, Paul Craig Roberts wrote:
Jobs offshoring destroyed the American industrial and manufacturing unions. Their demise and
the current attack on the public employee unions has left the Democratic Party financially
dependent on the same organized private interest groups as the Republicans. Both parties now
report to the same interest groups. Wall Street, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby,
agribusiness, and the extractive industries (oil, mining, timber) control the government regardless
of the party in power. These powerful interests all have a stake in American hegemony. The

message is that the constellation of forces precludes internal political

change.
And he concluded that: Hegemonys Achilles heel is the US economy.
If Roberts is right, and it is hard to see where he is wrong, the only thing that
can liberate Americans from their warlike iction would be economic collapse.
This is not a cheerful prospect. It is hard to hope for an economic catastrophe
as the only way to avoid nuclear annihilation. Whatever the odds, one cannot
help wishing that the American people would come to their senses and igure
out a way to end this policy of war and thus ind a constructive way of dealing
with the world. This happy ending is theoretically possible, but looks
extremely unlikely because of the American political system.
The U.S. Presidential election is essentially a popular entertainment event.
Billionaire sponsors send two carefully-vetted contenders into the arena, sure
to win either way. The intellectual level of Republican-Democrat confrontation
increasingly recalls that of the parties that divided the early Byzantine Empire,
based on blue and green chariot racing teams. In the 2016 presidential
election, the Good Cop party and the Bad Cop party will disagree about
domestic policy issues before everything gets stalled in Congress. But the most
significant issue of all is the choice of war.
Since the War Party dominates both branches of the Two-Party-System, the
recent track record suggests that the Republicans will nominate a candidate
bad enough to make Hillary look good.
But let us suppose that a miracle happens, and that thanks to a genuine
popular revolt, one of the parties actually nominates a peace candidate. That
would be a good sign, but it is not enough. We remember that Obama
promised change and was so convincing that some (falsely) nave
Norwegians awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize. He went on to outdo even his
predecessors in useless aggressive war-making with moments of hesitation,
however, which we cannot expect from Hillary.

Even a sincere peace candidate needs to have a peace team to take over
from the War Party in the White House and the State Department. Despite the
upbeat talk, Obama had no peace team and essentially let the same old War
Party take over.
It might still not be too late to radically reverse the direction of U.S. policy.
There are numerous quali ied individuals in the United States to form a peace
team. To mention just a few, we could start with Stephen Cohen as
Ambassador to Moscow, backed up in the State Department by John
Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Chas Freeman, and many others. Ron Paul would
be an excellent budget-cutting Secretary of Defense. Dennis Kucinich could
head a newly formed Department of Peace Transformation, to seek ways to
promote both peaceful relations abroad and a culture of peace at home no
small task. Let Cynthia McKinney be the new Ambassador to the United
Nations. Former FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley is well quali ied to be in
charge of the security agencies. William R. Polk, a descendant of the family of
the eleventh President of the United States, would make a ine National
Security Advisor for the new President in this dream administration.
And it is indeed a dream.
None of these honorable personalities could be con irmed by a Senate
whose members are not only beholden to AIPAC for campaign contributions,
but is largely convinced by the rhetoric of major newspapers. The Senate then
regurgitates this same rhetoric as part of the great national chorus of an
exceptional nation which stands up to threats from the Evil Ones.
A last-minute peace candidate would be a divine surprise. But a real
alternative to the War Party must be built up over time, for institutional
blockage also exists in Congress.
Anti-war movements have declined drastically in the United States, perhaps
because people feel, with justi ication, that they are useless. Indeed, the type of
anti-war movement that lourished in the Vietnam War is inappropriate today.
A war fought by a conscription army, as in Vietnam, can be effectively opposed
by a popular anti-war movement remote from power, because it threatens the
loyalty of the cannon fodder. But the War Machine has learned to make war
without unwilling boots on the ground. By trying to repeat the movement
opposing the Vietnam War, surviving anti-war movements tend to be almost
deliberately marginal. They are able only to rally unof icial representatives of
identity groups that feel more or less alienated, justi iably or not, because they
are more tied to the theme of identity politics than to stopping war. Such
movements have no strategy or ambition for taking power and in luencing
policy. Mere street protests will be repressed without making any impression
on Washington.
Wars fought at a distance by mercenaries and drones must be stopped at the

top, or finally defeated either by foreign forces or by domestic collapse.

A peace party must have a strategy for stopping war at the top. The rise of
Hillary Clinton should make clear the total failure of clinging to the Democratic
Party as the lesser evil. A Peace Party needs to be non-partisan and crosspartisan, rallying people who are fed up with a War Party composed of neocons
and humanitarian hypocrites. People can honestly disagree on domestic policy
and still understand that war is a matter of life and death.
What should be done? People may igure out what to do once they are aware
of what is at stake. That hasnt happened yet.
The United States cannot go on dominating the world. The question is: can
the United States dominate itself?
Basic wisdom is ancient and simple. Pride goeth before destruction, and a
haughty spirit before a fall. That is a lesson almost anyone should be able to
understand.

Endnotes
1 Nikolas Kozloff, Obamas Real Message to Latin America? The Coup in Honduras, CounterPunch, June 29, 2009. Eva
Golinger, Washington behind the Honduras coup: Here is the evidence, Global Research, July 15, 2009
2 Dana Frank, Dinner With Obama: Repressions Reward in Honduras? CounterPunch, September 23, 2010.
3 Dana Frank, A High Stakes Election in Honduras, The Nation, November 25, 2013
http://www.thenation.com/article/177028/high-stakes-election-honduras#
4 Dana Frank, Whos Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children? Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-frank/whos-responsible-for-the-honduras_b_5530518.html
5 It is relevant to note that according to a recent study by the Free University in Berlin, 60 percent of East Germans
consider socialism or communism a good idea, compared to 37 percent of West Germans. http://www.fuberlin.de/presse/informationen/fup/2015/fup_15_044-studie-linksextremismus/index.html
6 Plus Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Zalmay Khalilzad, William
Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Peter Rodman, Gary Schmitt, Max Singer, Casper Weinberger, David Wurmser and
Dov Zakheim.
7 The Influencer by Connie Bruck, The New Yorker, May 10, 2010.
8 Ibid.
9 [Jason Horowitz, Can Liberal Zionists Count On Hillary Clinton?, The New York Times, December 17, 2014.]
10 Secret negotiations are proceeding rapidly to conclude the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), enthusiastically
supported by great corporations and the political ruling class on both sides of the Atlantic, despite growing popular
opposition.
11 [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/04/edward-snowden-legal-defence-hillary-clinton-interview ]
12 [July 9, 2014 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.]
13 [Hard Choices, pp.552-555.]
14 Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet, Hillarys Prayer: Hillary Clintons Religion and Politics, Mother Jones, September 1,
2007.
15 Ghosts of Rwanda, FRONTLINE: PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/ghali.html
16 Charles Onana, Les Secrets de la Justice Internationale, Editions Duboiris, 2005; pp.367-370.
17 Samantha Power, A Problem From Hell, p.326.
18 Richard Holbrookes, To End a War, Random House, 1998. On page 202, he recounts that it was Kofi Annans
strength on the bombing in August that had made him the private favorite of American officials to replace Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. Although the American campaign against Boutros-Ghali, in which all our key allies opposed us, was long and
difficult [...] the decision was correct, and may well have saved Americas role in the United Nations. The key event was
the August 30, 1995 bombing. On page 99, Holbrooke recounts the eve of that bombing. In New York, Ambassador
Albright continued her vigorous campaign with those United Nations officials she could round up; fortunately, SecretaryGeneral Boutros-Ghali was unreachable on a commercial aircraft, so she dealt instead with his best deputy, Kofi Annan,
who was in charge of peacekeeping operations. At 11:45 a.m., New York time, came a big break: Annan informed Talbott
and Albright that he had instructed the U.N.s civilian officials and military commanders to relinquish for a limited period of
time their authority to veto air strikes in Bosnia. For the first time in the war, the decision on the air strikes was solely in
the hands of NATO -- primarily two American officers [...] To sum it up, page 103: Annans gutsy performance in those
twenty-four hours was to play a central role in Washingtons strong support for him a year later as the successor to
Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations. Indeed, in a sense Annan won the job on that day.
19 David S. Cloud, How James Rubin Shaped Pact With Hashim Thaci of the KLA, The Wall Street Journal, June 29,
1999.
20 Seth Ackerman, What Reporters Knew About Kosovo Talks - But Didnt Tell. Was Rambouillet Another Tonkin Gulf?
FAIR Media Advisory, 2 June 1999.
21 This focus on the State Department ignores such a glass ceiling breaker as CIA agent Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, the
champion of torture who served as model for Maya in the film Zero Dark Thirty made by a woman.
22 See John Ashton & Ian Ferguson, Cover-Up of Convenience: the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, Mainstream, 2001;
Report by Trial Observer Dr. Hans Koechler http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm
23 The European Community was then in the process of transforming itself into the European Union.
24 See my book Fools Crusade : Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions, Pluto Press (London), Monthly Review Press
(USA), 2002.
25 Kouchner rit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYOIV7bto4
26 In March 2014, an Iranian defector confirmed that Iran and not Libya was responsible for bringing down PanAm flight
103 over Lockerbie. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10688067/Lockerbie-bombing-waswork-of-Iran-not-Libya-says-former-spy.html
27 See John Ashton & Ian Ferguson, Cover-Up of Convenience: the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, Mainstream, 2001;
Report by Trial Observer Dr. Hans Koechler http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm
28 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZvPlGCt_8&feature=em-share_video_user.
29 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40843.htm
30 http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2014/04/25/did-the-us-choose-war-in-libya-over-qaddafis-abdicationn1829075/page/full

31 Maximilian Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATOs War on Libya and Africa, Baraka Books, Montreal, 2012, p.295.
32 Ray Locker, Pentagon 2008 study claims Putin has Aspergers syndrome, USA Today, February 4, 2015,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/04/putin-aspergers-syndrome-study-pentagon/22855927/ .
33 I regret to say what we are seeing here in the Unites States are the ascendancy of two factions in this country who
are against Russia and the Russians. First is Brzezinski, who was Obamas mentor when Obama was a college student in
Columbia, and Brzezinski in 2008 ran all the foreign affairs and defence policies of the Obama presidential campaign and has
stacked his administration with advisor on Russia at the National Security Council comes from the Brzezinskis outpoll CSIS
there in Washington D.C. I graduated from the same Ph.D. programme at Harvard that produced Brzezinski before me.
He is a die-hard Russian hater, he hates Russia, he hates the Russian, and he wants to break Russia up into its constituent
units, and, unfortunately, he has his people, his protgs in the Democratic Party and in this Administration. Second
faction lining against Russia are the neo-conservatives, for e.g. this latest Brookings Institute report calling for arming the
Ukrainian military in these Nazi formations which is now reflected in this latest bill just introduced into the Congress
yesterday, and the neoconservatives feel exactly the same way against Russia and the Russians.
I went to school with large numbers of these neoconservatives at the University of Chicago, Wolfowitz and all the rest of
them. Many of them are grandchildren of Jewish people, who fled the pogroms against Jews, and they have been
brainwashed against Russia and the Russians. So you have two very powerful factions here in the United States against
Russia and the Russians who are driving this policy, and I regret to report there are very few voices opposing this. Francis
Boyle: Brzezinski wants to break Russia up into constituent units - English pravda.ru,
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/16-02-2015/129834-brzezinski_russia-0/
34 The Grand Chessboard, p. 133.
35 0See Against Our Better Judgment, by Alison Weir.
36 The Snipers Massacre on the Maidan in Ukraine by Ivan Katchanovski, Ph.D., University of Ottawa.
https://www.academia.edu/8776021/The_Snipers_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine]
37 http://www.wienerzeitung.at/_em_cms/globals/print.php?
em_ssc=LCwsLA==&em_cnt=736123&em_loc=530&em_ref=/nachrichten/europa/europastaaten/&em_ivw=RedCont/Politik/Ausland&
38 Wake Up Europe by George Soros http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/wake-up-europe/ and A
New Policy to Rescue Ukraine by George Soros http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/05/new-policyrescue-ukraine/.
39 James ONeill, Why the Secrecy on the MH17 Investigation, CounterPunch, December 19-21, 2014.
40 See the commentary by Ron Paul: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featuredarticles/2014/December/04/reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia/ and
http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2014/12/05/reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia/#.VILpR1Ost4I.gmail .

Index
60 Minutes 64-65
Abedin, Huma 38-40, 89, 121
Abedin, Saleha 38
Abedin, Zyed 38
Abramowitz, Morton 43-44, 62, 66-68
Abrams, Elliott 9
Abromavicius, Aikvaras 170
ACLU 37
Adelson, Sheldon 12
Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) 2
Afghanistan 13, 46-47, 83, 128-29, 138-39, 174
African Union (AU) 117-18
Agriculture 170
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 31
AIDS 106-07
Air Force Special Operations School 113
Al Jazeera 111
Al Nusra 141-43
Al Qaeda 108, 118, 138
ALBA vi
Albania 42, 60, 62, 64, 89-91, 95
Albright, Joseph 59-60
Albright, Madeleine 13, 23, 44, 48, 50, 59-61, 63-66, 99-100, 117
Algeria 123
Alyokitina, Maria 72-75
Amanpour, Christiane 57-58, 62
American Academy of Diplomacy 48
American exceptionalism 15-17
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 9-12, 181
Amnesty International (AI) 70-73, 109-10
Anarchism 28-29
Annan, Kofi 61-62
Anti-Semitism 28
Arab League 114-15
Arab Spring uprisings 41, 103-04, 107-08
Arafat, Suha 11
Arafat, Yasser 11
Arbenz, Jacobo vi
Argentina x
Aristophanes 65
Arkansas 37, 58
Army Command & Staff College (US) 52
Ashton, Catherine 109, 154
Asperger Syndrome 135
Assad, Bashir al 98, 141
Assange, Julian 21
Assassinations xii
Atlantic Alliance 127
Atlantic, The 103
Auschwitz death camp 88
Australia 165
Austria 98, 172, 174

Avaaz 74-76
Azarov, Mycola 146
Bahrain 116-17
Balkans 2-3, 37, 40-43, 85, 88, 138, 172
Baltimore Sun 21
Ban-ki Moon 109-10, 163-64
Bandera, Stefan 153
Bangladesh iii
Bank of America 177
Baratta, Mira 42
Barroso, Jos Manuel 172
Baruch, Bernard 4
BBC 171
Bedouins 104
Belgium 18, 165
Benghazi, Libya 103-04, 108-09, 118, 121-23, 150
Berbers 104
Berkut secret police 153-54
Berlin Wall 4-5, 131
Bernstein, Carl iii, 130, 134-35
Biden, Hunter 170
Biden, Sen. Joseph 42, 168-69
Bildt, Carl 145
Bill Clinton Presidential Library 11
Bin Laden, Osama 115, 138
Bjork 73
Black Sea 146, 156-57, 172
Blair, Diane 129-30
Blair, Tony 63-64, 145
Blinken, Antony 167
Bloomberg News 10
Boeing Corp. 6, 177
Bolivia x
Bonaparte, Napoleon 77, 136-37
Bonilla, Juan Carlos x
Bosnia 37-38, 39-40, 44-46, 50, 55, 61-62, 66-67, 86-87
Boston Marathon bombing 141-42
Bouchuiguir, Dr. Sliman 109-10, 112-13
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 50-52, 61
Brazil v, 163
BRICS alliance 163
Brockman, Miguel dEscoto 112
Brookings Institution 11
Brzezinski, Zbigniew 59-60, 128-29, 137-38, 160
Bulgaria 106-07, 172
Bulgarian nurses affair 106-07
Burisma Holdings Co. 170
Burundi 50
Bush, George H. W. 84, 128, 164
Bush, George W. 7, 69, 132-33
Bustillo, Juana x
Byzantine Empire 180
Cambodia 67, 96
Cameron, David 142, 168
Camp Bondsteel 93

Canada 41, 149

Cargill, Inc. 170
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 43-44, 62, 66-67
Carter, Jimmy 129-29, 138
Cartoons, anti-Islamic 108
Casa Alianza xi-xii
Castro, Fidel v
Castro, Raul v
Cathedral of Christ the Savior 72-73
Catherine the Great iii
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 100, 121-22, 128, 138
Chad 123
Chalabi, Ahmed 41-42
Charlie Hebdo, attack on 143
Charlie Rose Show 163
Chavez, Hugo v-viii, 117
Chemical weapons attacks, in Syria 141-44
Cheney, Richard (Dick) 116, 151
Chicago Tribune 59
Childrens rights 58
Chile v
China 22, 47, 49, 55, 75, 123, 140, 163, 176
Chirac, Jacques 11
Christopher, Warren 59
Church of the Madeleine (Paris) 79
Churchill, Winston 144-45
Ciappa, Olivier 79
Citigroup, Inc. 177
Clash of Civilizations (Huntington) 147-48
Clean Break (Perle) 139
Cleopatra iii
Clinton Foundation 177-78
Clinton Global Initiative 177-78
Clinton, Bill viii-ix, 2-3, 5, 8-9, 27, 50-51, 57-59, 63, 84-86, 98-100, 139-40, 145-6
Clinton, Chelsea 63
Clinton, Hillary R. and Goldwater i, and womens rights ii-iii, 58-59, 120, and Asia iii, as Secretary of State iiiiv, v-viii, 10, 24-25, 103-25 and Cuba v, and health care 2, 58, 130, and Israel 10-11, 40, and human rights 1516, 65-66, and whistleblowers 19-22, and NSA spying 19-22, and civil society 23-25, and identity politics
31-34, and religion 35-37, and Bosnia 37-38, and genocide 48-56, role in Bill Clinton administration 58-60,
and smart power doctrine 69-78, and Syria 75-76, 141-43, and Pussy Riot 77-78, and Yugoslavia 86-87, and
Libya 103-25, and Russia 132-71, and Crimea 158-59, and MH17 162-66
CNN xii, 57-58, 62, 64, 164-68, and Clinton Foundation 176-78, and political themes 177-78
Coe, Doug 36-37
Cohen, Sen. William S. 48
Cohen, Stephen 166, 181
Cold War 3-4, 19, 34, 42-43, 71, 83, 131, 160-61, 174
Committee on the Present Danger 57
Communism 3-4, 135, 154-55
Communist Party, Ukraine 154-55
Communist Party, USA 4, 135
Concentration camps 85, 88-89
Connors, Brenda 135
Contra War vi
Coptic Church 120
Costa Rica vii

Crazy Horse club 78

Crimea 144-45, 147-48, 156-60, 162
Croatia 42, 67, 84-85
Croatian Army 67
Cuba iv-v, vii, 39
Cuban exile lobby 39, 42
Curveball 41-42
Cyprus 94
Cyrenaica 104
Czech Republic 127-28
D-Day invasion i, 19, 79
Darfur 48-49
Davis, Lanny viii-ix
Dayton Accords 67, 87
Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) 145-46, 150, 152-53
Defense Intelligence College 112-13
Del Ponte, Carla 95-96
Democratic Republic of the Congo 53-54
Der Spiegel 97
Diaspora lobbies 41-43
Dinkins, David 40
DioGuardi, Rep. Joseph 42
Diplomacy 99-100
Doherty, Glen 121-23
Dole, Sen. Bob 42
Donbass, Ukraine 146, 154, 162, 167-68
Donetsk River 146
Donetsk, Ukraine 146, 159
Dow Chemical Co. 177
Drake, Thomas 21
Dresden, bombing of 49
Drug trafficking v-vi, x, xii, 24, 63, 95
Dubai 164
DuPont & Co. 170
Duty (Gates) 151
Eastern Orthodox Church 147
Ebola virus 169
Economist, The 144-45, 169
Ecuador x
Education 23-24, 58
Egypt 38, 89, 104-05, 107-08
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 3-4
El Fatih Hospital 106-07
Eleanor of Aquitaine iii
Eli Lily Co. 170
Elizabeth I, Queen of England iii
Ellsburg, Daniel 21
ENI S.p.A. 172
Environmentalism 28-29
Espionage Act 22
Estonia 154
Ethiopia 105
Ethnic cleansing 93-94
European Commission 172
European Union (EU) 15, 19, 26, 52, 94-95, 98, 109-10, 110, 150, 151, 154-56, 160, 167, 170, 172

European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) 95-97

ExxonMobil, Corp. 177
False flag operations 154-56
FBI 21, 34, 181
Fellowship, The 36-37
Feltman, Jeffrey 152, 163
Femen 78-80
Finance capital 23-24
First-Strike nuclear doctrine 136
Forbes 145-56
Foreign Affairs 69
Foreign Affairs Policy Board 151
Foreign Policy Institute 12
Fort Benning (Ga.) vii
Forte, Maximilian 124
France i, 6, 11, 18, 78-79, 84, 92-93, 143-44, 160, 174
Frank, Dana xi
Free-trade agreements 17-18
Freeman, Chas 181
Freeman, Derek 31
Friends of Syria 75-76
Fuerth, Leon 44
Gaddafi, Muammar 98-99, 103-10, 113-14, 152
Gaddafi, Mutassim 121
Gaddafi, Saif al-Arab 119-20
Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam 107, 117-18
Gasprom 172
Gates, Robert 114-15, 151
Gay liberation 30, 70
Gay marriage 30-31
Gay Pride parades 32-33
Gelbard, Robert 62-63
General Peoples Congress 104
Genocide Prevention Task Force 48
Genocide, as pretext for war 46-56, 66-68, 100, 149-50, 174
George Washington University 112-13
Georgetown University 59
Georgia, Republic of 69, 170-71
Germany 4-5, 16, 18, 45, 84-85, 91, 98, 127, 150-51, 154-56, 159-60, 162
Gershman, Carl 110, 146
Giazyev, Sergei 145-46
Global village concept 17
Globalization 16
GMO crops 170
Goldberg, Jeffrey 103
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 177
Goldwater, Sen. Barry i
Gorbachev, Mikhail 4-5, 127-30, 174
Gore, Sen. Al 44
Grand Chessboard, The (Brzezinski) 128-29, 160
Great Britain 55, 57, 63-64, 84, 133, 142, 168
Greece 94, 98
Greenwood, Phoebe 19
Grenada, US invasion of 157, 174
Growing Up in Samoa (Mead) 31

Guardian 19-21
Guatemala x
Gulf of Tonkin incident 163, 166
Habsburg Empire 29, 45, 147
Habyarimana, Juvenal 50
Haliti, Xhabit 93
Ham, Gen. Carter 118
Haradinaj, Ramush 94-95
Hard Choices (HRC) iv, viii, 69, 114-16, 121, 132-33
Harvard University 68, 168-69
Health care 2, 58, 130
Hedges, Chris 92
Heritage sites (UN) 98
Hernandez, Juan Orlando x-xi
Hillarys Choice (Sheehy) 88
Hitler, Adolf 15, 28, 76-77, 84-85, 98-99, 157-59
HIV 106-07
Hoenlein, Malcolm 12
Holbrooke, Amb. Richard 44, 61-62
Hollande, Francois 79
Hollywood (movie industry) i, 15, 100
Holocaust 48, 59, 88-89, 149
Holocaust Memorial Museum (US) 48
Holomodor 149-50
Homeland Security Dept. (DHS) 179
Homosexuality 30-34, 70
Honduras iv-x
Hong Kong 22
Hoover, J. Edgar 34
Horowitz, Jason 11-12
Hotel Uraina 155
House Resolution 758 (H. Res. 758) 173
Human Rights Council (UN) 32, 66, 113
Human rights groups 70-71, 99
Human Rights Watch 70-71
Human rights, as pretext for war 7, 9-10, 15-16, 26-28, 58-59, 99, 113, 132-33
Humanitarian interventionism 64-65
Hungary 61, 98, 127-28
Huntington, Samuel 147-48
Hussein, Saddam 38, 98-99, 115, 139-40
Hutu tribe 50, 52-53
Ibar River 97
Identity politics 26-29
Idris, King of Libya 104, 107-08
Immigration 41-42
Imperialism 17-18
Independence Square (Kiev) 150
India iii, 163
Inequality, economic i-ii, 1-3, 17
InSight Crime xi
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA) 38-39
Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (1998) 21
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 131
International Court of Justice (World Court)158
International Criminal Court (ICC) 54, 100, 107, 113

International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) 91-92, 94-95, 99-100

International Crisis Group 67-68
International law 54, 91-92, 94-95, 99-100, 107, 113
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 84, 150, 151-52
International Republican Institute 132
Interpol 108
Iran 11-12, 31, 49, 134, 164-65
Iran Air flight 655, downing of 164-65
Iraq 2-3, 7-8, 13, 41-42, 64-65, 83, 115, 139-40, 170, 174
Ireland 66, 104
Irish Republican Army (IRA) 104
ISIS 143-44, 169
Islam 31-32, 37-38, 79-80
Israel 6-7, 9-11, 39-40, 42, 45, 108-09, 110, 113, 120-21, 138-40, 152, 177
Israel lobby 9-11, 39-40, 42, 181
It Takes a Village (Clinton) 58
Italy 18, 104, 160, 172
Izetbogovic, Alija 45-46, 86
Jackson, Rev. Jesse 40
Jackson, Sen. Henry 6-7
Jalil, Mustafa Abdul 109
Jaresko, Natalie 170
Jibril, Mahmoud el 108, 113
John Deere Co. 170
Kadeer, Rebiya 47
Kagame, Paul 50-53
Kagan, Robert 9, 12, 151
Katchanovski, Ivan 155
Kazakhstan 168
Kelley, Craig vii-viii
Kennan, George i-ii
Kerry, Sen. John 142-43, 158
Keynes, John Maynard 161
KGB 128, 133
Khmer Rouge 96
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 116
Khrushchev, Nikita 156-57
Kiev, Ukraine 43, 78, 145-46, 148, 150-56, 162, 165, 167, 170
King, Larry 64
King, Martin Luther Jr. 111
Kirkpatrick, Jeane 57-58
Kirsch, Ina 155, 171
Kissinger, Henry 63
Klitschko, Vitaly 151
Korbel, Joseph 59-60
Kosovo 39-40, 47, 60-65, 67, 83-101, 128, 158, 174
Kosovo Force (KFOR) 92-94
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 61-63, 90
Kouchner, Bernard 92-93, 96
Kravchuk, Leonid 147
Kremlinology 134-35
Kristol, William 12
Kubic, Adm. Charles 118
Kuchma, Leonid 147-48
Kucinich, Rep. Dennis 173, 181

Kuhashvili, Aleksandr 170

Kuwait 177
Kyiv Post 79-80
Lagergren, Nane 61
Lancet 91
Lavrov, Sergey 133, 177
League of Nations 117
Lesbians 30-34
Levy, Bernard-Henri 45, 108-09, 114, 153
Lewinsky, Monica 2
LGBT movement 30-34, 70
Liberation 74
Libya 8, 13, 58, 83, 103-125, 136, 140, 143, 150, 152
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 104, 112, 118-19, 124
Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) 113
Libyan League for Women 109
Lithuania 147
Llorens, Hugo vi-vii
Lobbyists, influence of 6, 9-11, 39-40, 42-43, 181
Lobo Sosa, Porfirio ix-x
Lockerbie, Scotland 105-06
Los Angeles Times 11
Luhansk, Ukraine 159
Luxembourg 18
Lysistrata (Aristophanes) 65
Macedonia 63-64, 92, 98
Madame Tussauds Museum 79
Madonna 73
Mahmood, Naglaa Ali 38
Maidan protests 150-51, 153-54
Malaysia 162, 165
Malaysian Air flight 17 (MH17), downing of 162-66
Malaysian Air flight 370 (MH370), crash of 167-68
Mali 123, 143
Malta 105
Mandela, Nelson 104
Manning, Bradley (Chelsea) 20-21, 71-72
Marine Corps War College 113
Marshall Plan 161
Martinelli, Bishop Giovanni 120
Marty, Dick 96
Marxist-Leninism v
Mbeki, Thabo 117
McCain, Sen. John 39, 131-32, 153, 169, 170-73
McCarthy, Sen. Joseph 34
McCartney, Paul 73
McDonalds 73
McKinney, Rep. Cynthia 53-54, 181
Mead, Margaret 31
Mearsheimer, John 181
Medicus 96
Medvedev, Dmitri 133-34
Meet the Press 112
Megrahi, Abdelbaset al- 106
Mercenaries 110-11, 143

Merkel, Angela 151, 162

Methodist Church 35-36
Military bases, overseas (US) 159-60
Military spending (US) 3-6
Milosevic, Slobodan 7, 63-64, 71-72, 84-85, 92-93, 98-99
Minority rights 24-25
Mirzakhani, Maryam iii
Mistral helicopters 168-69
Mitterrand, Daniele 60
Mitterrand, Francois 60
Modi, Narendra 163
Monitor 154-55
Monroe Doctrine xiii
Monsanto Co. 170, 177
Montenegro 60
Monti, Mario 145
Morocco 89
Morsi, Mohammed 38
Movement for Justice and Development 41
Mujahidin 46-47, 138
Mullen, Adm. Mike 114-15
Multiculturalism 27-29, 35
Murdoch, James 177
Muslim Brotherhood 41,
Muslim World League 38
Nasser, Gamel 104-05
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) vi, 18, 24-25, 47, 99-100, 110, 132, 146
National Party (Honduras) ix-x
National Prayer Breakfast 36-37
National Security Agency (NSA) 19-22, 159-50
National Security Council (NSC) vi, 3-4, 65-66, 128-29
National Security Council Report-68 (NSC-68) 3-4, 161
National Transitional Council (NTC) 108-09
Nationalism 28
Natural gas 145, 170, 172
Nazism 28, 84-85, 88-89, 159
Negroponte, John vii-viii
Neibuhr, Reinhold 36-37
Neo-Nazi movement 153-54
Neoconservatives 7, 151
Neoliberalism 26-28
Netanyahu, Benjamin 12
Netherlands 18, 106, 165
Neuer, Hillel 110
New Age movement 58
New Deal 3, 26, 161
New Republic 68
New Straits Times 165
New York Daily News 59
New York Post 11-12
New York Times 11-12, 41, 58, 92-93, 122, 143
Nicaragua iv, vi, 112, 151
Niger 123
Nitze, Paul 161
No-fly zone (Libya) 113-14, 140

Nobel Peace Prize 144, 180

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) 99, 109-10
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 18-19, 44-45, 52, 59-60, 60-62, 63-65, 84, 88-89, 100, 105, 113,
119-20, 127, 129, 148, 151-53, 156-60, 167
Northwestern University 1-2
Nossel, Suzanne 69-70, 75
Ntaryamira, Cyprien 50
Nuclear weapons 5, 136
Nuland, Victoria 12, 65, 116, 150-53, 169
Nye, Joseph 69
ONeill, James 165
Obama, Barack H. iii, 10-11, 20, 58, 109-10, 114-15, 118, 124-25, 132-34, 142, 158, 168-70, 180
Oberg, Jan 60
Occupy Wall Street movement 27-28, 80
Odessa massacre 155-56
Oil industry 145
Oman 121
Open Society Institute 18, 67, 177
Operation Horseshoe 91
Orange Revolution 148-49, 152-53
Oresharski, Plamen 172
Organ trafficking 63, 96
Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 60-61, 63
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) 144
Organization of African Unity (OAU) 105
Organization of American States (OAS) iv
Otpor (Croatian National Resistance) 72
Ottoman Empire 29, 37, 45, 104
Paet, Urmas 154
Pakistan iii, 38, 46
Palestine 11, 40, 115, 139, 152
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) 104
Palin, Sarah 87
Pan Am flight 103, bombing of 105-06
Pandith, Farah 38
Party of Regions 150
Parubiy, Andriy 153-55
Pashtun tribe 31-32
Patriot Act 179
Paul, Rep. Ron 12, 173, 181
PBS 51
Pentagon Papers 21
Peres, Shimon 145
Perle, Richard 139
Persian Gulf 105, 115, 164-65
Petraeus, Gen. David 145
Pinchuk, Viktor 145, 177-78
Poland 61, 127-28, 137-38, 147-48, 154, 160
Police shootings 24
Polisario Front 104
Political Action Committees (PACs) 6
Polk, William R. 181
Poroshenko, Petro 145, 156-57, 162, 168, 170-71
Portugal 172
Powell, Gen. Colin 65

Power, Samantha 54-55, 57-60, 66-68

Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations 12
Princeton University 1-2
Problem From Hell (Power) 54-55, 67-68
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 8-10, 139-40
Propaganda 100
Prostitution 58, 63
Psaki, Jen 65-66
Pulitzer Prize committee 68
Pussy Riot 70, 72-77, 80, 155
Putin, Vladimir 32-34, 73-74, 76-77, 98-99, 171, 128, 130-33, 143-44, 152-53, 157-61, 163-68, 170-73, 175,
178
Pyatt, Geoffrey 151-52
Qaradani, Sheikh Yussef 109
Qatar 110-11, 120, 177
Racism 28
Rambouillet Accords 60-62, 99-100
Rape 96
Reagan, Ronald 57, 83
Refuseniks 6-7
Regime change doctrine 69-70, 113-14
Reich, Bernard 112-13
Religion 31-38, 72, 76-77, 79-80, 120
Religious right 36-37
Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) 103-04, 110, 140-41
Rice, Amb. Susan 65-66, 112, 140-41
Richardson, Gov. Bill 145
Ries, Marcie 172
Right Sector Party 154-56
Rights Action x
Roberts, Paul Craig 179-80
Roma people 96-97
Roman Catholic Church 147
Roman Empire 104
Romania 94
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 144-45
Rose Revolution 170-71
Rose, Charlie 163
Rousseff, Dilma 163
Rowley, Coleen 181
Rozoff, Rick 136
Rugova, Ibrahim 62-63, 99
Rumsfeld, Donald 9
Russia iii, 9, 22, 28, 32-34, 42-43, 47, 49-50, 55, 70, 72-79, 84-85, 87, 98-99, 125-76, 178-80
Russian Orthodox Church 33-34, 72, 76-77
Rwanda 50-51, 55
Rwanda Patriotic Front 50-53
Saban Center for Middle East Policy 11
Saban, Haim 10-11
Sacirbey, Mohammed 45
Samutsevich, Yekaterina 72-75
Sanctions, economic 3, 64, 69, 96, 99, 106, 112-13, 130, 160-61, 163-64, 166-69, 172, 174
Santorum, Sen. Rick 37
Sarajevo, Bosnia 45
Sarkozy, Cecilia 107

Saudi Arabia 33, 40, 46, 116, 177

Scheffer, David 44
Scheffer, Jaap de Hoop 131-32
Schroder, Gerhard 145
Schuessel, Wolfgang 174
Scotland 105-06
Sebastopol, Crimea 140, 156-58
Security Council Resolution 1244 (UN) 92-93
Security Council, UN 50, 52, 68, 90, 92, 110, 113-14, 117, 140-41, 152, 174
Segregation, racial 4
Self-Determination in the New World Order (Carnegie) 43-44
Serbia 7-8, 37-38, 44-45, 47, 50, 57-65, 72, 158
Sexual liberation 31-32
Sexual politics 29-34
Shakashvili, Mikhail 170-71
Shakespeare, William 125
Shale gas 145
Shalit, Gilad 120-21
Shannon, Tom vii
Sharanksky, Anatoly (Natan) 6-7
Sharp, Gene 72, 99
Sheehy, Gail 88
Shevchenko, Inna 78-79
Shiloah Center 113
Sikorski, Radek 145
Sirte Declaration 105
Slavery 58
Slouching Towards Sirte (Forte) 124
Slovakia 94
Slovenia 84
Smart Power doctrine iv-vi, 69-70
Snowden, Edward 19-22
Sochi, Russia 32-35, 74, 174-75
Sophocles 125
Soros Foundation 177
Soros, George 18, 67, 155, 161, 177
South Africa 117, 163
South Ossetia 171
South Stream gas pipeline 172-73
Spain 94
Srebrenica, Bosnia 46-47, 67-68
Sri Lanka iii
Stahl, Leslie 64
Stalin, Josef 74, 76, 144-45
Stevens, Amb. Christopher 121-23, 150
Stinger missiles 138
Stop NATO 136
Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society 23-25
Strauss-Kahn, Dominique 145
Sudan 2-3, 69, 174
Summers, Lawrence 145
Sunden, Jed 79-80
Svoboda Party 79-80, 153-55
Sweden 60, 61
Switzerland 112

Syla, Azem 93
Syria 41, 49, 55, 58, 75-76, 122, 140-43, 152
Tarhouni, Ali 113
Taylor, William 166-67
Teil, Julien 112
Tel Aviv University 113
Terrorism 123, 141-43
Thaci, Hashim 62-63, 93-94, 99
Thatcher, Margaret 57
Think tanks, influence of 6, 11, 98-99
Tillich, Paul 36-37
Timiryazev Museum 73
Tito, Marshall Josip 46
Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda 72-75
Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) 18-19, 26, 168
Transgender movement 30-34
Transnational Institute 60
Treaty of Rome (1957) 18
Tripolitania 104
Truman, Harry S. 3, 139
Tsarist Russia 77, 138, 146, 176
Tunisia 89, 103, 107-08
Tutsi tribe 50, 52-53
Uganda 53
Uka, Ali 93
Ukraine 6, 12, 32-33, 42-43, 49-50, 58, 69, 78-79, 99, 103, 137-38, 144-51, 153-171
UN Correspondents Association 66
Uniate Church 147
United Arab Emirates 177
United Nations (UN) 32, 50-51, 54, 57, 65-66, 85-86, 90, 92, 109-10, 112, 117, 131, 140-41, 158, 163-64, 169,
181
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) 50
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) 94, 96
United Nations Watch 110
United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) 118-19
University of Denver 59
University of Libya 108
US Institute of Peace 48
US/Ukraine Business Council 170
US/Ukraine Foundation 152-53
Use of Oil as a Political Weapon (Bouchuiguir) 112-13
USS Vincennes 164-65
USSR i, 3-4, 6-7, 71, 79, 128, 134, 146-47, 149, 152, 156-57, 159-61, 171
Ustashi 42, 85
Uyghur American Association 47
Uyghurs 47
Valdai International Discussion Club 174-75
Vanick, Rep. Charles 6-7
Vatican 147
Vazquez, Gen. Romero vii-ix
Venezuela iv, vii, ix, 117
Vietnam 13, 49, 118-19, 136, 163, 166, 181
Villepin, Dominique de 174-75
Voyna group 73
Walker, Amb. William 61

Wall Street Journal 93-94

Wallenberg, Raoul 61
Walt, Stephen 181
War crimes 94-96
Warsaw Pact 4-5, 9
Washington Post 146
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) 41-42, 69-70, 115, 141-44, 174
Weiner, Rep. Anthony 40
Welfare 17
West Bank (Palestine) 11
Wheelus Air Base 104
Wiener Zeitung 155
Wikileaks 20-22, 41
Williamson, John C. 96-98
Winter Olympics in Sochi (2014) 32, 34
Wiretaps, by NSA 19-21, 159-60
Wise, Jeff 167-68
Wolfowitz, Paul 7, 9
Wolfson, Howard 87
Woman in Charge (Bernstein) 130
Womens rights ii-iii, 58-59, 120
Woods, Tyrone 121-23
Workplace Religious Freedom Act (2013) 37
World Bank 145
World Conference on Women 58
World War Two i-ii, 15, 28, 46, 49, 61, 84, 104
Xi Jinping 163
Yale University 66
Yalta European Strategy 145-46
Yalta, Crimea 144-45
Yanukovych, Viktor 145, 154
Yarosh, Dmytro 155
Yatsenyuk, Arseniy 151-52, 154
Yeltsin, Boris 34, 128
Yugoslavia 38, 44-46, 55, 59, 69, 71-72, 83-101, 127-28
Yushchenko, Viktor 148-49
Zelaya, Manuel iv-x
Zelaya, Xiomara x-xi
Zguladze, Ekaterina 170-71
Zoellick, Robert 145
Zuma, Jacob 117, 163