Foreign Policy Double Standard

by Gerard Emershaw

When the United States invades a country which has not attacked it, this is considered justified, but when Russia does the same thing, it is viewed as grounds for sanctions. When the United States stations troops in over 140 countries, this is considered acceptable, but when Russia announces plans to build bases in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, it is considered an act of naked aggression and viewed as grounds to restart the Cold War. Why does such a hypocritical double standard exist? In what sense is “Do as I say, but not as I do, Vlad” a policy which gives the United States the moral high ground that it once held?

Since the Cold War ended, the United States has taken an aggressive stance against Russia for no apparent reason. Former members of the Warsaw Pact—Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia were admitted to NATO. Georgia and the Ukraine have been under consideration for membership. Combined with American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, Russia can rightly feel as if the United States is attempting to surround it. Until it was cancelled in 2009, the United States had also been planning to install a dubious missile defense system in Poland. Yet neocons pretend as if the United States has been well behaved and that Putin is somehow out of control?

If Russia wants to overextend its empire again as it had done decades earlier as the Soviet Union, why should the United States seek to stop it? Despite its resources, with its centrally controlled economy with little economic freedom, Russia is bound to collapse again despite the natural resources that it controls. The United States virtually bankrupted itself during the Cold War when it was clear to anyone who understands economics that the Soviet Union was destined to collapse no matter what the United States did. Why in the world do neocons insist on having the United States again make a similar costly mistake? Do these former Trotskyites really still hold a grudge against Russia for what the Soviets did to their beloved idol? Or is the Military-Industrial Complex secretly funding the countless lame neocon think tanks where friends of Bill Kristol gather to play nerdy war games and have bull sessions about the third rate philosophical ideas of Strauss? Maybe these chickenhawks would not be so laughable when construed as Neo-Cold Warriors if any of them had spent any time in actual military service. Instead, they do a fine job of screaming about spending other people’s money to send other people’s children to die in pointless wars that do not make the United States any safer. Neocons need a new name that is not such a flagrant violation of truth in advertising. Neocons are about as conservative as fool’s gold is gold. Then again, pyrite can actually look like gold. Neocons never look like real conservatives.