It Doesn’t Matter Who Rules America — It Nevertheless Remains an Empire

So, on Jan. 8, everything seemingly ended well. Iran exacted “holy revenge” on Washington for the assassination of its general, Qassem Soleimani. Yet at the same time, Tehran’s missile strike on two U.S. bases in Iraq didn’t injure a single star-spangled soldier. Iran had warned Iraq, which warned the Americans; everyone saved face and is happy.

But the good news doesn’t change the key point. The Middle East is once again ablaze. And this is happening because the American elite have definitively imagined themselves to be the rulers of the world. They are prepared on a whim to kill and to show mercy as though they are faced not with one of the most complicated regions on earth — the Persian Gulf — but with a pen of turkeys on a Texas ranch. That’s what Nataliya Yeliseyeva’s column is about.

Last fall, menacingly accusatory articles appeared in Western media about a new “enemy of democracy” — Qassem Soleimani, the general of Iran’s special forces. This, even though the general, incidentally, cooperated with Washington following the attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He provided information about the Afghan militants who were the connection to the main organizer of that tragedy, Osama bin Laden. That is, the man indirectly helped the Americans liquidate “terrorist No. 1,” and now he himself has been declared as such and has likewise been sent to his grave.

Absurd? No, it’s a normal U.S. tactic. Practically everyone with whom the Americans cooperate sooner or later gets stabbed in the back — especially in the Middle East. Underhandedness? Double standards? It’s imperial politics, at least in the utterly primitive form in which the White House and State Department understand them.

A concrete and by now half-forgotten example is Operation Anfal. In 1987-88, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein unleashed monstrous repression of the Kurds. The Americans didn’t react to the extermination of a huge number of civilians (according to various estimates, between 50,000 and 182,000 people). After all, the Kurds were then fighting in Iraq’s war with Iran on the side of the latter (for which Saddam punished them). And the friend of your enemy is your enemy.

But then, in the following decade, after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam became a bad guy. The United States suddenly decided to attend to the rights of the Kurds and became their defenders. But even after occupying Iraq in 2003, the Americans never gave Iraq its own state.

Fine, all of that was long ago. But in 2016, when an anti-establishment candidate with a fiery head of hair unexpectedly won the presidential election, euphoria broke out among many in Russia. The sanctions would soon be lifted and we would share the world by teaming up with our “friend Donald.” It’s high time to understand: Donald Trump is the very same kind of American imperialist, only with slightly different views on a number of secondary issues. Because he felt like it, he caved on the Kurds, just as he did in the fall of last year, when the Americans simply left Syrian Kurdistan, giving up the region to neighboring Turkey.

Someone will say that Trump is simply not all there and does whatever comes into his head. Wake up, already: the assassination of Soleimani isn’t madness but a continuation of Washington’s imperial politics. And, I reiterate that it is imperial precisely in the bad sense where there’s an “us,” the rulers of the world, and there’s a “them,” the wild barbarians who must be introduced to democracy with the aid of bombs and drone missiles.

Perhaps I am saying something seditious. But Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and the Bushes, both father and son, are all perpetuators of the harsh, ruthless foreign policy of the American state, which instead of stopping to think about deviating from a predetermined vector, replaces either the leader or the regime in a desired country — or at least launches a nasty attack. Take, for example, the missile strike on the Syrian government’s Shayrat air base the night of April 7, 2017, which also took place under Trump, who’s supposedly “our” guy.

Why? Because today’s United States simply cannot physically exist even in a bipolar world, as was the case about 40 years ago during the United Soviet Socialist Republic era, let alone a multipolar world. You see, there can be only one “holy empire.” And the empire doesn’t understand the key thing, which is that it is not eternal, even if it seems unshakable, like the USSR circa 1988.

And the last question is, what should we do?

We should borrow best practice from our competition, including the Americans. We should not be afraid to launch pinpoint attacks against Russia’s enemies — and not necessarily with missiles. Today, even the most uncivilized field commanders, not to mention respectable politicians, have offshore accounts, assets under Western jurisdiction, and sources of income which, as a rule, are illegal.

For example, journalists recently dug up corruption schemes (one has to think with the assistance of that part of the U.S. intelligence agencies which support Trump) involving Trump’s main rival in the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden. It turns out that five years ago, while vice president, he funneled millions of dollars from Ukraine to a family-run firm. When it became public, Biden’s poll numbers collapsed, and now in a number of states, even other Democrats are beating him, to say nothing of Trump.

It’s a beautiful blow — no victims, no destruction.