|
Kerry Can Not Be Trusted
Lavrov: US pressuring Russia into passing UN resolution on Syria under Chapter 7
“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If
Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we
will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a
complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State
John Kerry’,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told
Channel 1’s Sunday Time program.
…
“Our partners are blinded by an ideological mission for regime
change,” said Lavrov. “They cannot admit they have made
another mistake.”
…
“I am convinced that the West is doing this to demonstrate
that they call the shots in the Middle East. This is a totally
politicized approach,” said Lavrov.
There were two Geneva agreements on negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition between the U.S. and Russia. Then there was the latest agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons. The U.S. has tried to renegotiate or reinterpretate all three of these agreements.
It is obvious, not only to Russia, that the United States government and especially its current Secretary of State can not be trusted. It will not stick to even written agreements.
Iran’s new president Rouhani and his team must keep this in mind when they start to negotiate with their United States government colleagues.
Lavrov and Russia have slowly manouevred Kerry and the US into such a weak position that they are reduced to raising Chapter VII “powers.” Kerry isn’t doing this because he wants to but because he has to. It is only one degree removed from saying, as they have said,” It doesn’t matter what the UN says, it doesn’t matter what Congress says: if Israel orders us to attack we will do so.”
As somebody rightly remarks, the real question is whether a combination of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah (with the SCO in the background)constitutes a deterrent. And he’s right, it seems to do so.
Kerry may say what he wants but it is going to take more than another showing of the snuff movie to reverse the course now established in Syria. Today the Turkish President Gul put on a masterful display of hypocrisy and claimed that Turkey has been doing all that it can to prevent Syrians from crossing its borders. This would seem to suggest that the hand washing has begun.
Most important in these calculations is what is happening in the States, and probably throughout NATO, at the tectonic plate level of politics: after years of declining living standards, cuts in social wages, increasing un, and under, employment and other earnests of dystopia, the citizenry is waking from its long drugged sleep. And, as it opens its eyes the dream of inexorable material progress, in a society in which new freedoms constantly unfold themselves, dissolves.
So far very little has changed: a few politicians have discovered that populist economic programmes catch hold; while the media is finding that it can no longer tell people what to think then report that it is what they are thinking. On the right it is noteworthy that in Congress it is the Tea Party types who are leading the campaign to de-fund the NSA. There is a split among those who have been the rock solid base supporting US militarism for many years- the neo-cons can no longer rely on the rednecks to go along with them.
Liberal imperialism has preached for seventy years that the military exists as much as a form of generosity, towards a world that “needs” US military assistance as to protect the USA. And now, finally, those voices which have been opposing the Pentagon because they can see no threats to the United States, are joined by a burgeoning isolationist lobby which points out that, if the US doesn’t have the money to pay pensions or fund public education, it should not be doing “good deeds” abroad, “protecting” people who can’t protect themselves. It is going to get harder to promote military adventures than it has been for decades, as people realise that foreign policy is not peripheral but central, and blame the collapse in their living standards, and the coming of permanent precariousness or insecurity, on the waste of trillions in Iraq, in subsidies to the bankers and in an arms race with no other contenders.
Time is not on Kerry’s side, which is why he won’t stop wriggling.Those who seem to think that the US can do what it wants whenever it chooses, and that the drool from its incontinent rulers’ flapping lips should be treasured and savoured, are wrong. It is not just that Kerry is a fool- which is par for the course- but that he is surrounded by fools, his boss is a fool, the UN Ambassador is a fool, the National Security advisor is certifiably idiotic. And they choose their own advisors and assistants. After Bush and Obama the White House has become nothing but a campaign HQ, staffed entirely by machine politicians. And this is taking place just as, down at the grassroots, their machines are breaking down, because they can no longer be greased and oiled.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 23 2013 16:03 utc | 62
|
