Fare Thee Well, James Monroe

by Bernie Holland

The ‘Monroe Doctrine’ originated by US President James Monroe in 1823 proclaimed that the whole of the Americas was its own ‘backyard’ and that any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas was a potentially hostile act against the USA. During the Cold War this ‘principle’ was extended to enable US imperialism to establish its hegemony over Western Europe and large parts of Africa and Asia.

It was during a visit to South Africa by US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken that Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor explained it is South Africa that will decide who their allies are and not have their choice of allies dictated to them by the USA. The purpose of Blinken’s visit was to ‘persuade’ South Africa that it should join the ‘democracies’ of the ‘international community’ in a concerted effort to isolate and contain Russia and to join the clamour and outrage against the Russian leadership in what can only be described as an effort towards regime change in Russia.
    As much as efforts are made to disguise the fact, this has been primarily the purpose of the provocation of Russia through the expansion of NATO over more than three decades. Over the same period, Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov have gone to great lengths to de-escalate tensions, largely borne of a Western animus towards Russia, by offering every opportunity to engage in diplomatic exchanges in the interest of furthering cordial relations. They have been rebuffed with insults and threats at virtually every turn, however.
    Gripped by an obsession with a ‘Cold War’ mentality, the USA continue peddling the lie that this ‘international community’ is united in ridding the world of the menaces of communism and imperialism, still viewing the Russian Federation as the old Soviet Union, the autocracy of which has to be supplanted by the liberal democracy of the Anglo-American sphere of influence based on 19th Century geopolitical doctrine.
    Ignoring the fact that the emergence of that global majority of Eurasia and the Global South represents 85 per cent of the world community, the minority of the Anglo-American bloc display little in their view of the rest of the world that can be regarded as ‘internationalist’ in nature. In their drive to isolate and contain others, particularly through punitive economic sanctions, they are only succeeding in doing exactly the same to themselves.
    Reflecting on views expressed by EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, it appears that the West has placed a partition between its perfumed garden of freedom and democracy and that of the ‘lawless jungle’ of its former colonies to the east, perpetuating the mistaken view that this western democracy will prevail over the autocracies of both Russia and China.
    Herein lies the root of this problem, namely the pressing forwards a notion that it is necessary to create enemies of those who wish to be your greatest allies. The reason for this ‘necessity’ is simply that by removing the belief that these ‘enemies’ and ‘threats’ actually exist, then will come the abandonment of the idea that war itself is an imperative. And it follows that should this be the case, then so should be that of dismantling and abandoning the war industry once and for all.
    It is the greed and depravity of those who profit from the grotesque leviathan of the military industrial complex, however, sponsored by the central figures within corrupt political power bases, that guarantees the continuity of this evil, which can be likened to the growth of a malignant tumour, a diseased organ within the body of Mother Earth.
    We cannot look to others to cure this pathology. We have to assume the role of apothecaries to find a prescription to transform this poison into an elixir that can be administered to this belligerent juvenile, devoid of emotional intelligence, which thrashes around in violence, demanding that his perverse appetite be satiated by the suffering of others. We have to sift the herbs of truth, justice, compassion, dignity and diplomacy to fashion a pill, bitter-sweet in taste, that can be administered to lead those, driven by devilish functions, to a more enlightened condition of being.
    Addressing those who perpetrate this vile xenophobic, racist and fascist drive to demonise and destroy the Russian people, their traditions, culture and religious convictions, in taking the prescription of these medicinal herbs, they will be brought to accept that the people of Eastern Ukraine have voiced their unanimity in choosing to enjoy the peace and security offered to them by Russia, in a wholesale rejection of the imperative to suffer under this illegitimate Ukrainian regime that is infected with fascism.
    Furthermore, in containing the course of this treatment, the patient must abandon this conceit that the diverse characteristics of ‘exotic’ nations are an irrelevance to a Western mind that presupposes a dominant position across the spectrum of world affairs.
    It is this pathological narcissism that prevents the patient from realising the potential offered by a new model of internationalism, borne of the transactional relationships developed within this emergent global majority, by means of which the participants have gained the liberty to reject entirely any notion that a world order can be maintained through the prosecution of military interventions, the concoction of ‘popular revolt’ by means of externally sponsored ‘colour revolutions’ and the bringing about of the overthrow of regimes which, leaning more towards social emancipation, are not inclined towards being further oppressed by the predatory instinct of western imperial and neo-colonial interests that are intrinsically founded on premises that are specious and immoral and benefit no one other than the merchants of death who reside in luxury, distancing themselves from the world of the ‘foreigner’, soaked in blood and carnage and permeated with human misery.
    Whilst the US President and his pack of cronies stage the pantomime of their Summit for Democracy in furthering their futile attempts to dismember and dismantle Russia, China and the BRICS movement, Brazilian President Lula continues his diplomatic endeavours with Chinese President Xi Jinping, choosing to work out bilateral trade agreements rather than engaging in plans for the next ‘war of choice’.
    Whilst Nuclear disarmament remains on the horizon, shining a beacon of hope for the further evolution rather than the extinction of our species, another form of disarmament has already been effected, that being the removal of the economic weaponry of the dollar as a tool of sanctions. This has been effected by the rejection of the dollar in favour of the Chinese yuan and the Brazilian real as units of international currency. Furthermore, Lula will be in Shanghai on 13th April for the investiture of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff as head of the new Development Bank within which the dangerous speculative adventures, favoured by the failing Western banking cartels, will be prohibited.
    Furthermore, what will surely stick in the craw of this increasingly belligerent and provocative Transatlantic alliance is the fact that, with South Africa chairing the BRICS-Plus Summit this year, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor will find her ‘in-tray’ heaped with more than a dozen applications from other nations eager to join this alliance of the global majority, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria being amongst them. Just one question remains here – will the USA be dispatching their ‘sophomore diplomat’ Anthony Blinken on yet another tour of these countries demanding once and for all that they gang-up against Russia?