CLINTON CANUL LUNA
Permit me, our dear readers of this column, to present to you Part 1 of the following analysis which I find to be of much interest, posted on Youtube in Spanish by Diario Público under the heading “Los ‘neocons’: ¿quienes son y que tienen que ver con las guerras recientes? – Inna Afinogenova“ (The ‘neocons’: who are they and what do they have to do with recent wars? – Inna Afinogenova) on July 29, 2022. It is as follows:
There is a movement that spans the last four decades of US administrations, regardless of the ruling party. An ideological current that has defined the country’s foreign policy with both Republicans and Democrats. The one that establishes, among other things, that the United States must maintain military predominance without anyone overshadowing them. Surely many of you have heard of the ‘neocons’. What you may not be so clear about is who we specifically refer to when we talk about the neocons and, above all, because they are so relevant. In this video we will talk about its founders, its disciples and their theses that have had a decisive importance in the construction of recent history. Before watching it, don’t forget to subscribe and activate the bell. Why have the neocons called our attention this time? Basically, because a week ago an article written by the American economist Jeffrey Sachs went viral in several languages in which he concludes that the war in Ukraine is the culmination of three decades of a neoconservative project. A risky and controversial conclusion in these times, whose author can be branded pro-Russian before even being read.
Without delving too deeply into his biography, we will only clarify that if he has something pro-Russian, he has been hiding it very well throughout his career. He is a professor at Columbia University who has been an advisor to the UN on the millennium goals, included twice in Times magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people, and was also an economic advisor to the government of Boris Yeltsin in the Russia of the 90s, although it is not something that one could be very proud of, but, well, that is another topic. According to Sachs, the US, led by the neocons, is leading Europe into a new geopolitical disaster from which the ‘old continent’, if it were a little perceptive, should move away as soon as possible. Basically, he maintains that the current US administration is dominated by the same neoconservatives that promoted the so-called wars of choice in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, which are the same ones that have been pushing Russia to invade Ukraine, and here I imagine that many will lie down hands to the head: but how can we remove the responsibility from Russia for the invasion?
Calm down, you can denounce this war and be clear about who started it and at the same time analyze the reasons that triggered it and those that have led us to where we are, which is with one foot on the edge of the abyss. According to Sachs, the US sought to break out the war in Ukraine to expand its hegemony, and Russia entered it partly to stop that advance and partly for its own imperial pretensions, but what interests us in his analysis is the role played by neoconservatives in all of it. Let’s see. The origins of the neoconservative movement can be traced back to the 1970s, and in particular to two academics: University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University historian Donald Kagan. His thesis is not complicated at all and can be reduced to the idea that the United States must exercise global, political and military dominance, and for this, it is worth everything to plant military bases on the planet, it will stop emerging powers and even start any war of choice that it considers necessary, and by war of choice they mean any war they choose to start without needing to be provoked by objective reasons beyond their own convenience as leader of the free world, even if those wars lead the rest of the world to not be so free, as usually ends up happening.
In the 1990s, the then US Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, captured all these ideas in a document entitled “Defense Policy Guidance,” also known as the Gulf-Based Doctrine. At first it was a confidential document, but it was leaked to the American press, and from there we learned of the predominant role of the United States in the new world order [as part] of its objective of retaining its status as the only power of unilateralism, or in other words its carte blanche to move international organizations in their resolutions and preventive interventions. The document also advised expanding US influence in Central Europe and Eastern Europe. In fact, already in April 2006, Robert Kagan, son of Donald Kagan, remember: one of the intellectual fathers of the neocon doctrine, explained in an article the advisability of incorporating Ukraine into NATO and the European Union as a way to achieve expansion of Western liberal hegemony. It may seem like the opinion of any individual, but at the same time his wife, Victoria Nuland, was the US ambassador to NATO under the George Bush administration. Nuland later became famous for her remembered “f**k the EU” in a leaked audio in the middle of the Maidan revolt while organizing the composition of what would have to be, in her opinion, the future government of Ukraine. At the same time, she was also handing out buns to protesters in central Kyiv. At that time she was already working for another administration, this time one of the Democratic Party. She was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs from 2013 to 2017 under the Obama administration.
(To Be Continued)
August 7, 2022
Finca Solana
Corozal Town