What will it take to stop our government from covertly overthrowing other governments?

[yurbud]

Within my lifetime, we have made two great strides reducing our government's violence toward other countries: eliminating the draft, which makes it harder and more expensive to put a lot of troops into a conflict, and just recently, preventing direct intervention in Syria.

While not dropping bombs or putting boots on the ground in Syria was a major victory, it hasn't stopped our government from backing rebels, including the same kind of religious extremists we claim to be fighting in the War on Terror.

Our government is also backing right wing violence in Venezuela and the Ukraine.

While these actions may not result in the loss of the lives of any of our troops, the damage to the people in the targeted countries, and therefore the potential blowback for average Americans and our foreign policy is incalculable.

Sixty years later, we are still dealing with the negative effects of overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran, and it took Chile and other South American countries decades to quietly and carefully pry the fingers of the blood-thirsty but business friendly dictators we installed.

You would think 9/11 would have been the wake up call to Americans that destroying other countries and installing puppet governments to make them obey Wall Street, banks, and oil companies can have fatal consequences.

In the Ukraine, our government is baiting a former superpower, who may not be a match for us in conventional weapons, but does still have quite a few nukes.

Russia ended the Cold War and gave up communism and the thanks Washington seems to be giving them is doing everything possible to reignite a Cold War with Russia, to dismember it piece by piece, and starve them of income by taking away their oil an gas exporting business.

If our government's long term strategy for Russia works or to the extent it already has worked, don't you think that will have consequences at least as severe as our meddling in Iran?

What will it take to stop these proxy wars and astroturf revolutions that will come back to bite us on the ass?

[jberryhill]

1. Success?

[babylonsister]

2. How is our gov't baiting the Ukraine? nt

[yurbud]

6. we are baiting Russia by backing the right wing coup in the Ukraine

See this post on our diplomats deciding who will be in and out of the new government:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101686327

[babylonsister]

8. There was a coup that had to be reacted to.

What were your suggestions to react better? Who could have?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. Ever notice we never seek out the peacemakers? Only those who can be bought.

[stevenleser]

10. So if a group of diplomats have a phone call, they are directing a coup?

Is there anything bad that happens that you do not blame the US for?

[yurbud]

13. a) did you read the call and b) do you know the history of the last 60 years?

If you did, you couldn't ask that question with a straight face.

[stevenleser]

14. I not only read it, I replayed it on my show and covered it extensively.

How could you claim with a straight face that it was directing a coup?

[cprise]

17. Its very clear the speakers are either controlling or negotiating with

the people who are trying to overthrow a democratically elected still-sitting president. Its not like Yanukovich had already been overthrown.

Also, handing out cookies to insurgents when they had already turned violent is a pretty gross PR move. I would have had her arrested on the spot.

[stevenleser]

19. No, it's very clear the speakers are negotiating with the UN and other world leaders to mediate the

crisis and it was not a secret that they were involved. This was in the news prior to the details of the conversation being made public.

[cprise]

20. Yes, they want the UN to sanction what they're doing

It doesn't change the facts on the ground of fire-bombing, brick-throwing and even bulldozing police and that the US was working to reward a minority faction for this behavior.

[tech3149]

34. Thank You Yurbud!

We as a nation have to learn the lesson that pissing in other peoples sandboxes will never be a productive exercise.

[whistler162]

30. We exist ergo we are baiting them!

[tech3149]

33. Seriously, do you not know?

Do you not know of the EU discussions that would put Ukraine in the NATO sphere of influence? That was primarily influenced by economic influences that sought another sacrifice zone like Greece.
Do you not know about the millions of dollars invested in promoting and supporting any and every challenge to a government that would align with Russia in any sense?
I respect your views on many issues and your history with DU but on this issue I would say you have to expand your resources to inform your opinion.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. ,

,

[Cleita]

4. End government corruption. Clean up elections to get better and more

honest elected officials and put some penalties with teeth in them and even prison sentences for accepting bribes and other payola, like the crap going on in NJ.

[Scootaloo]

5. That's an interesting question

But I think it's better to ask why the ones we've done so far worked - or seemed to work.

it's a question of relative power. In 1953, the Us stood as the one nation in the world with both a powerful industrial base and also had suffered very little in WW2. Only the USSR could serve as competition in power; thus the notion of "superpowers" - it's not that these two nations were enormously powerful on their own... but also that all the other nations were either flattened by war, or former colonies that had been impoverished to pay for that war - and the one before.

The US was so much more powerful than these other "little nations" that it really could just sweep in, throw out the old regime and instal la new one fairly securely - as in Iran. The Soviets were able to do the same thing. However less powerful states - like Britain and France - foundered in the same endeavors, because they were closer to their targets in terms of power.

However, two things happened. First, other nations began to regain some of their lost power - the parity began to shift. Second, alternate methods of establishing and expressing power came into use - through guerrilla or terror methods, mainly, but also in mass civil unrest movements.

As the power began to ebb closer to parity, we found that our attempts at changing and maintaining "favorable" regimes became more fragile, more likely to blow up against us. The clearest lesson for the US was in Vietnam, where pretty much the entire nation participated in a guerrilla war against our soldiers and the installed government they were protecting. It blew up again in 1978 with our attempted counter-revolution in Iran, and then in 1984 when we tried to back up Israel's puppeteering in Lebanon. The Soviets meanwhile lost hard in Afghanistan and were rapidly losing their grip on the Warsaw pact, starting with Poland, and quickly spiraling from there.

Nowadays, we lack the ability to effectively "puppet." Either we destroy these other nations - as in Iraq - or we end up backing blatantly anti-human regimes such as in Honduras and Egypt.

What will it take? Well, it'll take someone in our government realizing that we are no longer staring down Stalin across occupied Berlin; We are long past the era of superpowers. However our foreign policy is still stuck in the Truman administration, and Allen Dulles might as well still be head of our intelligence agencies. The Us is living in a leave it to beaver fantasy land of foreign policy, and so long as that's the case, we'll keep smashing around like bulls in a china shop until either we reach an economic tipping point where the taxpayer can no longer support the military and themselves, as happened in the USSR, or some genius figures out that HEY! 1953 was sixty years ago, time to move on.

Sadly that genius will not be from this generation of politicians, all of whom are still firmly rooted in the concept of "evil empire" and "superpowers"

[yurbud]

7. I agree with most of your analysis except the evil empire stuff

Our politicians are profoundly corrupt, but they are not stupid (at least not the ones guiding foreign policy).

As someone said at Counterpunch, our government still has the power to break other nations--we just can't remake them to our liking anymore.

[Scootaloo]

9. What I mean by that...

Is that hat's what the current generations of politicians grew up under. The notion of a black-and-white world, with Intrinsically Good America on one side and Inherently Evil Russia on the other. Even if they know better, intellectually-speaking it's hard to shake that upbringing. It still leads to a profound inability to understand the politics of the modern world, or at least in regards to the United States' place in it (along with, as we see, knee-jerking reactionism towards Russia... and to be fair I imagine Russia has the same goddamned problem in its political crop.)

[yurbud]

40. when you read the declassified, behind the scenes stuff, it is surprisingly clear-eyed

about the real threats and aims of foreign policy.

The one concession I make to your point is those at the top use national interest and national security to mean the interests and security of the very wealthy who put them in office. Therefore, if Russia is an obstacle to some scam of theirs, they are a threat to "our" national interest.

[yurbud]

41. Even the NAZIS could be quite pragmatic in private

If you read the Hossbach Memorandum when Hitler and his top lieutenants were talking about when to start World War II, they acknowledged that the arms they built up would begin to become obsolete and need to be replaced, and all the guys they got fired up and into the military would eventually get tired of marching around in uniform. They also discussed whether it was practical for Germany NOT to expand but economic and natural resources constraints made that unpalatable to them.

You can disagree with their analysis in that and strongly dislike their methods, but it definitely wasn't the rantings of ideologues.

[tech3149]

35. Agreed again but I think you miss an important point

Those that are guiding foreign policy are not stupid but they are deluded( to the detriment of us all).
They do live in a bubble that reinforces their concept of the world and what position our country should play in it.
When policy makers don't have intelligent and educated information to make those decisions, they will most likely be bad decisions.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Defund the MIC.

[questionseverything]

18. how about ,no more wars til they find the last 8.5 trillion they lost?

The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China’s economic output last year.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/11/8-5-trillion-taxpayer-money-doled-congress-pentagon-since-1996-never-accounted.html

[yurbud]

24. that's a good idea

[democratisphere]

12. Cut their budget substantially.

Problem solved.

[defacto7]

15. When it's no longer profitable they will stop. n/t

[BainsBane]

16. When we cease being an empire

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. Easy: End the Cold War Policy of the United States representing, promoting, and IMPOSING Capitalism.

[yurbud]

23. if we could just eliminate the third, that would be great--and get them to actually respect other

countries democratic elections.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

27. It's like the World Bank - Designed to keep them in debt...

Then there's the "Free Trade" which turns their citizenry into sweatshop labor for t-shirts and sneakers.

[Zorra]

25. Just Follow The Money! Preventing multinational wealthy RW 1% corporatists from buying legislators.

Get all the money out of government, and the US will stop relentlessly trying to overthrow governments. The reason we try to overthrow the democratically elected governments of sovereign countries is because the 1% wants their own people in control of those governments in order to maximize profit and control of resources.

Follow the money.

It really is that simple.

[reddread]

26. stop voting for the candidates they put forward

there is no other way to fight boundless money than to refuse their choices.

[Zorra]

28. Except that there are only two choices at General Election time:

Corporatist, or worse corporatist.

[reddread]

29. not true

aside from the numerous third party choices, there is the WRITE IN spot.
People are free to choose a different Democratic Party candidate.
Assuming the primary process is monkey wrenched by money's influence,
that is an opportunity to return the favor.

[Drunken Irishman]

31. It's always America's fault.

Always.

Everything.

The coup in the Ukraine? America's fault.

Russia invading the Ukraine? America's fault.

Russia was being provoked. They did nothing wrong! Good ol' Comrade Putin just wants to reform the Old Soviet Union and we're here trying to start up the Cold War again. Goddammit, America!

The right is hardly ever wrong in their caricaturization of the left. But they're wrong about one thing: A lot of liberals buy into the idea of blame America first. Everything is always America's fault.

[reddread]

32. Right Message, wrong message board

[Spider Jerusalem]

36. The US government has nothing to do with what happened in Ukraine.

And most of the violence there has been directed against protesters by the government. A majority of Ukrainians support association with the EU, and not with a Russian trade bloc. The interesting thing about the discussions around the Ukraine issue, from the perspective of an American living in Europe, is the degree of reflexive American arrogance presumed even by the American "left" (arrogance in the preumption of an American influence on events that have nothing whatever to do with the US).

[reformist2]

37. LOL! Like hell they didn't!

[reformist2]

38. Electing Obama clearly didn't do the trick. He may not be one of "them," but he hasn't stopped them.

[rusty fender]

39. This overthrow of Yanukovych has the CIA

written all over it. The Nuland/ambassador leaked conversation tells us that the U.S. was involved, knee-deep, in the destabilization of the government in Ukraine.

Yes, Yanukovych was corrupt, but when the CIA helps, perhaps organizes the the whole uprising, the U.S. cannot claim to be shocked and outraged when Russia gets involved in a region that is right on their border.

If Obama has the ability to reflect on any of his foreign policy decisions, I wonder if he feels like JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in that he was foolish to trust the CIA.

[yurbud]

42. Obama isn't an idiot, so either he's complicit or isn't actually in charge of his own foreign policy