Monument of Motherland Calls in Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex in Volgograd. Photo: AP/Dmitriy Rogulin.
By John Miles – Mar 7, 2024
The more things change, the more they stay the same in terms of US foreign policy, says one analyst.
The modern political divide between Russia and the West often evokes memories of the Cold War and even World War II, according to author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik.
The writer and activist appeared on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Wednesday to discuss Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent remarks at the Forum of Supporters of the Struggle Against Modern Practices of Neocolonialism.
“Over the last three decades, there’s been a model of globalization engineered by the US and its closest allies which has proved to be untenable,” said Lavrov in a speech delivered in Moscow. “Western countries have led humanity not to prosperity, but to one of the most acute international crises since the Second World War. The conflict space in the world is expanding and a deep split between the West and the countries of the global majority is emerging.”
“Russia has for a long time tried to play ball with the West,” claimed Kovalik, agreeing that the rhetoric emerging from Moscow and Beijing has become more strident in recent years. “But it finally dawned on them that the West didn’t want to be friends with them. So now you do hear people like Lavrov and [Security Council of Russia Deputy Chairman Dmitry] Medvedev, as you say, kind of taking the gloves off and saying it like it is.”
The lawyer pointed to Israel’s military operation in Gaza as well as the conflict in the Donbass, which The New York Times recently admitted was fomented in part by the CIA’s decade-long presence in Ukraine. Both crises risk the eruption of a major world war, he claimed.
Host Garland Nixon claimed Russia is embracing the anti-colonial or even “anti-imperialist” legacy of the Soviet Union in recent years, noting the USSR fostered strong ties with Africa and Latin America. The Soviet Union was an ally of South Africa’s anti-apartheid cause as well as popular movements in Latin American countries like Chile and Cuba.
Kovalik noted Russia released a white paper recently specifically mentioning the foreign policy legacy of the Soviet Union. “Russia’s proud of that past, it’s part of their legacy, and they continue to carry that forward,” he said. “And so you even see Putin, for example, hosting various Palestinian factions in Moscow, trying to get them together to agree to work as one. That is some old-timey, Soviet-like diplomacy there.”
Meanwhile, US foreign alliances increasingly recall unflattering aspects of the West’s history, including the 20th-century emergence of fascism in Europe. Earlier this week, it was announced the Ukrainian city of Nikopol had renamed a street in honor of Pyotr Dyachenko, a Ukrainian SS officer who was decorated with the Iron Cross by Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.
The incident follows the well-publicized recognition of Yaroslav Hunka by the Canadian Parliament last year, a Ukrainian World War II veteran who was revealed to have fought in a Nazi-aligned military unit. Western countries have continuously backed Ukraine’s post-Maidan government, which even the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council has admitted is significantly influenced by neo-Nazi militants.
The United States has also backed reactionary elements in Syria as it was recently announced the country has appointed a former Daesh* chief as a commander in the US-backed Syria Free Army. The US has spent billions of dollars supporting fundamentalist elements in Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
“We live in a time in which, again, Western governments are unabashedly honoring Nazis,” claimed Kovalik. “As Russia honors its Soviet past, the West is now honoring its Nazi past.”
“My friends would say we would be very reluctant to make this analogy before October 7th, but I would say that the West is now supporting a Nazi-like regime in Israel at this point,” Kovalik added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza in recent months, the vast majority of them women, children, and innocent civilians.
Host Garland Nixon agreed. “If you look at Ukraine and you look at Israel, what you find in both instances [is] you have one ethnicity – although in Ukraine they just won’t admit it – but you have one group who feels that the other group is inferior, maybe ethnically, however you want to call it, and they have a desire to wipe them out and have actively made a kinetic effort to wipe them out.” Neo-fascist troops fighting for Ukraine have referred to their foes as “Asiatic hordes,” employing racist terminology likening Russians to “orcs.”
“What we’re seeing right now in Gaza is open genocidal warfare akin to the Holocaust,” claimed Kovalik bluntly. “You’re starting to see images out of Gaza of these emaciated bodies who look like people who’ve been in a Nazi concentration camp. And, of course, they have been in a Nazi-like concentration camp, and that’s called Gaza.”
“It’s ‘back to the future,” the activist concluded. “We’re back to the old Cold War days.”
*ISIS (also known as Daesh/ISIL/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.
(Sputnik)
