On September 5, 2009 I addressed an international conference in Austria on the subject of Europe's subordination to the US and, thus, the absence of any constructive criticism of US foreign and domestic policies. Karel van Wolferen, whose website is here, kindly reminded me of my address to the conference when he sent it to me with his supportive response. Both are available below. You can see from my address and from Karel's response that the reckless direction of US foreign and domestic policy has been known for many years. Yet the recklessness continues...
Europe's Complicity in Evil
By Paul Craig Roberts
There is a widespread supposition that Obama, being black and a member of an oppressed race, will imbue US foreign policy with a higher morality than the world experienced from Bush and Clinton. This is a delusion.
Obama represents the same ideology of American "exceptionalism" as other recent presidents. This ideology designates the United States as The Virtuous Nation and supplies the basis for the belief that America has the right, indeed the responsibility, to impose its hegemony upon the world by bribery or by force. The claim of American exceptionalism produces a form of patriotism that blinds the US population to the immorality of America's wars of aggression.
Nothing is any different under Obama. Obama has escalated war in Afghanistan; started a new war in Pakistan; tolerated or supported a military coup that overthrew the elected president of Honduras; is constructing 7 new US military bases in Colombia, South America; is going forward with various military projects designed to secure US global military hegemony, such as the Prompt Global Strike initiative that intends to provide the US with the capability to strike anywhere on earth within 60 minutes; is working to destabilize the government in Iran, with military attack still on the table as an option; supports America's new military African Command; intends to encircle Russia with US bases in former constituent parts of the Soviet Union; has suborned NATO troops as mercenaries in US wars of aggression.
How should Europe react?
Europe should disassociate from the United States and go into active opposition to US foreign policy. Europeans should demand that their governments withdraw from NATO as it serves no European interest. The two aggressive militarist powers, the US and Israel, should be sanctioned by the UN and embargoed.
Instead, Europe is complicit in US and Israeli war crimes.
Because of the Cold War, Europe is accustomed to following US leadership. The financial convenience of the shelter provided by US military power negated independent European foreign policies. In effect, Western European countries became US puppet states.
How does Europe escape from a subservient relationship of many decades? Not easily. The US is accustomed to calling the shots and reacts harshly when it meets opposition. For example, French opposition to Bush's invasion of Iraq brought about instant demonization of France by the US media and members of Congress.
The US government uses financial sanctions and threatened leaks of sensitive personal information gathered by its worldwide spy networks to discipline any independent-minded European leader.
Europe is essentially captive and forced to put US interests ahead of its own. Consequently, unless Europeans find their courage and discard their servile status, Europe will be badgered into more wars and eventually led into a devastating war with Russia. One European country can do little, but concerted action would be effective. For example, why do not Europeans protest that the war criminal Tony Blair was given a post in the EU?
The Obama administration's attitude towards self-determination and the sovereignty of the people is that these grand-sounding concepts are useful platitudes with which to mask the hegemonic interests of the US government. US money and propaganda foment "velvet" or "color" revolutions that turn more countries into American puppet states.
The platitudes are useful also to disguise the overthrow of US civil liberties, such as habeas corpus, due process, and prohibitions against torture and pre-emptive arrest.
During the Cold War era, one of the mainstays of US propaganda against the Soviet Union was the inability of Soviet citizens to travel within their country without the government's permission. This indignity has now been inflicted upon US citizens. As of September 2009, US citizens can no longer travel within their country by air without the permission of the Transport Security Administration.
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