The following observations tell at least one aspect of the reality yet dominated by the Empire.
Bonnie Kristian, fellow at Defense Priorities, writes in Business Insider (“Bashar Assad’s inevitable presidential victory is another sign of the limits on the US’s power”, June 2, 2021, https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/bashar-assads-inevitable-presidential-victory-is-another-sign-of-the-limits-on-the-uss-power/amp_articleshow/83175304.cms):
“For the United States, Assad’s re-election should be a reiteration of the great foreign-policy lesson of the post-9/11 era: Our [US] government cannot remake the world in its image.
“We cannot play global police and social worker rolled into one, launching one military intervention after another to solve every problem and topple every dictator. Washington’s regime change projects over the past 20 years have failed.”
No ambiguity there’s – failed. Failures don’t happen without cause. Failures don’t float on air. Failures have foundation – facts, factors, etc.
The opinion referred to Iraq and other countries:
“They failed even when they ‘succeeded,’ as in Iraq and Libya. They failed when they were merely threatened, as in North Korea. And they failed when they failed, as in Syria, where Assad continues to hold on to power.
“Washington’s failure in Iraq and Libya hardly needs rehearsing, 18 years after one war began and 10 after the other.
“Both nations, much like Syria, were ruled by cruel autocrats who should never have had power. But both also suffered enormously in the aftermath of regime change. Iraq swapped dictatorship for terrorism, first al Qaeda, then the marauding ‘caliphate’ of the Islamic State. Libya remains chaotic and bloody, riven by civil war, a textbook case of how not to intervene.
“Neither has become an exemplar of democracy or a source of regional stability. In neither is there evidence that further US military involvement will make progress toward anything that may be called ‘victory.’”
The Iraq- and Libya-cases were failures for the empire, it’s being told. The claim can’t be brushed away.
Bonnie Kristian also refers to John Bolton’s approach:
“Our [US] government’s regime change failure with North Korea is less visible, but we have come far too close for comfort to just such a war. The chief regime change advocate was former national security advisor John Bolton, who in his capacities in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations was a consistent advocate of preventive strikes.
“In his 2007 memoir, Bolton expressed ‘dismay’ over the advent of US-North Korean diplomacy – until, he wrote, he realized the North Koreans ‘were what they were,’ so negotiations might break down and then war could break out.
“More recently, while working for former President Donald Trump, Bolton repeatedly pointed to Libya – with its dictator deposed and dead – as his ideal for North Korea and its despot, Kim Jong Un. With rhetoric like this (and, even in its absence, the US record in Iraq and Libya on full display), is it so surprising the Kim regime won’t surrender its nuclear arsenal?”
The opinion goes back to Syria, which tells a fact of bourgeois democracy, which is regularly ignored by a part of scholars and a part of progressives – executive actions without authorization from legislative part of state:
“Then there’s Syria, where the last three US presidents have launched strikes m – all without congressional authorization, as the Constitution requires.”
It also tells an imperialist fact – forceful occupation of a country/a country’s part:
“A small contingent of US forces remains on the ground …”
Is there any UN resolution approving US troop in Syria? Is it a precedent to be followed in some other land, if the Empire feels necessary for its “national security” or with some other “logic”? Who shall answer? Governments entangled in the present world order?
The opinion says:
“They’re [US troop] there, apparently indefinitely, though it has long since been clear that the US will not oust Assad. Syria’s election demonstrates that anew, said Robert Ford, who was US ambassador to Syria when the civil war began in 2011.”
Bonnie Kristian refers to Robert Ford:
“‘Great powers like the United States cannot remove this guy,’ Ford told The Washington Post ahead of the vote.”
A fact of today – “cannot remove” – has been told. However, this “can’t remove” isn’t absolute. At times, and in certain circumstance, it can remove. But not always and everywhere it can remove. Once, it could remove as it planned. That was in Libya, in Iraq. Once, it could successfully launch political moves called color revolution. But, now, all attempts for “color revolution” haven’t succeeded. Once, “color revolution” was not exposed. Now, that move is exposed. Everybody don’t buy the “color revolution”, don’t get allured by imperialist slogan of “democracy” – the “democracy” slogan is dissected, its source of fund and backers are searched. The organizations backing these “democracy”- and “rights”-movements are identified. Names and backgrounds of these organizations are now well-known. This spread of information has created a sort of obstacle on the imperialist “democracy” campaign in countries, although imperialism has now begun boosting such “democracy” campaigns and crusaders in lands. It’s part of its new tact.
Bonnie Kristian, contributing editor at The Week, and columnist at Christianity Today, tells another fact:
“Keeping US soldiers on Syrian soil increases our risk while doing nothing to change the reality of Assad’s office. Washington should withdraw all American troops from Syria (and Iraq) immediately and adopt the foreign-policy restraint these failures advise.”
It’s admitting the empire’s limit – presence of force doesn’t always increase empire’s security; rather, the opposite can happen – “increase risk”. This means the empire can’t always buy its security with its troops. Only a few years back, this reality was not so stark, specific.
Changes are appearing. Russia’s role in Syria has torpedoed the empire’s initial plan – install a lackey in Damascus. Russia forcefully stood against the empire’s intervention in Syria. The proxies the empire mobilized found their guns and dynamites turning ineffective. The proxies’ “democracy” slogan and the MSM’s “poison” story couldn’t be successfully marketed. In contrast, the proxies, their slogan, and the toxic stories were exposed. Now, with developments in the eastern Mediterranean coast country, the empire’s limit of power is getting exposed.=
Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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