by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
It was only a matter of time before our so-called foreign policy turned into a serious problem with someone who can punch back.
For decades the United States has arrogated to itself the capacity to tell other nations who they should have as leaders. Who must run said nation, and who may not. The alliances that are to be coddled, and those that are forbidden. This is preposterous, of course, in that national sovereignty is precisely that, yet we have for decades believed we have the “righteous authority” to issue such diktat.
The CIA has topped some 50 governments over time. Some more-or-less openly, some on the down low. Iran is an infamous one that ultimately blew up in our face. Deciding that the Iranian government was unacceptable because it expropriated the property of a British company, not even a US concern, we interfered, toppled the government and installed the Shah. This ultimately led to the Iranian revolution and the seizure of hostages at our Embassy, never mind a whole bunch of other terrorism.
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We are very anti-narcotic and anti-serious drug — except, of course, when the use of the money generated suits us. Then its “oh well” or “oh, that’s sad”, even if the people that die from said drugs are in the United States, and they often are. Oliver North and the cocaine trade that was at the center of Iran-Contra anyone?
The United States was the initiator of events that led to the war in Ukraine. We were fully behind the overthrow of the government there back at the time of Maidan less than a decade ago. Said government was incorrigible, but that’s none of our business, right up until it apparently is and someone gets a wild hair in their backside about where someone’s using the money — or really, really likes the idea of being able to launder some as a US interest. Anything that gets in the way of that is, of course, unacceptable.
But for Maidan there would be no war in Ukraine. But for our continued attempts to do what we did with Turkey and missiles right near Russia there would have been no Cuban missile incident either. Yes, that was a crisis, but it was our making — not the USSR’s. Would you sit back and let some foreign nation put nuclear missiles in Mexico within a few minutes flight time of LA?
Didn’t think so.
Fundamentally the Ukraine problem lies there. Ukraine has always been an ungovernable cesspool; there are roughly four ethnic groups, all of whom hate each other, and one of them is essentially Russian. The land itself is a trade crossroads that has served as such for over a thousand years, so that this occurred is not really a surprise. The USSR delegated nearly all operating authority to the territory for this reason; Moscow simply didn’t have the desire to try to tame that which was always trying to bite from one direction or another, as they understood the only real way to make that happen would be to kill 3/4 of the population there or enslave all of them.
Crimea was purchased by Catherine the Great as it was a gateway for a strategic, warm-water 12 month port. Without it Russia was at risk of a pincer on said port at any time, and this was unacceptable. Therefore rather than take it, she bought it. This is historical fact and no amount of revisionism will ever change it, any more than you can un-do the fact that the United States purchased Alaska; even though it is non-contiguous with the rest of our land, it serves as a buffer between North America and the Russo/Asian landmass. It’s ours; we bought it through legitimate consensual negotiation, just as Russia bought Crimea through the same process.
The Turkish mess with NATO (since when are they in the North Atlantic?) and that part of the Cuban mess ought to be obvious, but that’s in the rearview mirror and we managed to avoid blowing each other up, even though we provoked it — and were in the wrong.
