Chaos, destruction, death and refugees: The decades long failure of US wars

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Chaos, destruction, death and refugees: The decades long failure of US wars

Many of the world’s refugees are a direct result of American policy.

By Arshad M Khan, Countercurrents.org

There are two countries in the world with the nuclear capacity to plunge the world into a nuclear winter.

For a while, the threat of nuclear war seemed in the past as rapprochement prevailed between America and Russia. Then in another country (known at least to one observer for its intricately decorated Easter eggs), there was a rift among the elite as to its future direction. Should it continue to look east to Moscow, or should it look towards the EU? That was in 2004 — the Orange Revolution. It soured Russia. But given Ukraine’s precarious economy, it was forced eastwards again and Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010. However, the Maidan protests and the subsequent removal of Yanukovych (seen in Moscow as a US assisted coup in view of the damning, hacked Victoria Neuland phone call) has brought us to a fracture of relations with Russia.

Russia has acted to preserve its Black Sea access taking back Crimea. It had been gifted to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev on the three hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav when the Orthodox Ukrainian Cossacks pledged loyalty to the Czar of Russia in exchange for protection against Catholic Poles. The tug-of-war between the Ukrainian-speaking western part and the Russian east is centuries old and why America exacerbated it is difficult to comprehend.

Crimea is back in the Russian fold. The fracture within Ukraine is unlikely to mend soon. The Russian-speaking Slavic east, tied by language, tradition, religion and industries supplying Russia (including critical military hardware), is in open rebellion. Not only are we back to a 1956 Hungary like situation using proxies with the roles reversed, but the dismantling of a buffer state places the west in direct confrontation with Russia. Whether by logic, miscalculation or accident, the possibility of nuclear winter has returned.

Ukraine has now signed an agreement on free trade with the EU as a possible first step to membership. But which Ukraine does the Kiev government represent when the industrial half is in open rebellion with daily casualties?

The UN reports the number of refugees worldwide has surpassed fifty million for the first time since World War Two. Impoverished Pakistan, the victim of Afghan instability, still hosts and supports more refugees than any other country in the world without any significant outside help. Part of the blowback lies in the constant terror attacks that have brought the country to the brink of civil war and to civilian displacement and destruction in the Afghan border areas.

The refugees have multiplied … millions from Iraq to Syria then elsewhere as Syrians themselves, again in the millions, flee their own country; refugees from Libya, from Somalia, and earlier from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos … in a world of whose making? Now there is Ukraine, so far a trickle but an increasing daily reminder. Since many of the world’s refugees are a direct result of American policy, surely we can provide more assistance towards their upkeep.

Blowback in Cambodia (from Vietnam) killing millions; in Nigeria from Libya; in Kenya from Somalia, in Pakistan from Afghanistan … . Blowback and torture — the consequences of guerrilla war when facing an almost invisible enemy, torture became an enticing short cut to victory. Not very successful, looking at the results in Vietnam, Iraq, etc., and sobering and shameful for the country, though not surprising, that Bush Jr. and Cheney cannot travel abroad without fear of arrest.

The 2012 book “Torture and Impunity” by Professor Alfred W. McCoy lays out a well-researched history that has to be a must-read for future policy makers.

Dr. Arshad M Khan is a retired Professor. A frequent contributor to the print and electronic media, his work has been quoted in the US Congress and published in the Congressional Record.

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Chaos, destruction, death and refugees: The decades long failure of US wars