Letter to my Liberal American Friends on the True Nature of the U.S. Empire

Comment: Superb article - one to keep.

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The Saker
thesaker.is

Introduction by the Saker: During my recent hurricane-induced evacuation from Florida, I had the pleasure to see some good friends of mine (White Russian emigrés and American Jews who now consider themselves American and who fully buy into the official propaganda about the USA) who sincerely think of themselves as liberals, progressives and anti-imperialists. These are kind, decent and sincere people, but during our meeting they made a number of statements which completely contradicted their professed views. After writing this letter to them I realized that there might be many more people out there who, like myself, are desperately trying to open the eye of good but completely mislead people about the reality of Empire. I am sharing this letter in the hope that it might maybe offer a few useful talking points to others in their efforts to open the eyes of their friends and relatives.

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Dear friends:

During our conversation you stated the following:

1. The USA needs a military
2. One of the reasons why the USA needs a military are regimes like the North Korean one
3. The USA has a right to intervene outside its borders on a) pragmatic and b) moral grounds
4. During WWII the USA "saved Europe" and acquired a moral right to "protect" other friends and allies
5. The Allies (USSR-US-UK) were morally superior to the Nazis
6. The Americans brought peace, prosperity and freedom to Europe.
7. Yes, mistakes were made, but this is hardly a reason to forsake the right to intervene

I believe that all seven of these theses are demonstratively false, fallacies based on profoundly mistaken assumptions and that they all can be debunked by common sense and indisputable facts.

But first, let me tackle the Delphic maxim "know thyself" as it is, I believe, central to our discussion. For all our differences I think that there are a number of things which you would agree to consider as axiomatically true, including that Germans, Russians, Americans and others are roughly of equal intelligence. They also are roughly equally capable of critical thinking, personal investigation and education. Right? Yet, you will also agree that during the Nazi regime in Germany, Germans were very effectively propagandized and that Russians in Soviet Russia were also effectively propagandized by their own propaganda machine. Right? Do you have any reason to suppose that we are somehow smarter or better than those propagandized Germans and Russians and had we been in their place we would have immediately seen through the lies? Could it be that we today are maybe also not seeing through the lies we are being told?

It is also undeniable that the history of WWII was written by the victors of WWII. This is true of all wars - defeated regimes don't get to freely present their version of history. Had the Nazis won WWII, we would all have been treated to a dramatically different narrative of what took place. Crucially, had the Nazis won WWII, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that the German people would have shown much skepticism about the version of history presented in their schools. Not only that, but I would submit that most Germans would also believe that they were free people and that the regime they live under was a benevolent one.

You doubt that?

Just think of the number of Germans who declared that they had no idea how bad the Nazi regime really was. Even Hitler's personal secretary, Traudl Junge, used that excuse to explain how she could have worked for so many years with Hitler and even like him so much. There is an American expression which says "where I sit is where I stand". Well, may I ask - where are we sitting and are we so sure that we have an independent opinion which is not defined by where we sit (geographically, politically, socially and even professionally)?

You might ask about all the victims of the Nazi regime, would they not be able to present their witness to the German people and the likes of Traudl Junge? Of course not: the dead don't speak very much, and their murderers rarely do (lest they themselves end up dead). Oh sure, there would be all sorts of dissidents and political activists who would know the truth, but the "mainstream" consensus under a victorious Nazi Germany would be that Hitler and the Nazis liberated Europe from the Judeo-Bolshevik hordes and the Anglo-Masonic capitalists.

This is not something unique to Germany, by the way. If you take the Russian population today, it has many more descendants of executioners than descendants of executed people and this is hardly a surprise since dead people don't reproduce. As a result, the modern Russian historiography is heavily skewed towards whitewashing the Soviet crimes and atrocities. To some degree this is a good thing, because it counteracts decades of US anti-Soviet propaganda, but it often goes too far and ends up minimizing the actual human cost of the Bolshevik experiment in Russia.

So how does the USA compare to Germany and Russia in this context?

Most Americans trust the version of history presented to them by their own "mainstream". Why? How is their situation objectively different from the situation of Germans in a victorious Third Reich? Our modern narrative of WWII was also written by victors, victors who had a vested reason in demonizing all the other sides (Nazis and Soviets) while presenting us with a heroic tale of liberation. And here is the question which ought to really haunt us at night: what if we had been born not Russians and Jews after a Nazi defeat but if we had been born Germans after an Allied defeat in WWII? Would we have been able to show enough skepticism and courage to doubt the myths we were raised with? Or would we also be double plus good thinking little Nazis, all happy and proud to have defeated the evil Judeo-Bolshevik hordes and the Anglo-Masonic capitalists? 

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Ten reasons why Victoria Nuland should be seen as Stalin of today

Vladimir Golstein
Russia Insider

10. Both use made up names. Stalin's family name was Jugashvilli, Nuland's ancestor's name was Nudelman. The ancestors of both Nuland and Stalin came from the Russian empire, which probably gave them both the idea that they have a special knowledge of how to handle Russia.

9. Nuland's right hand man happens to be her husband, Robert Kagan. Stalin's right hand man was a fellow communist, named Lazar Kagan(ovich). Kagan co-authored "Project for a New American Century" and he obviously wants to realized his vision for Ukraine by implementing what might be called, "amerikanizatsiia," that is, the process of bringing in the officials from US and other countries to run Ukraine along the American lines. In his turn, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR from 1925-1928 and was expected to usher in "New Soviet Century" through the politics of "ukrainizatsiya": creating a new ruling Soviet elite for Ukraine, the elite brought in primarily from other places.

8. Both are clear ideologues: Nuland of "neocon movement", Stalin of bolshevism. Both went to schooling with the masters and chief ideologues. Nuland worked closely with Rumsfeld and Cheney, starting as Vice President's senior aide, and eventually serving as his deputy national security adviser. In his essay for Financial Times, Geoff Dyer quotes an former colleague in the Obama administration State Department , who observed that "I have no doubt that when she sits down for a family dinner, she is the biggest neocon at the table." While Lenin's widower, Krupskaia, joked that had Lenin re-appeared when Stalin was already in charge, he would have had Lenin put to jail for deviating from the party course.

7. Both are willing to see through numerous deaths in Ukraine to get the territory under their influence. Stalin together with Kaganovich unleashed forced collectivization upon Ukraine, resulting in mass death of peasants, known as Holodomor. Nuland's and her fellow neocons' forced "americanization" resulted in the civil war between Donbass and Kiev, that so far has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed infrastructure, and produced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

6. They both tend to be aggressive and demanding and refuse to take no for an answer. Consequently, they prefer to squeeze their opponents till they break. Geoff Dyer's quotes Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest in Washington DC who observed: "It is clear that her whole approach is to push Russia so hard that it has no choice but to accommodate the US." Stalin's ability to squeeze his opponents is, of course, proverbial.

5. According to Stalin's critic, Abdurakhman Aftorkhanov, Stalin made two mistakes during the WWII. He showed Europe to Russians (soldiers who saw how prosperous it was and realized that they were duped). And he showed Russians to Europe - which got scared, and started NATO, and other programs. The fate of Russia and the rest of the world has changed as the result of these mistakes. Someday, Nuland's critics will charge her with accomplishing a similar feat. She has fully exposed to the Western world Ukraine's lawlessness, corruption, and neofascism. And she has amply demonstrated Western World to both Ukrainians and Russians, who will never trust it again: seeing its unscrupulous meddling into their affairs.

4. Both are too arrogant and impatient to waste their time of diplomacy, and prefer to cut to the chase. They dismiss the possible opposition or obstacles with the similar terms. "F..k EU," famously observed Nuland, in response to the questions about EU attitude toward the regime change in Ukraine. Stalin never hesitated to resort to the foul language, calling Lenin's wife, "syphilitic whore," or bragging that in the course of WWII he managed to outsmart Great Britain: "Stalin could always raise a laugh from his courtiers by saying, as he often did: 'We f***ed England!'"

3. Both prefer to rule by decree and appoint the people to the offices. While Nuland boldly proclaimed from the comfort of her office that Yatseniuk will be the future leader of Ukraine: "Yats is the man," Stalin, of course, went even further, not only assigning Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and others to run Ukraine, but threating Lenin's widow, Krupskaia, that if she continues to challenge him, he'll appoint another woman as Lenin's widow.

2. Similarly to Stalin, who for the sake of strategic purposes made the deal with Nazis (Ribbentrop), Nuland held various meetings with Ukraine's Right Sector and other ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist organizations; and seems to be very cozy with Svoboda leader, Oleh Tyahnybok.

1. And finally, both Stalin and Nuland tend to present themselves in stunning visual imagery as the good caring parents of the new nation, easily duping the gullible locals. Here is Stalin surrounded by admiring Soviet children who are forever grateful to him for their happy childhood, and here is Nuland, surrounded by happy Ukrainians, whom she feeds with pastry as they are ready to embark on the path toward the new statehood.