EDITORIAL

The Cracks in the Hypocrisy:
It’s the Time for a Change

Jason Ross

March 6—Will the collective West (already a fragmenting assembly) regain its sanity and drop the policies that lead the world to global war and nuclear annihilation?

An opportunity is presented this week in the United States, where an expected vote on a War Powers Act resolution will call upon members of the House of Representatives to take a stand on ending the illegal U.S. military presence in Syria. The privileged resolution, H. Con. Res. 21, directs the President to remove U.S. forces from Syria within 180 days of its passage, recognizing that Congress never authorized them to be there in the first place.

If a crack forms in the wall of hypocrisy, will a truthful policy be able to knock it down?

Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Syria March 4 making very public the occupying military force that continues to operate in a sovereign country without its permission. What about sovereignty and territorial integrity?

For the U.S.-UK-NATO axis, the Kurds, a minority group in Syria, are said to require protection from the depredations of the Damascus authorities, headed by the supposed chemical weapons enthusiast President Bashar al-Assad. What of Donetsk and Lugansk, which had been subjected to military attacks by the Kiev authorities for the better part of a decade, with some ten thousand or more killed? The supposed defenders of democracy lied, mouthing support for a Minsk peace process while planning the reconquest of those territories.

Argentina has just withdrawn from a 2016 pact with the UK that conceded control of the Malvinas Islands to the UK. But according to UK Foreign Minister James Cleverly, the islands are British. “Islanders have the right to decide their own future—they have chosen to remain a self-governing UK Overseas Territory,” he said. Are the people of Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine allowed to decide their own future?

China is accused of all manner of atrocities in Xinjiang, with demands that the “international community” stand up to what the U.S.-UK-NATO axis considers a cruel autocracy. But did those same powers, with direct responsibility for the Minsk process, stand up for the people of Donetsk and Lugansk, a majority of whom plainly do not want to be administered by Kiev?

The “rules-based order” appears to have as many exceptions as it does rules. Free trade and open markets are extolled, except for China. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are sacrosanct, except for Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Crimea. Terrorists must be rooted out and punished, anywhere in the world, except for the Nord Stream bombers.

The opportunity to end the occupation of Syria is a flank. So is the exposé by Seymour Hersh of the Nord Stream bombing. These are opportunities ripe to be exploited to induce a much broader change.

A new world is dawning. As the trans-Atlantic financial system crumbles and disintegrates, world power is shifting to Eurasia, to the Global South more broadly. Leaders of many nations increasingly trust China and Russia more than the “West.” The world effect of the NATO-Russia war being played out mostly in Ukraine is only catalyzing, accelerating these changes. The British saw the writing on the wall years ago, and have, with their U.S. friends, deployed Russia-gate and the anti-China campaign to maintain control. Although they cannot succeed in this, they may succeed in bringing about nuclear devastation.

The Global South has had enough of this hypocrisy. Have the citizens of the West?