American Diplomacy

President #Compromise (who won’t answer to that name now that it’s campaign season, by the way) recently said that we are in lockstep with Israel on the issue of Iran, which he hopes to keep peaceful by means of diplomacy. He wasn’t talking about “normal” diplomacy. Like Condi Rice’s illucidation of the issue of exporting democracy to the Middle East when she couched it in terms of “American democracy”, I have to assume he’s talking about American diplomacy.

For an example of American diplomacy, here it is in action in Russia.

[W]hen the new US Ambassador to the Kremlin, Michael McFaul, arrived in Moscow, he met with leaders of the Russian opposition on his second day in town. As Eric Kraus, a Moscow-based fund manager, put it:

“One should first ask what the reaction would have been in the United States if the British ambassador to Washington began his mandate by throwing an open house for ‘Occupy Wall Street’ – it would have been considered a hostile act. Why is Russia any different? Russia is a sovereign state, not a protectorate, and the job of any ambassador is to facilitate state-to-state relations, not to become a player in domestic politics.”

  Justin Raimondo

I believe the answer is “American Exceptionalism.”

But of course the US is indeed involved in the domestic politics of practically every nation on earth, and it even has an official agency in charge of such meddling. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “public-private” institution that receives direct grants of US tax dollars, which it then funnels abroad via its four main constituent parts: the National Democratic Institute (NDI), affiliated with the Democratic party, the International Republican Institute (IRI), a division of the GOP, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), sponsored and partially funded by the AFL-CIO, and the Center for International Private Enterprise, affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1984, NED played a key role in undermining the Nicaraguan government at a time when the US government was illegally funding the so-called “contras,” who were carrying out a terrorist campaign against the authorities in Managua.

[...]

In 1989, when Nicaragua’s Sandinista government was being challenged by the opposition — led by newspaper publisher Violeta Chamorro, and her United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) — Congress passed a $9 million appropriation for the NED to get involved in the Nicaraguan election. It passed with one restriction, however: none of the money was to be used to help one particular party. In reality, however, almost all the funding went to the UNO. In tandem with the flood of millions of dollars into the opposition, the US unleashed the contras, inflicting unprecedented violence on civilians and wrecking the economy.

Forgive me if I don’t think the desire to fund the Contras was completely coincidental to the formation of NED.

US funding via NED [in 1985 to two French groups] – to the tune of $830,000 – was seen as an attempt to undermine Francois Mitterand’s socialist government.

Hmmmm….I think I can see why that might have been. After all, NED is the National Endowment for Democracy. Did France not have a democracy in 1985?

On the occasion of the NED’s twentieth anniversary, President George W. Bush proclaimed the US was launching a “global democratic revolution” – and there was no doubt its main target was the Middle East.

[...]

Gen. Wesley Clark related in an interview with Amy Goodman how, ten days after 9/11, a top General revealed to him how the decision to invade Iraq was made bereft of any link to al-Qaeda. Coming back to his informant a few weeks later, Clark said:

“’Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And the General said ‘Oh, its worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk and picked up a piece of paper. He said, ‘I just got this … from upstairs from the Secretary of Defense’s office today. This is a memo that describes how we are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years. Starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon. Then Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Then finishing off Iran.’”

[...]

Egypt figures prominently in all this: it is “the prize,” as neocon theoretician and former LaRouchie Laurent Murawiec put it in an infamous presentation to the Defense Policy Board, in which he and his fellow neocons pushed not only the invasion of Iraq but also a US takeover of the Saudi oil fields and – eventually — “regime change” in Egypt. “The pivot of the Arab world is the most important one to transform in depth. Iraq may be described as the tactical pivot, the point of entry; Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot; but Egypt, with its mass, its history, its prestige and its potential, is where the future of the Arab world will be decided. Egypt, then, in the new Middle Eastern environment created by our war, can start being reshaped.”

[...]

[NED is] a conduit for funding the “color revolutions” that were sparked by US-funded activists in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It is, in short, a weapon in the US arsenal designed to effect “regime change” in countries deemed insufficiently enthusiastic about becoming – or staying – a US protectorate.

[...]

It appears, though, that the Egyptian government – which has just elected a majority Muslim Brotherhood parliament – is having none of it: Cairo recently put NED activists, including the son of the US Secretary of Labor, on a “no fly” list, and announced it will prosecute a number of individuals, including 19 Americans, for engaging in illegal activities. Washington is outraged, and its amen corner is already mobilizing in support of the “Cairo 19.”

These are the people Hillary Clinton recently claimed did “nothing wrong.” They were “just trying to promote democracy.”

By the way, before we elevate Sam Lahood, son of US Labor Secretary and former GOP congressman Ray Lahood, to the status of a martyr for “democracy” and “liberalism,” let’s note that his former gig was serving as a censor for the US Occupation Authority in Iraq.

[...]

The penalty [in the US] for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) [which foreign contributions to electoral activities on American soil] is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine – roughly equivalent (except for the fine) to the penalty faced by the “Cairo 19.”

[...]

That’s the Americans’ signature stance in the world: one standard for me, and another for thee….

American Exceptionalism.

In this post, Raimondo offers a different take on the “Arab Spring” than I’ve heard elsewhere – elsewhere viewing it consistently as a bid for democracy by the citizens of dictatorships. When I think about the recent history of the US activities in the Middle East, it dawns on me that Raimondo may just be right, to wit:

In each and every instance, the target of the crowds in the streets has been a regime sporting the West’s imprimatur. Even Gadhafi had finally made his peace with those he once denounced as “imperialists,” and gained a degree of legitimacy in Western circles.

The Arab world has essentially been under occupation by the West since the fall of the Ottomans in the aftermath of World War I. The “anti-colonial” revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s ended in the consolidation of sclerotic regimes that oppressed their own people and – as the cold war petered out – wound up in the Western orbit. Indeed, as Mubarak and Gadhafi prepared their sons to succeed them, these regimes became indistinguishable from the monarchies traditionally backed by Washington and London.

Monarchies and dictatorships, which by the way, are sometimes quite frankly bought outright, circumventing the need for NED.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.