{"id":104360,"date":"2018-01-08T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=104360"},"modified":"2018-01-01T18:16:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T18:16:31","slug":"putin-foresaw-death-of-us-global-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/putin-foresaw-death-of-us-global-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin Foresaw Death of US Global Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like a good wine, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s famous speech delivered in Munich 10 years ago regarding global security has been rewarded with time. A decade on, the many facets contained in that address have only become all the more enhanced and tangible.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

28 Dec 2017 – <\/em>Speaking<\/a>\u00a0to a senior international audience at the annual Munich Security Conference, on February 10, 2007, the Russian leader opened by saying he was going to speak about world relations forthrightly and not in \u201cempty diplomatic terms\u201d. In what followed, Putin did not disappoint. With candor and incisiveness, he completely leveled the arrogance of American unilateral power.<\/p>\n

He condemned the \u201caspirations of world supremacy\u201d as a danger to global security. \u201cWe are seeing a\u00a0greater and\u00a0greater disdain for\u00a0the\u00a0basic principles of\u00a0international law,\u201d adding at a later point: \u201cOne state and, of\u00a0course, first and\u00a0foremost the\u00a0United States, has overstepped its national borders in\u00a0every way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, moreover, Putin presciently predicted that the American arrogance of unipolar dominance would in the end lead to the demise of the power from seeking such supremacy.<\/p>\n

A unipolar world, he said, is \u201ca world in\u00a0which there is one master, one sovereign. And\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0end of\u00a0the\u00a0day this is pernicious not only for\u00a0all those within this system, but also for\u00a0the\u00a0sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years on from that call, few can doubt that the global standing of the United States has indeed spectacularly fallen \u2013 just as Putin had forewarned back in 2007. The most recent example of demise was the sordid business earlier this month of arm-twisting and bullying by the US at the United Nations over the tabled resolutions repudiating Washington\u2019s ill-considered declaration of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.<\/p>\n

Other examples of fallen American leadership can be seen in regard to President Trump\u2019s reckless threats of war \u2013 instead of diplomacy \u2013 with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program. Or Trump\u2019s irrational and unfounded belligerence towards Iran. The American propensity for using military force regardless of diplomacy and international law leaves most nations feeling a shudder of contempt and trepidation.<\/p>\n

Another example of fallen American leadership is seen in the boorish way the Trump administration has unilaterally rejected the 2015 international Paris Accord to combat deleterious climate change. Trump views it as a conspiracy to undermine the American economy, as he alluded to in his\u00a0recent<\/a>\u00a0National Security Strategy. How can such a self-declared global leader be taken seriously, much less, with respect?<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s warning that the unipolar-seeking US would \u201cdestroy itself\u201d could not be more apt.<\/p>\n

Because in order to seek such supremacy, such a power, by necessity of its ambition, must reject the rule of law and the principle of democracy as being nothing other than bothersome constraints on its hegemony.<\/p>\n

President Trump likes to talk at times about the \u201cpeaceful coexistence of sovereign nation states\u201d. But whatever virtue he may be intending or paying lip service to, it is totally negated by American ambitions of unipolar dominance \u2013 ambitions that have been harbored in successive administrations in Washington since the end of the Cold War more than 25 years ago.<\/p>\n

To this view of the world, Putin said: \u201cI\u00a0consider that the\u00a0unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in\u00a0today\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impossibility, and impermissibility, stems from the inevitable tendency of unilateral conduct, which rejects the principle of all being equal under the law. The would-be unipolar hegemon, by definition, sees itself as above the law. Such a self-anointed view of oneself leads to tyranny and abuse of power.<\/p>\n

Since the end of the Cold War balance of power between the US and the former Soviet Union, the world has been plunged into a state of permanent wars and conflicts, due to the proclivity of the United States to act alone and on the basis that its \u201cmight is right\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago in Munich, Putin noted: \u201cUnilateral and\u00a0frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and\u00a0created new centers of\u00a0tension. Judge for\u00a0yourselves: wars as\u00a0well as\u00a0local and\u00a0regional conflicts have not diminished\u2026 even more people are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!\u201d<\/p>\n

The unipolar position sought by the US leads ineluctably to a world of lawlessness, chaos, insecurity, fear, violence, and, in a fiendish feedback loop, reinforces the further deterioration in all such facets.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we are witnessing an\u00a0almost un-contained hyper use of\u00a0force\u00a0\u2013 military force\u00a0\u2013 in\u00a0international relations, force that is plunging the\u00a0world into an\u00a0abyss of\u00a0permanent conflicts,\u201d said Putin in Munich.<\/p>\n

Recall that the Russian leader was speaking at the height of the US, British and NATO wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars constitute perhaps the two biggest war crimes over the past quarter of a century. The violations went unpunished, as befitting the arrogance of unipolar power, and because of that impunity, the lawlessness and abuse of national sovereign rights have only become more exacerbated, as Putin forewarned.<\/p>\n

Diplomacy, international law, dialogue and consensus have been all but discarded. Look how the US and its NATO allies demolished Libya in 2011, and how they ransacked Syria covertly through a seven-year proxy dirty war; a war that was only stopped by Russia and Iran\u2019s principled military intervention at the end of 2015. Look how the US and its NATO allies have destabilized Ukraine, yet blame Russia, even as Washington readies in the New Year to supply lethal weapons to the regime in Kiev it installed by a violent coup in February 2014.<\/p>\n

The provocative expansion of NATO across Europe with its weapons pointed on Russia\u2019s border was also an outcome that Putin warned against in 2007, admonishing that it would lead to more insecurity and tensions in Europe, not less.<\/p>\n

Putin was right to talk straight truth to power in that 2007 speech, rather than using \u201cempty diplomatic terms\u201d, as he put it.<\/p>\n

We cannot hope to rectify problems unless we address those problems accurately.<\/p>\n

In doing so, Putin deserves immense praise for exposing the corruption of absolute power in world relations.<\/p>\n

But there can be little doubt that his courageous speech in Munich in 2007 earned him the hatred of Washington\u2019s imperial planners. Putin was in effect giving notice that Russia was shaking off the vassal status that his predecessor Boris Yeltsin had accepted in the early post-Cold War years.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is a\u00a0country with a\u00a0history that spans more than a\u00a0thousand years and\u00a0has practically always used the\u00a0privilege to\u00a0carry out an\u00a0independent foreign policy. We are not going to\u00a0change this tradition today,\u201d said a defiant Putin.<\/p>\n

It was this defiant independence and Putin\u2019s searing analysis of how so much of global insecurity is the direct result of American imperialist arrogance that has since made the Russian leader the target for so much hostility from Washington over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

When you step back, it is amazing to observe the campaign of relentless Russophobia, vilification and slander directed at President Putin by Washington and the mass media under its control. The precedent for this demonization can be found in the Munich speech delivered by Putin a decade ago.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s recap on the point he made about unipolar obsession being self-destructive.<\/p>\n

The American penchant for lawlessness and violation of democratic principles does not just stop with its intrigues of regime change and subversions abroad. Those very noxious habits of diseased US statecraft are now eating into the body politics of the US itself.<\/p>\n

Looking at the necrotic state of US politics and society \u2013 the venal, political infighting and corruption, the lack of respect for its own laws, and the lack of respect for its people\u2019s sovereignty and office of the president \u2013 there can be little doubt that the once ambitious superpower is dying a slow death from diseased practices that have turned inward.<\/p>\n

Putin saw it coming 10 years ago. And in a classic futile case, they have tried to shoot the messenger ever since.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Finian Cunningham<\/em>, originally from Belfast, Ireland is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including <\/em>The Mirror, Irish Times and<\/em> Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 strategic-culture.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a good wine, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s famous speech delivered in Munich 10 years ago regarding global security has been rewarded with time. A decade on, the many facets contained in that address have only become all the more enhanced and tangible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}