A tense standoff between the U.S. and its allies and Russia over Ukraine continues. It is essentially a confrontation over which imperialist power—the U.S. or Russia—will dominate key territories and countries in Eastern Europe. Along with military mobilizations that could erupt in war, the two sides are fighting it out in the arena of international diplomacy—each branding themselves as the “peace-loving good guys” in the world.
At a January 31 meeting of the United Nations Security Council, U.S. ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared:
One country cannot simply redraw another country's borders by force, or make another country's people live under a government they did not choose.
In reporting on this, the newspaper of “public record” and voice of mainstream liberalism—the New York Times—guided its readers to focus on how the U.S. was “upholding the principle that nations cannot redraw international borders by force.” National Public Radio directed its readers to channel their outrage at “Russia's history of invasions, including 2014 in Crimea and 2008 in Georgia.”
There were a few things missing in these and other similar stories in the American media:
In recent times, there has been no more egregious example of “redrawing another country’s borders by force” than the U.S. backed violent expansion of the state of Israel on land seized through the terrorist ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The U.S. has funded, armed, and upheld Israel’s constant expansion through wars, illegal annexation of territory seized through wars, relentless ethnic cleansing through official and KKK-style settler terror, and mass slaughter of thousands of Palestinians–overwhelmingly civilians, many children–in the Gaza region of Palestine in 2008, 2014 and 2021.1
In 1848 the United States went to war with Mexico and redrew that country’s borders by force to steal half of Mexico to extend slavery. (See American Crime Case #83: The U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848.)
From a series of U.S. Army photos depicting the summary execution of 1,800 South Korean political prisoners over three days in July 1950 carried out by the U.S.-installed puppet Syngman Rhee.
In 1950 the United States invaded Korea with over 300,000 troops in order to move against revolutionary movements in Asia. The U.S. killed 20 percent of the entire population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure, burned the northern half of the country to the ground with carpet bombing, and installed a pro-U.S. fascist regime in South Korea. (See American Crime Case #93: U.S. Invasion of Korea—1950.)
Iranian troops in the streets, 1953.
In 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran to replace the elected nationalist government with a pro-U.S. torture regime. (See American Crime Case #98: 1953 CIA Coup in Iran: Torture and Repression—Made in the USA.)
In 1965 the CIA orchestrated the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian communists, activists, dissidents, women, minorities, and others in order to depose a nationalist government and impose a pro-American regime on the Indonesian people. (See American Crime Case #100: 1965 Massacre in Indonesia.)
In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq on the pretense of lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and installed a government of its choosing. The invasion and its aftermath resulted in hundreds of thousands and up to a million deaths and poured gasoline on the clash between reactionary Islamic jihad and the western imperialist-capitalist powers (See American Crime Case #70: "Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003.")
The list goes on and on. And on. Find out about this for yourself: read and spread the revcom.us American Crime series.
When it comes to invading other countries and redrawing their borders, overthrowing other countries’ governments, imposing brutal tyrants, slaughtering people in the process—and doing so in the service of dominating a world of exploitation and oppression, no force in human history can touch the bloody hands of the USA.
These crimes are carried out by a country founded on invading another land, destroying the borders of every single people who live in what is now the United States, and breaking hundreds of treaties it made with the Native Peoples.
This record of invasions, war crimes, and genocide is not a reformable flaw in a system trying to bring democracy to the world. It is a symptom of and an essential component of capitalism-imperialism, a system driven by a brutal and relentless dog-eat-dog logic of expand or be crushed. The reality is as Bob Avakian says in BAsics 1:3:
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
We—the billions of people on this planet including those of us within the borders of the U.S.—have no interest in this system, no interest in fighting its wars, and every interest in welcoming its defeats and working to overthrow it.
1. In 1967, Israel invaded and occupied large sections of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. Rather than denouncing this and declaring Israel "cannot simply redraw another country's borders by force," strategic thinkers in the U.S. government took Israel's actions as an indication of what a uniquely valuable asset Israel would be for the U.S. as the "leader of the free world"—that is, the head of the bloc of western imperialists. For more on the "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel see the special issue of revcom.us on Israel. [back]