PAEANS to Joe Biden’s diplomatic skills have been flowing since the fruition of a prisoner exchange between Russia and the West. The deal apparently took years to negotiate.
From a Western point of view, the consequences are commendable. It’s easy to accept that the American journalist, a few other Westerners, and the small bunch of Russian dissidents who were liberated ought never to have been incarcerated.
But where do those diplomatic skills vanish when it comes to negotiating an end to the war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine? Sure, Vladimir Putin is the culprit insofar as he launched the war, and one could argue endlessly about the extent of US/Nato/EU provocation. But the point is to end the hostilities, and in this context the US has served more as a hindrance than a facilitator.
Its role in the Middle East follows an equally naked trajectory of near blind support for Israel and its actions, including assassinations, combined with blanket assurances of assistance to the Zionist regime. Israel’s fatal attacks against Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut came shortly after a genocidal maniac called Benjamin Netanyahu received 58 standing ovations during the Israeli prime minister’s address to the US Congress. Netanyahu spouted a stream of nonsense, such as condemning American agitators against his genocide — many of them young Jews — as agents of Iran.
One hostage deal is hardly a triumph.
The US, meanwhile, has deployed more warships to coordinate Israel’s ‘defence’ in the event of attacks from Iran, Lebanon or elsewhere. This week, the US Central Command chief visited Israel to discuss “joint preparations”, and the US defence secretary, according to the Pentagon, “has ordered adjustments to US military posture designed to … increase support for the defence of Israel”.
It is precisely this kind of American posturing that condemns the world to endless strife while contributing to the coffers of the military-industrial complex. Israel has for ages demonstrated its proficiency as the most effective terrorist state anywhere on earth, yet has never featured on any list of sponsors of terrorism. Israel’s crimes against humanity have stood out since 1948, yet it has got an easy pass from the self-ordained upholders of the global conscience, thanks in part to the abhorrent atrocities perpetrated against European Jews by the Nazi state.
There have been echoes of Nazism ever since, not least in Bangladesh in the run-up to its independence in 1971. Hasina Wajed’s flight to India on Monday was a dramatic and welcome denouement, but it does not clarify what the future holds. It’s not hard to justify the uprising against her authoritarian misrule, but reports of concomitant atrocities against Hindu communities are alarming, and the future of the Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar, that Bangladesh has reluctantly accommodated, rests in the balance.
Sudan’s predicament is even worse. Unlike Bangladesh, it faces a repeat of both the Darfur genocide a couple of decades ago and the famine of 1984. A conflict between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces — an outgrowth of the Janjaweed militia that terrorised Darfur — followed a falling out between the generals who aborted their nation’s drift towards democracy after the toppling of Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
That was a welcome development, but Sudan’s descent into a deadly crisis should serve as a warning to Bangladesh — just as the Awami League’s premature jubilation after the January elections should remind Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro that manipulation may not pay off, and that his threat to ‘pulverise’ his opponents on the streets (who include many former Chavistas) might seriously backfire. It is incredibly dumb for the US to recognise Maduro’s opponent as the legitimate president, especially since this kind of absurdity came a cropper just a few years ago. But if Maduro is truly a disciple of Hugo Chávez, he should recognise that his time is up.
Far away in the UK, Keir Starmer has almost echoed Maduro in his threats against the ‘far-right thugs’ who have wreaked havoc across cities in England in the wake of the horrific attack on young girls in Southport. It was an outrage, but one that involved neither an ‘illegal immigrant’ nor a Muslim. That did not deter fascist elements from unleashing violence against libraries, mosques and asylum-seeker hotels. The law-and-order response from the new Labour government might stifle the symptoms, but appears to ignore its causes.
Almost a century ago, Antonio Gramsci announced from an Italian prison something along the lines of ‘the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters’. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris shake hands with the monsters. Donald Trump is determined to be one himself.
Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2024
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