Hypocrisy and lies as important tool for foreign policy public relations
Biden administration along with European leaders from 2022 Russian invasion into Ukraine taught the world a lesson every country must learn: there is no charity in international relations, only pragmatism.
Initially, when Putin’s troops crossed Ukrainian borders in February 2022, the leaders of western “democracies” publicly formed a “united front” against Russian aggression. They strongly denounced the invasion and publicly committed to supplying Ukraine with ALL the necessary weaponry and financial assistance to fight Russian armies and to liberate occupied Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian president Zelensky received numerous assurances of support, high level visits to Kyiv, including the famous Biden visit to the country at war with sirens turned on to make it look more dramatic.
President Zelensky trusted Western nations, mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops and expected the West to arm them properly, provide F 16s, sufficient number of Patriot systems, long range artillery, permission to strike into Russian territory with western weapons and expected to get everything he asked for to win the war. Why did president Zelensky expect all that ? Because western powers PROMISED him to fully support Ukrainian war effort and did send him SOME Patriot systems, some HIMARS, lots of ammunition, some tanks and armored vehicles etc and provided SOME financial assistance to prevent Ukrainian economy from collapse.
After Russians retreated from Kharkov region and from the southern city of Kherson, it seemed that this could even be a winnable war. And then came the botched counteroffensive – without air cover, without long range artillery, just throwing troops to die needlessly at the Russian minefields and defense lines south of Kherson and on the way to the sea… Who told Zelensky it was a good idea to mount counteroffensive? Perhaps he did this because again Western powers convinced him and the world that they would provide air cover, long range artillery and whatever else was needed to mount the counteroffensive? And then they didn’t ! When Zelensky was pleading Biden to provide F 16s and long range ATACMS missile systems, Biden sabotaged Zelensky’ s request – moreover Biden didn’t allow Europeans to supply Ukraine with most effective weapons they needed.
After the failed counteroffensive, as the war effort was getting under way, Russia was intensifying its attacks, Russian military learned from early setbacks, built some defense lines, recruited more soldiers, manufactured more weapons and began steadily advancing west especially in Donetsk region after taking strategic town of Avdiivka.
WHY IT WAS IMPORANT FOR BIDEN REGIME AND THE EUROPEANS TO CREATE AN ILLUSION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ORDER WHILE SABOTAGING ITS ENFORCEMENT
Ukraine continued to beg for weapons, Biden and Europeans continued to express “concerns” and make empty promises while in reality actively and knowingly sabotaging Ukrainian war effort. Why did Biden and Company sabotage Ukraine, their own declared foreign policy priority? After all, Biden and his team kept talking tough against Putin and pledging endless support for Ukraine for as long as necessary and publically pretend that they want to be a world policeman punishing aggressors like Russia for invading their neighbors.
Well, the only reasonable conclusion is that Biden administration and our European “allies” didn’t see any benefit to themselves from either giving Ukraine enough support to win the war or directly confronting Russia. On contrary, Europe depended on Russia for gas, power and oil supplies and Europeans did a lot of business there. Ukraine, devastated by war, and depopulated could never replace Russia as a supplier of resources, or market for European goods. Direct confrontation with Russia – such as letting Ukraine use western weapons to hit major Russian cities or sending NATO troops to defend Ukraine would not bring any benefit to the West and would risk nuclear confrontation and world war III.
So western “democracies” knew it wasn’t in their interest to fully support Ukraine and help Ukraine win , but they still LIED about the need to “stop Putin” and pretended to be helping Ukraine while spoon feeding the weapons and refusing to provide truly effective weapons, artillery, missile systems, air cover etc. It was important for western “democracies” to LIE because they wanted to “LOOK GOOD” to the world and to liberal segments of their populations, to look like they are the noble fighters for international justice and peace ! They have held all these useless Ramstein meetings, announced a series of useless and ineffective sanctions against Russia, bragged about sending tiny quantity of weaponry to Ukraine and waged a media and public relations campaigns in support of Ukraine.
Did all this help Ukraine SOMEWHAT? Yes, to some extent – Ukraine more or less stabilized the frontlines and survived (barely) as a Nation that depended only on the West and not on Russia. You can’t call it full independence though – Western NGOs and European bureaucrats dictated Ukraine’s domestic policies, many of which were woke and didn’t agree with Ukrainian culture and traditions. Still, this half-assing effort by Biden and western “democracies” at least prevented Russia from completely taking over Ukraine or doing a regime change there.
In practice, however, Biden regime and Europeans who had all the military capabilities in the world to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needed to win, refused to do so putting Ukraine in a bad position at the front lines and at the negotiations table.
This entire campaign to help Ukraine was a major international scam by liberal governments in the U.S., Canada, and NATO countries designed to create an ILLUSION that there are enforceable international law and order. At the end of the day, Ukraine paid a high price losing tens of thousands of young people, 8 million refugees who moved abroad.
Western taxpayers paid a price supporting Ukrainian refugees, supporting military industrial complex, and suffering from high gas, oil, electricity and other prices in Europe at the time when inflation was already high due to irresponsible money printing during Covid time.
Russia didn’t just survive the sanctions, but in fact, its economy was boosted by military spending and its domestic businesses are thriving without western competition domestically. Russia did suffer severe losses in the front lines just like Ukraine did, but in return Putin can boast annexation of 20% of Ukrainian territory, land bridge to Crimea and possibly soon some regime change in Ukraine for more pro-Russian one, even though its hard to believe that someone who is NOT hostile to Russia could win elections in Ukraine…
DOUBLE STANDARDS AGAINST TRUMP USED AGAIN
Now President Trump is getting all the bad publicity for “bullying” Zelensky and for being the first honest leader who openly declared that his policy is pragmatism, not charity and exposed his predecessors’ Ukraine aid scam (billions of dollars invested into useless assistance instead of sending Ukraine weapons they requested! ) President Trump is making an effort to clean up Biden’s mess and cut the losses for Ukraine in recognition that no one else is willing to propose anything better and back it up with their own troops on the ground. Are all these mainstream European government willing to send troops to Ukraine not for peacekeeping but to fight the Russians to get all Ukrainian territory back? Are they? Not really! If Macron, Starmer or Merz or Polish president are not willing to send their own troops in harms way to actually fight the Russians in Donbass and together with exhausted but brave Ukrainian troops get the territories back, then Macron and Starmer and Merz and others should sit down, shut up and listen to Trump no matter how unjust or imperfect his proposals seem to be!!
CONCLUSIONS
What is the lesson for all countries from all this? The lesson is that objectively speaking there is NO ENFORCEABLE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ORDER system in place! All relations between countries are not based on charity – international relations are all TRANSACTIONAL and have always been this way! No one has moral authority or will or interest in enforcing international law and order! Stronger countries can invade weaker countries with impunity unless those weaker countries belong to NATO. At this point it is not even clear whether NATO would be willing to risk nuclear conflict with Russia over say, tiny Estonia or a war with China over Taiwan. There are no knights in the shining armor – only bullies. Every country looks out for its own interest – sometimes they band together to protect themselves from common enemy, and sometimes they don’t. The world is divided into geopolitical spheres of influence and they fluctuate.
No one should trust western liberal demagogues claiming that their decaying socialist system is somehow more superior than “autocracies” and should be exported to those autocracies: because every time the West attempted “nation building” it failed miserably and only caused wars and needless suffering. Autocracies are more honest – they are just saying to smaller neighbors – submit to my power or else I will come and conquer – something that’s been done for centuries by western countries as well. So called “western democracies” are not real democracies because they domestically engage in political persecution against right wing opposition, they suppress freedom of speech and they tamper with elections (see latest examples in Holland, Romania, France where right wing leaders were unlawfully denied coming to power). Moreover, and most importantly, so called “western democracies” expand self-serving socialist government control over the population, depriving us of basic freedoms from government tyranny. And yet, western democracies managed to earn a “good reputation” by lying about being a true democracy where power belongs to the people when in reality it belongs to the swamp bureaucracy.
The question is, why do these hypocritical lying regimes, that don’t really believe in international law and order or justice, be allowed to dictate to other countries how to run their business? Or how to behave internationally?
George Bush lied about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons and invaded independent Iraq solely because Bush wanted to control oil prices and control Iraqui government – result was installation of pro-Iranian Shiah regime and the loss of reputation for the U.S. as a fair player in the international scene.
Prior to that, NATO invaded Yugoslavia to help anti-western Muslims fight Christian Serbs – that scam gave rise to renewed Russian militarism – but the West kept lying about reason for intervention into Yugoslavia to stop “genocide”. In fact, they intervened on the wrong side simply to get rid of the pro-Russian and disloyal to the West regime of president Milosevich – they wanted only loyal regimes in Europe.
In Afghanistan, U.S. went after rare earth metals and to fight Taliban, and supposedly raised an army of allies in that country only to abandon them to be massacred by Taliban and allow massive robbery of U.S. weaponry and massive corruption of pro-American regime that fled the country at the first opportunity.
Under Obama we allowed Arab spring to proceed and removed stable dictators from power in most arab nations – under the pretext of exporting democracy there – and what happened at the end? ISIS and a bunch of Islamic extremists taking over power in Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia etc.
When genocide and massacres happen on a daily basis in various parts of Africa, is the west rushing to send troops there to defend or install “democracy”? NO. Why? Because the West is not benefitting from being present in Africa – Russia and China are, but they don’t care about telling these people how to run their countries, – on contrary Russia and China are there to just do business with them
China may be a totalitarian regime, but they are not exporting their system anywhere – they are being honest about their intent to do business not to do regime change so whatever governments they are working with are less apprehensive about working with China than working with former colonial powers!
Is Russian totalitarian regime any better than Western fake democracies? Probably, not – because they are not a real democracy either and they are not claiming to be. Did Putin lie about reasons to invade Ukraine such as potential NATO expansion, or some large scale discrimination of Russian speaking population in Ukraine? Yes he did – in reality he just wanted to destroy Ukraine to make sure Russians don’t see Ukrainian more democratic system that had good chances for success as a viable alternative to Putin’s regime. Putin didn’t even benefit from land grab because Donbass and southern Ukraine territories he occupied are mostly devastated by war, depopulated and need huge investment of resources Russia doesn’t have for recovery and restoration. It is a huge burden for Russians to subsidize Donbass and Crimea and all other occupied territories – if all that money went back to Russian taxpayers average income in Russia would have probably have risen dramatically.
So all this “fuss” was not Putin’s attempt to bring back a Soviet style empire, but merely to prevent disloyal Ukraine from being successful. This is another example of dishonesty in international politics but there should be no double standards – all power players lie to gain advantage – including China, Russia, U.S. and Europe; and smaller countries lie too when its convenient for them .
Can international politics be more fair? Probably its too much to ask, its never been that way, but what we have the right to demand is HONESTY – if its in your interest to conquer a neighboring country say so, if its not in your interest to defend that country, say so openly – don’t make countries like Ukraine rely on you only to be betrayed by your failure to keep your promise to help! And there should not be these hypocritical double standards – when Biden regime was lying about helping Ukraine everyone was applauding despite the fact he was sabotaging military assistance ; but when Trump decided to end the war everyone is criticizing him !
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