Ukraine: U.S., NATO must be held accountable

For weeks, from CNN through BBC to Al Jazeera, we are fed the same diet on a daily basis. We run the risk of being victims of intellectual kwashiorkor. Hence, some of us have to cry out!

This exercise is not in defence of President Vladimir Putin, a dictator of no mean measure. I reject fascism, communism, Nazism, militarism, sit-tightism and all forms of tyranny. Putin epitomises monocracy. I like Westminster’s model of democracy.

The United States’ presidential system of government is fascinating. When it comes to the rule of law, freedom and right to dissent, I belong to the West (the U.S.). I reject the strangulating, despotic governments in China and Russia. They are an open sore on our humanity. The Kim Dynasty in North Korea must fall. Everything must be done to bring down autocracy everywhere in the world.

The world must stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Myanmar (Burma), Chad, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, etc. and take all legitimate measures, including the use of force, to remove the unconstitutional governments and usurpers of political power.
 

The Ukraine crisis (now a full-scale war), which has claimed over 14,000 lives, is deplorable. The blame for the deadly turmoil rests squarely at the doorstep of Washington. The United States, through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is obsessed stealthily with the ambition to emerge as the only superpower in the globe.

The notion of a ‘balance of power’ is anathema to the American establishment. The European Union, United Kingdom and other allies in NATO are mere pawns on the power chessboard of America.

The U.S. is neurotically against a bi-polar world. After using the so-called allies to achieve a unipolar world of its dream, it will dispense with their services.

Did America not stab France, a major ally, in the back recently by undercutting it through the Australia-UK-U.S. pact on nuclear-powered submarines in Australia? The uppercut delivered by Washington to Paris was so devastating that France had to withdraw its ambassador to the United States! Looks surreal; looks impossible! “Yea, you’re dispensable; you’re our ally only on our own terms” – the import of the U.S. message to France.
 
The European member-states had better open their eyes before it is too late. Recall the infamous statement of ex-Prime Minister of UK, Tony Blair – “I will be with you, whatever!” Yes, the UK, France and others went everywhere with the then President George Bush blindfolded. By the time President Joe Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistan, he practically didn’t remember any ally for consultation!

Hence, Russia is fighting back. The only profound regret is that this battle is not on a diplomatic front but involves blood-letting, which is comprehensively inadmissible. There is no justified war. Had U.S. abandoned its sly intention to hem in or surround Russia militarily in order to emerge as the only superpower, there would have been no war in Georgia and currently in Ukraine.

Apparently, the Soviet President deluded himself with that submission. The war had been won and lost. The U.S. wasted no time in sending the message of a new empire or a new world order. The Warsaw Pact may die as it was bound to but not NATO; in fact, unified Germany must be a member of NATO; and U.S.-controlled NATO must reap in full the spoils of war through expansion and occupation of the ‘defeated territories’ in Eastern Europe. To achieve this, the U.S. continued to massage the ego of Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and their successors while pushing the apparatus of death to their doorstep under different guises in order to realise its dream of a unipolar world.

Of course, America is not in a hurry in its strategy of containment of the former arch foe – it took some five decades for communism to be defeated – but the process of achieving the American Empire must be jump-started under different guises (a process which the U.S. no fewer regards as supremely adroit). Russia can see through the slyness, camouflage, hence, his counteractions, which have rattled the U.S. and will surely return CIA, Pentagon and the military-industrial complex to the drawing board. Russia’s counter actions in Georgia must be viewed in the context of an effective riposte to the U.S. manoeuvres in some countries close to its borders. It is exactly the same scenario that is playing out in Ukraine. Pre-emptive strikes are justified in international law. If there is palpable evidence that Territory C might ultimately use Territory B to launch an attack against Territory A or compromise its security, then Territory A can take proportionate pre-emptive strikes against Territory B.
 
Americans claim they are lovers of freedom but that liberty they have denied others. It claims Ukraine is a sovereign State and is free to choose a path that pleases it by joining NATO. Why then is the U.S. fighting Iran, another sovereign country, for choosing a path that pleases it by developing (potential) nuclear arms?

UK and European Union should be in a hurry to dismantle NATO. Otherwise, either now or in the future, Europe risks being the battlefield in a feud between the U.S. and Russia, and Europe will be the loser for it – the U.S. being thousands of miles away from the warfront. I call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine while the U.S. with its allies and Russia return to the negotiating table. There is no justified war.

In this age of globalisation that opens unprecedented doors for economic integration and prosperity for peoples of the world, military alliances have become anachronistic.    
 
Soyombo, media practitioner and public affairs analyst, sent this contribution from Abeokuta.