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Jack Matlock was the penultimate US Ambassador to the USSR. In a very insightful and profound discussion published yesterday with Glenn Diesen, he compares the war against Serbia in 1999, in which Nato "killed over a thousand men", with the bloodless Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.
"That gave Putin a precedent, an almost perfect precedent, for the taking of Crimea."
He says the 2014 revolution in Kiev 'was actually a coup d'état'. People said this in 2014 and I did not see it, but yes it was a coup in which the Americans' involvement was crucial.
How splendid the US old school diplomats were before, as Mr. Matlock says, the neo-cons 'took over the foreign policy of both our political parties' to justify heavy defence spending.
I think he is right that it was the military industrial complex wanting money that was to blame.
He says that "when we tried to spread democracy by military force or economic compulsion we failed and ended up losing a lot of our democracy at home".
'O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world.'
(As You Like It Act 2, Scene 3)
Love the quote, a bit sustaining. I'm wondering if this break down in diplomacy goes back further to just after the Berlin Wall fell (1988). Roughly a year later, April Glaspie, American ambassador to Iraq, was giving the go ahead to Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait "‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’" State Department also putting in its two cents, "‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait"."I'm not trying to characterize threats. The threat is a vicious aggression against Kuwait, and that speaks for itself. And anything collaterally is just simply more indication that these are outlaws, international outlaws and renegades. Shortly after the invasion, George Bush "And I want to see the United Nations move soon with chapter VII sanctions; and I want to see the rest of the world join us, as they are in overwhelming numbers, to isolate Saddam Hussein." Perhaps oil fields and Israeli and Saudi security in mind, but this could also be the proto-neocon realization of there being a new diplomatic playing field due to the vacuum left being by the Soviets and the sudden realization that the U.S.could fill it.Taken much further by Bush's son's democratization of Iraq and Afghanistan ""The free people of Iraq are now doing what Saddam Hussein never could -- making Iraq a positive example for the entire Middle East." The faltering midwifery of the new diplomacy?
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