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Interventionism Kills: Post-Coup Ukraine One Year Later
Interventionism Kills: Post-Coup Ukraine One Year Later
It was one year ago last weekend that a violent coup overthrew the legally elected government of Ukraine. That coup was not only supported by US and EU governments — much of it was actually planned by them. Looking back at the events that led to the overthrow it is clear that without foreign intervention Ukraine would not be in its current, seemingly hopeless situation.
By the end of 2013, Ukraine’s economy was in ruins. The government was desperate for an economic bailout and then-president Yanukovych first looked west to the US and EU before deciding to accept an offer of help from Russia. Residents of south and east Ukraine, who largely speak Russian and trade extensively with Russia were pleased with the decision. West Ukrainians who identify with Poland and Europe began to protest. Ukraine is a deeply divided country and the president came from the eastern region.
At this point the conflict was just another chapter in Ukraine’s difficult post-Soviet history. There was bound to be some discontent over the decision, but if there had been no foreign intervention in support of the protests you would likely not be reading this column today. The problem may well have solved itself in due time rather than escalated into a full-out civil war. But the interventionists in the US and EU won out again, and their interventionist project has been a disaster.
The protests at the end of 2013 grew more dramatic and violent and soon a steady stream of US and EU politicians were openly participating, as protesters called for the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Senator John McCain made several visits to Kiev and even addressed the crowd to encourage them.
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Washington Works To Overthrow Argentine Government
Washington Works To Overthrow Argentine Government
The Strategic Culture Foundation has published Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s report on the effort underway by Washington and Argentine intelligence agents to overthrow the reformist president of Argentina.
Washington cannot tolerate reformist governments in Central and South America. For example, Washington’s interferences in Honduras and overthrow of reformist governments are legendary. One of Obama’s first acts as President was to overthrow the government of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was allied with reformist Venezuela president Hugo Chavez and, like Chavez, was portrayed as a dictator and a threat.
Currently Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina are on Washington’s list of governments to be overthrown.
For decades Washington has had what is euphemistically called “close relations” with the Honduran military. In Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, Washington is allied with the Spanish elite, which traditionally has prospered by permitting US business interests to loot the countries. In Argentina Washington is allied with the Argentine intelligence service, which is currently working with Washington and the oligarch class against the reformist president.
Washington squelches reforms in order to protect the looting ability of US business interests. As US Marine General Smedley Butler said of his service in Central America, “I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”
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Failed Statebuilding versus Peace Formation: The Consequences and Implications over the Last 25 Years
Failed Statebuilding versus Peace Formation: The Consequences and Implications over the Last 25 Years
Recent years have seen an abundance of foreign intervention to achieve peace and statebuilding. Below, Oliver Richmond discusses how statebuilding often fails to achieve its goal of long-term peace and a stable state, and questions whether peace formation should come from actors and institutions?
The Limits of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
1.5 billion people are currently affected by conflict1 so all peacemaking activities impact upon a significant percentage (over 20%) of the world’s population. The story of the last twenty-five years of western interventionism to build a “liberal peace” and the modern neoliberal state within an international community characterised by law and rights, is one of great plans often going awry. Initially, the modern intervention narrative consisted of a mix of western triumphalism about liberal democracy and capitalism with cruder interests of the remaining major powers at the end of the Cold War. The defeated, vanquished, or merely poor were not treated with too much empathy or solidarity by the rich and powerful states of post-Cold War order, however, even in those heady days of the earlier 1990s, notably during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992-5.
The new peace and liberal orientation in many conflict-affected states in the 1990s, however, seemed to mean it deserved the epithet of peace, even if the liberal peace and the state were far from perfect. Human rights, democracy, capitalism, and a reinforcing international peace architecture made up of liberal states appeared to represent the best hope for, and historically most advanced form of, peace ever seen (as the international officials, not a few from the global south, and many scholars from the world’s elite universities were fond of repeating).
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Charlie Hebdo and the ‘Blowback’ Debate
Charlie Hebdo and the ‘Blowback’ Debate
The vicious murder of the editors and writers of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris has had an effect similar to the hysteria that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: demands that we invade Iraq (again!) and also Syria, as well as a campaign of vilification directed at anyone who dares question this dangerous nonsense.
What we might call the Charlie Hebdo Effect, in concert with the rise of the so-called Islamic State, has propped up the previously failinginterventionist consensus, mobilizing previously faltering neocons on the right and “liberal” interventionists on what passes for the left around the flag of the War Party.
You may ask: So what else is new? Yet there is something new-ish about the response of some of the more weak-kneed libertarians, who never did care much for the anti-interventionist critique of US foreign policy and have now come out of the closet, so to speak, training their fire not on the interventionists but on principled opponents of US militarism. Shikha Dalmia, writing in The Week, takes aim at Ron Paul: “Former congressman and erstwhile presidential candidate Ron Paul offers a completely off-base analysis of the root cause of the episode. It is blowback for Western foreign policy adventurism, the libertarian-leaning Texan claims.” Paul, Dalmia avers, isn’t “doing his avowed commitment to the cause of freedom any good.”
Leaving aside for the moment the absurd “libertarian-leaning” appellation – is she really challenging Paul’s libertarian credentials? – Dalmia goes on to write:
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The Austrian Case Against Economic Intervention – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada
The Austrian Case Against Economic Intervention – Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada.
The basic unit of all economic activity is the un-coerced, free exchange of one economic good for another based upon the ordinally ranked subjective preferences of each party to the exchange. To achieve maximum satisfaction from the exchange each party must have full ownership and control of the good that he wishes to exchange and may dispose of his property without interference from a third party, such as government. The exchange will take place when each party values the good to be received higher than the good that he gives up. The expected, but by no means guaranteed, result is a total higher satisfaction for both parties. Any subsequent satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the exchange must accrue completely to the parties involved. The expected higher satisfaction that one or each expects may not be dependent upon harming a third party in the process.
Several observations can be deduced from the above explanation. It is not possible for a third party to direct this exchange in order to create a more satisfactory outcome. No third party has ownership of the goods to be exchanged; therefore, no third party can hold a legitimate subjective preference upon which to base an evaluation as to the higher satisfaction to be gained. Furthermore, the higher satisfaction of any exchange cannot be quantified in any cardinal way, for each party’s subjective preference is ordinal only. This rules out all utilitarian measurements of satisfaction upon which interventions may be based. Each exchange is an economic world unto itself. Compiling statistics of the number and dollar amounts of many exchanges is meaningless for other than historical purposes, both because the dollars involved are not representative of the preferences and satisfactions of others not involved in the exchange and because the volume and dollar amounts of future exchanges are independent of past exchanges.
