09/03/2023
STOP DECEIVING US ABOUT DEMOCRACY, FOCUS ON ENDING THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The United States will hold its so-called Democracy Conference in Zambia at the end of this month. But what for?
What can the United States, a country that that has initiated so many coups in Africa and other parts of the world, killed so many of our leaders and helped rig elections in many countries, teach us about democracy and elections? Its own elections are being disputed!
This is a shameful conference to hold in Zambia, a country that for a long time was the liberation centre of our region. Today, Zambia is being turned into a centre of neocolonialism with a puppet government, a lackey of imperialism.
We have been cheated, fooled, for a long time with rhetoric about democracy and freedom. It must come to an end. The American rhetoric about democracy should be dismissed with derision.
Let them leave us alone and focus on ending the conflict they provoked and are fuelling in Ukraine.
And clearly, whatever they say, whatever they do, Ukraine is heading for military defeat and will never be the same. The contortions that will be needed to explain Ukraine’s impending defeat will be something to behold.
If anything, this conflict has actually helped to bring Russia much closer to China. It has also helped expose the hypocrisy of the United States and the West.
Cynical and confected outrage in the West about Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty conveniently ignores its own, more devastating crimes in Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. There is no mention of the West’s acceptance of Turkey’s annexation of northern Cyprus and support for Israel’s effective annexation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, as well as its brutal blockade of Gaza. The West is not defending any moral or legal principles in Ukraine. Rather, it is opportunistically exploiting a tragic situation, which it helped to provoke for its own interests.
But events do not take place in a timeless vacuum. Historical context is always needed to make sense of them. Anyone who understands how the United States moved NATO relentlessly eastward towards the Russian border after the collapse of the USSR, despite assurances to the contrary, will not be surprised that Russia responded.
Those who are also aware that the United States has manipulated Ukrainian domestic politics since it promoted regime change in 2014 to antagonise Russia, will not be surprised that those who claim to defend freedom are being questioned by an increasingly cynical public suspicious of their own governments’ motives. Anti-war rallies have just begun in Europe and are likely to spread around the world.
Fred M’membe,
President of the Socialist Party
