America sees her mission is to oppose autocracies worldwide - in other words, to rule the world. Napoleon, Hitler, Great Britain at her imperial apogee did not have any such mad hubris. Lenin did.

 

Bloomberg: 'Russia is likely to resume buying foreign currency [yuan] for its reserves as soon as this month as rising oil earnings stabilize public finances despite US and European efforts to squeeze Kremlin income.'

Sanctions against Russian have not had the effect America expected. Meanwhile sanctions elsewhere cause enormous suffering. Why are there sanctions against Afghanistan or Syria?

Posting this on Facebook led to a long exchange with one of my most intelligent Facebook friends, a retired senior State Department official (Mr S) who, to his credit, only ever supported ‘targeted sanctions’, not sanctions against a general population. Good, but the ensuing discussion made me understand how insane American policy is. 

America thinks she has a duty to save the world from autocracy anywhere in the world. In other words, to rule the world. Napoleon , the Kaiser, Hitler and Great Britain at her imperial apogee did not have any such mad hubris. The only leaders who did were Lenin, Trotsky and in theory, but certainly not in practice, Stalin.

 

Mr S: Assad brutally murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including defenceless children. Perhaps he is no worse than those he fights, but that does not excuse his actions or make them less deserving of condemnation by civilised society.

Me: But why do we have a dog in this fight? I remember the Daily Telegraph saying Bill Clinton's foreign policy made the US an attachment of Oxfam. Reading what you wrote in the last few days I see wise canny State Department people like you see foreign policy as a moral crusade. This is terribly misguided. Sanctions are a terrible idea and should be reserved for cases where one country invades another. Nobody proposed sanctions against the USSR even though they did invade and conquer several countries. This moralism always seems to be accompanied by the idea that Israel is important to American interests, which it clearly isn't any more now the cold war is over. US foreign policy seems an illogical bundle of emotional ideas, but all reasons for American domination of the world in a way the UK never contemplated for a moment. It's all connected to the idea that the USA is bound together by the Whig ideals of the declaration of independence. (In fact it is bound together by Anglo-Saxon culture and to a limited extent blood.)

Mr S: Alas, some thugs, see Putin, Ortega, et alia are not dissuaded and then must be fought. Surrender to imperialist autocracy is not an option.

Me: This remark absolutely horrifies and terrifies me. You seem to be saying that America and friends are entitled to and even have a duty to oppose all dictatorships? This is mad. You will always have autocracies and what business are they of America or GB? Stanley Baldwin and at first Neville Chamberlain were rightly anxious not to go to war in Europe - you want conflict anywhere!

Mr S: Yet not oppose all dictatorships is madness. To acquiesce to oppression is cowardice. But after acknowledging the morally right thing to do, one must determine how to do it. Thus, prudence demands that our opposition to oppression requires different responses at different times with appropriate tools and methods. Totalitarian rule is like a chronic disease - one must live with it if one cannot eradicate it, but one should never call it healthy or treat it with indifference.

Me: I read too fast. You said we should resist attempts by dictators to EXPORT their malevolence. Very few try to. I don't approve of dictators but not all are malevolent - Salazar was a good thing and in NATO. The Saudi monarchy of course is malevolent but our ally as it slaughters tens of thousands of civilians for the crime of being Shia. Dictatorships are not a disease. Nor are absolute monarchies. The medical analogy is so wrong. America preferred dictatorship in Algeria to democratic victory for Islamists. Allende in Chile. Iran in 1953. Perhaps the most unforgivably stupid of all the stupid mistakes the 2nd Bush administration made was the insane idea that all countries are ready for democracy. This is the disastrous liberalism that gave us leaders like Wilson, LBJ, Bush 2 and now Joe Biden.