When the day dawns on the mighty United States of America when it has to look back on why it lost its high pedestal and ended up as a storied rump fighting to stave off its irrelevance, it will turn to the day it left its utterly dependent ally, Ukraine high and dry, to face the pounding by mighty Russia: A distraught and overwhelmingly helpless Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, fully trusting of President Biden, pitiably and most heartrendingly lamenting, “We’re alone, and the most powerful forces in the world’ are watching from a distance”.
The US is now trusted to betray its allies. Edward Lucas’ warning in The Times in 2019 following the US’ betrayal of the Kurds in Syria, that European nations must be prepared to cast aside too, has come true three years later. In between, outside Europe, we saw how Afghanistan was thrown to the wolves.
The endless appetite for US to use-and-throw its allies is only hastening its expected meltdown, which is now seen as inevitable and is only a question of when and not if.
The current Ukraine crisis is only the latest example of why.
To know why, you have only to hear the statement made by President Biden. Read it again. US Presidents only make statements. They don’t have to necessarily mean anything. Recall the statements made by Uncle Sam over the past say six decades, every time they have been involved in battle, either directly or through their proxies.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden warned that any nation that countenances Russia’s “naked aggression’ and a ‘totally unjustifiable’ war against Ukraine will be stained by association.
This time however, one can feel a hint of hubris in the statement, and it does seem like the mighty US has lost its touch. While the aggressor, Russia, has to be put on the mat, it feels like the US is running for cover!
It’s the price you pay for repeating the old template of the previous millennium. That template is simply not up to speed for the ever-changing world we live in.
Remember George W. Bush’s ‘You are with us or not with us’, as a prelude to the Afghan war? This only got them Pakistan as an ally, and today, the US Congress has itself acknowledged many a time that it got badly gamed by Pakistan.
Every time US is involved in a military conflict, if you are not with them, you are against “human dignity, rules-based international order, world peace, citizen rights” and democratic blah-blah-blah.
Even in the most complex wold of geopolitics, what goes around comes round. While US routinely ditches its allies, its “rogue” ally, Pakistan, gave a taste of its own medicine! Every time the US says its allies stay strong with them, they are actually not. Was Pakistan, their ally in the war against terror, strongly with them? The US Congress has mounds of evidence documenting its “strong ally’s” duplicity and sleight of hand.
Now on Ukraine, is Europe fully with US? Germany seems like it is desperately looking for an opening to do business with Russia. France is the next suspect in line. Excepting Britain, there’s hardly anyone US can count on, as a loyal ally.
When it involves US, there’s always a great historic sense of distrust and dismay, despite its status as the world’s number one superpower.
Its intelligence failures after it quit Afghanistan is only the latest embarrassment, of how bad it is in reading the ground situation.
Ukraine may well end up as this year’s goof-up.
Vladmir Putin, undoubtedly, is a bully, next only to China. His statement flaunting his nuclear power and his rogue ability to cause the worst ever havoc in history, is deserving of a North Korea, and not Russia.
But did US let loose Putin on the world, by making NATO membership of Ukraine, non-negotiable? Former US presidential hopeful, Tulsi Gabbard has put the blame squarely on Biden, for pushing Russia into a war with Ukraine, and called for a meet-up between the two.
The US-dominated NATO, was meant to secure Europe from USSR, but it did not stop the united USSR from invading Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968. It did not deter Russia from annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, to cite the latest example.
Ironically, the country which poses as the policeman of the world, is itself involved in military conflicts, something we expect only from a failed state or a rogue nation like Afghanistan.
Almost every tenure of a US President is riddled with wars, directly, indirectly, or new or old, in continuum.
It’s almost like Uncle Sam pines for a demon to show off his might. And so you have a string of conflicts from the Persian Gulf war in the 1990s, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq war a few years later, and various military interventions in Bosnia, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemeni, as side-shows, to name a few
But these are all demons who can’t bite back. Putin can, because he is a nuclear power, and is willing to press the button. You have to merely read his lips to know this for sure.
So why did the US bring upon the world a war that Putin wanted, though it was within its might to prevent it?
The need for a demon perhaps ending up as an obsession. But this time, it cannot put the genie back in the bottle.
This routine is now humbug: The US goes on a hunt for ushering in democracy in other countries. And then it puts in place regimes that are anything but democratic, like arming the Mujahideen and the Taliban during Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, and General Musharraf in Pakistan, to cite but a few examples, who we are grandly told, are actually knights in shining armour come to restore peace in the region! And then it will demand that whoever is not on its side is anti-democracy, anti-human dignity, and anti-rules-based world order! It will promise to protect its allies and nonchalantly ditch them. It will harbour terrorists and happily go laughing to the bank, all in the name of national security! It will impose sanctions on those who are not with it, and after some time, return to that country to do business with it and share the spoils. And come elections, the government of the day will promise its people that it will not indulge in any needless wars and exactly do the same, after entering White House.
However extraordinarily stupid the actions of US might seem, there is always a sliver of a chance they are actually being smarter than we think. Right now, the Ukraine war playing out is supposedly to pad p Russia as the enemy number one, so that the red lines ease off against the other most deserving number one enemy, China and then, it can play ping pong with it.
For India, Prime Minister Modi has shown that he too can offer a straight bat in the name of national interest, to the US. Our strategic ties with Moscow are too intertwined and integral to our security interests. Plus, Moscow, for all its flaws, can be a trusted ally. In contrast, as we have seen, Washington, as a trusted ally, is virtually an oxymoron.
For far too long, America has succeeded in aligning us within their foreign policy domain, in the name of protecting democracy, without our realizing that we are falling into a trap set by them.
The biggest irony is, the world desperately needs the US to behave like a responsible policeman of the world, and stay at the top of its game, as a counterweight to the acknowledged bullies, Russia and China, and of course, the other equally, if not worse, threat to peace, Islamic terror.
To conclude with an anti-climax, India however still needs the US on its side, for all its flaws, deliberate or unintended. We simply can’t afford to face up to an evolving axis of Russia, China and Pakistan. .
The only way out for this is to woo the US with easy, hassle-free and more access to the Indian market. It’s the one thing that’s too tempting for Americans to resist. And also a face-saver for Uncle Sam against liberal naysayers.
By- KS Muralidharan
