In North America, citizens are so free that they can, if they wish, completely ignore geopolitical reality. Among the freedoms they are offered is the freedom to ignore the importance of these issues, a freedom that the authorities willingly maintain, offering them bread and circuses as a token of gratitude. They are kept in ignorance of the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Security Agency (NSA) and even the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
North American public opinion structures its understanding of the political world rather through internal politics as they unfold within their states, opposing for example the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States, as well as the Liberals and the Conservatives in Canada. In both cases, it is an opposition between politicians of liberal tendency and politicians of conservative tendency. Thus, an average voter of liberal tendency will have been inclined in recent months to support Justin Trudeau (Liberal Party) against Pierre Poilièvre (Conservative Party) and Joe Biden (Democrat) against Donald Trump (Republican).
It can certainly not be denied that there are significant differences persisting between these political parties, and especially in the present context, regarding identity politics, whether it concerns women, LGBTQ, African-Americans, indigenous citizens or immigrants. The fight against wokeness may obscure other substantive debates, but the choices made in these matters are not trivial and unimportant, because they can have serious consequences for the people concerned.
When it comes to geopolitical issues, minds have been formatted on the certainty that the West offers freedoms that are absent in Russian, Chinese or Iranian societies. Thus, when it comes to understanding what is happening at the international level, North American citizens, regardless of their allegiance, tend to map onto the geopolitical reality the certainties acquired about the internal functioning of their respective countries. A recent article on the pre-Second World War mentioned the authoritarian drift, the undermining of democratic institutions and xenophobia, but not the international situation and the march to war. The international realities were completely absent of that paper. These citizens subscribe to Western “values” and agree on the supremacy of individual rights. Under such circumstances, when a conflict arises, they have unfavorable prejudices against Russia, China or Iran. They fail to realize that collective concerns, settled or non-existent in the West, can be priorities in other societies. They are not aware that individual rights, cast in absolute terms, have become an instrument that Western powers use to destabilize the societies they seek to take control of.
The seriousness of identity issues in non-Western societies should not be underestimated. In particular, we must be sensitive to the treatment that a very large number of these societies inflict on women, LGBTQ people and other minorities. However, we must be wary of the unfortunate tendency to make decisions on geopolitical issues based on opinions that have been formed about the internal regimes or social practices of the countries concerned. Even if we are hostile to a state that we consider authoritarian, we must recognize that this state still has the right to live in a secure international environment and not to be attacked by the West. Would we demand that Western countries be invaded because social inequalities, discrimination, xenophobia and racism are found in them? We cannot understand international issues by limiting ourselves to societal, identity or humanitarian considerations alone. Empathy and moral indignation are not enough.
An imperial presence unmasked?
Let us take as a starting point Ukraine and Russia’s special military operation that began on February 24, 2022. Here, hatred of Vladimir Putin and his alleged actions toward his political and media opponents structure our opinion. He is said to eliminate, imprison, and poison his opponents. Therefore, he can only be guilty of an unprovoked aggression in Ukraine that can be explained by attributing to him the intention of reconquering the lost territories of the former Soviet Union. This is how European and North American politicians, journalists, and intellectual circles reacted to the intervention in Ukraine, producing an opinion that, inevitably, by its unanimous nature, would also be adopted by all citizens.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could also have been dissolved, because it was an anti-Russian military organization under American command. Instead, the organization adopted an open-door policy, only too happy to expand its ranks and impose its domination on a humiliated Russia. NATO members would grow from 16 to 30, and now there are 32. Military bases would more and more encircle Russia. The NED and the CIA would play a key role in the color revolutions that the Americans would seek to foment: pink in Georgia, orange in Ukraine, denim in Belarus, tulip in Kyrgyzstan, cedar in Lebanon, and green in Iran.
Specifically, regarding Ukraine, the United States tried unsuccessfully to bring about regime change in 2004. It nevertheless announced in Bucharest in 2008 its intention to include Ukraine in NATO, despite repeated refusals and warnings from the entire Russian ruling class. Including Ukraine in NATO was clearly a move that the Russians were not going to accept. American diplomats, experts and intellectuals in large numbers warned their government not to take this path.
Regardless, politicians John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Chris Murphy, Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland all took turns meeting with the three leaders of the Ukrainian opposition: Vitali Klitschko, Oleg Tiagnibok and Arseniy Yatsenyuk. In 2014, they successfully supervised, supported and financed regime change with the help of Right Sector, a fringe neo-Nazi movement that nevertheless played a key role in the violent hijacking of the popular revolt that was supposed to be democratic and peaceful. The United States, by Victoria Nuland ‘s admission, invested $5 billion to achieve regime change in Ukraine.
It subsequently took control of the country. As revealed in an intercepted phone call between Victoria Nuland and the American ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, it was decided to entrust the role of Prime Minister to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The other two members of the opposition had to remain out of the government. Thus, Vitali Klitschko would become mayor of Kiev, while Oleg Tiagnibok, leader of the small neo-Nazi Freedom party, would be completely sidelined because of his anti-Semitic background denounced by the Elie Wiesel Foundation. Be that as it may, four members of his party were integrated into the government. An American citizen, Natalie Ann Jaresko, was quickly naturalized Ukrainian in order to become Minister of Economy in December 2014. An ally of the United States, Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who started the Georgian war in 2008, was promoted as governor of Odessa. The CIA director at the time, John Brennan, traveled to Ukraine to meet the new leaders. Vice President Joe Biden went there a dozen times. His son Hunter joined the board of directors of the Burisma company and received a huge salary. During the following year, his father Joe had the attorney general who was in charge of investigating a former Burisma executive dismissed.
Confronted with the coup, Russia also reacted quickly to retake Crimea, a Russian-speaking region that had been joined to Ukraine in 1954. While this region had been under Russian control for centuries, this control escaped it in 1991 when Ukraine became independent. The Russians retook in 2014 a region that had only been lost for 23 years, to preserve access to the Black Sea and to keep control of Sevastopol, one of their rare naval bases. Under the new regime in Kyiv, this base would have become an anti-Russian asset for the United States and NATO. Russia had turned a deaf ear to the referendum held in Crimea in 1991. It was not going to react in the same way this time. A second referendum was held which once again gave the same results. Almost the entire population voted in favor of joining Russia.
Restrictive laws were passed against the use of the Russian language the day after the coup, on February 23, 2014. Neo-Nazis traveled to Odessa to set fire to the Union House where Russian-speaking opponents of these laws had taken refuge. About fifty of them were burned to death. The Oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk declared their independence in response to the newly adopted laws. A civil war began, at the center of which was the neo-Nazi group Azov, leading to the deaths of 14,000 people.
The Minsk Agreements were adopted by Ukraine and Russia and sponsored by France and Germany. These agreements were intended to end the civil war. They aimed to restore the public use of the Russian language and to constitutionalize the autonomy of federated states for the two secessionist Oblasts. Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Petro Poroshenko later candidly admitted that they never intended to implement the measures contained in these agreements. Their adoption was only to gain time in preparation for the war against Russia.
Following the 2014 coup in Kyiv, the Americans continued their warlike escalation. They trained the Ukrainian army, including the neo-Nazi group Azov. They equipped and fortified Ukraine preparing it for war. They did nothing to force Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements.
The Americans withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty (ABM) in 2002 and then installed anti-missiles systems in Poland and Romania. They also withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Missile treaty (IMF) in 2019. Were they going to install them in Ukraine? Joe Biden, who became president, initially promised in December 2021 not to place such missiles on Ukrainian territory, only to abandon this promise a few weeks later. Russia therefore risked finding itself facing a Ukraine now turned into a de facto member of NATO and on whose territory the Americans would be able to install intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching Moscow in a matter of minutes. It would therefore have to be ready, at any time of the day or night, to find itself confronted with a major alert. If a missile were launched towards Moscow, it would have only a few minutes to decide whether to retaliate and lead all of humanity into the spiral of a nuclear war. It is appropriate in this context to describe such a situation as an “existential threat”. This is equivalent to the situation of an individual who is confronted with a gun pointed to his head.
In December 2021, the Russians unsuccessfully put forward final proposals to NATO and the United States on security in Europe and the disarmament of military bases surrounding Russia. They could have pursued other solutions, but they quickly understood that escalation would continue anyway. They chose to act before their backs were completely against the wall. A special military operation (not a war) was therefore launched on February 24, 2022, to strengthen Russia’s security by pushing the United States away from its border and neutralizing Ukraine. The causes of the conflict in Ukraine are geopolitical: the expansion of NATO to Russia.
In the weeks that followed, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia were quickly initiated. They were about to be concluded in April 2022 in Istanbul, just a few weeks into the military confrontation. But that was without counting on the Americans and the British, who quickly intervened to put a stop to this imminent agreement.
So the Americans did everything they could to make this war happen and continue. They used Ukraine to weaken Russia. In fact, a document produced by the Rand corporation (“Extending Russia”) in 2019 outlined the path to follow. The document examined various options, including supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine, destabilizing governments on Russia’s periphery, withdrawing from the Medium-Range Missile Agreement, ending Russian oil and gas sales to Europe, and halting the Nordstream gas pipeline project. The U.S. government followed this road map to the letter, despite significant reservations expressed by the authors of the document.
The facts we have just reported may be considered superfluous and repetitive for those who are already aware of the geopolitical dimension of this conflict, but they are still largely ignored and, in any case, they have not shaken the widespread conviction that we are rather dealing with an opposition between Good (the West) and Evil (Putin’s Russia).
A first reason to doubt
The events of October 7, 2023, however, introduced a first crack in this over-simplified ideal image of good guys against bad guys. In response to the operation by Hamas and affiliated groups, the far-right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu reacted with unprecedented violence, supported by the United States. The Netanyahu government announced its intention to make the Gaza Strip unlivable and set itself the goal of depriving the Gazan population of food, electricity, gas and water, which was the only way, according to Defense Minister Yoav Galant, to behave towards these “human animals.” Citizens around the world were for the first time direct witnesses of a genocide, openly assumed and recognized as plausible by the International Court of Justice. The United States was directly compromised with this genocide because it supplied the hundred thousand tons of bombs Israel dropped, helping it to carry out this unspeakable carnage. Genocidal support from Washington was the work of Democratic Party President Joe Biden.
The United States proved to be surprisingly belligerent. One might have hoped that public opinion would change about Ukraine as a result of these tragic events. Some tried instead to show that the deaths of hundreds of Israelis killed by Hamas and by the Israeli army on October 7 constituted the real act of genocide, while the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazan civilians were merely the unfortunate collateral effect of Hamas using citizens as human shields. Those who saw things this way had no reason to change their opinion about Ukraine, because the United States was also supporting a “victim.” Israel, it was said, had “the right to defend itself.”
Others pointed out the Biden administration’s inconsistency and its double standards. But this argument presupposed a favorable judgment regarding military support for Ukraine. Few recognized the internal consistency of American imperialism, using Ukraine to weaken Russia and supporting its Middle Eastern ally against Iran.
Unfortunately, the opposition between Biden and Trump in the 2024 presidential race took very quickly precedence over all of these considerations. News from Gaza became increasingly rare and almost absent from the mainstream media, except to recall the “humanitarian crisis” experienced by the citizens of the Gaza Strip and the “pressure” still exerted by Israel against Hamas.
A second reason to doubt
More recent events, however, gave a momentary hope of seeing a new critical awareness of the United States emerge. Trump’s election gave rise to an aggressive and belligerent posture, even towards his closest allies. Buying Greenland? Seizing the Panama Canal? Renaming the Gulf of Mexico? Imposing tariffs on Mexico and Canada? Integrating Canada as the 51st state? It took all this for the Canadian mainstream media to talk for the first time about American imperialism.
Donald Trump proposed to ethnically cleanse the 2 million Palestinians. The world reacted strongly against Trump, including in Canada. And yet, this position was in perfect continuity with that which had been adopted previously by the Biden administration. Both Biden and Trump aligned themselves with Israeli ethnic cleansing policies. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had, in fact, himself made approaches to Jordan and Egypt trying to convince them to welcome Gazan refugees. Biden’s support for Israel had made it possible to flatten the entire Gaza Strip. The logical continuation could at first glance make it almost necessary to move the population to other territories.
Despite all this, attention quickly focused on Trump’s authoritarianism, which contrasted with the previous administration. His stance on immigration, his abject decisions taken with regard to LGBTQ people, his “executive orders” that ignore Congress, his unconstitutional decisions, the exclusion of the Associated Press from White House press briefings, the dismissal of prosecutors appointed by Democrats, all this highlighted a fundamental break with the past. The famous checks and balances were being called into question. The rule of law no longer existed. The president believed himself to be above the Supreme Court and the constitution, like a true fascist in charge of a far-right state.
All this is true, but at the same time, the focus on Trump’s domestic politics leads to ignoring or glossing over the violations of international law under the Biden administration. Trump’s flippant attitude at the domestic level had indeed been matched by that of Biden at the international level. The imposition of a “rules-based order” was put forward as a substitute for international law. The US veto in the Security Council over resolutions aimed at establishing a ceasefire in Gaza showed how much the US was hindering the international settlement of the conflict. The genocidal support for the genocidal state was in flagrant violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The interruption of funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was an additional slap in the face for international institutions. The same remarks apply concerning the continuation of aid to Israel, which was granted even after the rulings of the International Court of Justice were made public in January 2024. All this should have made an impression on people. Whether we consider the Biden administration or the Trump administration, in both cases, the United States believes itself to be above the law. But since foreign policy is being overshadowed by domestic policy, the focus is on Trump and not Biden.
Which policy is more odious? The one that goes against the internal constitution of the United States or the one that goes against international law? It is difficult to decide, but the focus on Trump’s daily intemperate statements prevents grasping the arrogance of the Biden administration, which is responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza and responsible for the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine.
A third reason to doubt
A third confusion has just appeared, however, with the image of a Western world representing universal values under the leadership of the United States. Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin alone. The aim is to agree on the terms of a ceasefire in Ukraine but also, more broadly, on the lasting conditions of peace that will allow us to move on. Ukraine and Europe are hopping mad for good reason, because they are not present and were not invited.
The importance of the negotiations that are beginning and that could end the conflict cannot be overlooked. However, one cannot help but notice the devastating effect felt by Ukraine and Europe. They were drawn into this conflict by the Americans. The Europeans deprived themselves of cheap Russian gas and oil in order to implement the “sanctions” decreed by Washington. Ukraine, for its part, has lost hundreds of thousands of men in combat and millions of Ukrainians have emigrated.
Nevertheless, the United States, one of the losers in this war, is meeting Russia, without the other two losers, Ukraine and Europe. Will we finally understand that the United States is largely responsible for this conflict? Shall we take note of the fact that the Americans were Russia’s real adversaries, that the war was basically between Russia and the United States and that Ukraine and Europe were instrumentalized in this whole affair? From the beginning, the narrative would have it that it was a war between Russia and Ukraine, with the United States coming to Ukraine’s rescue by providing it with money and weapons. Bilateral negotiations brought geopolitical reality to the forefront: the conflict in Ukraine is a confrontation between the United States and Russia; the two adversaries are talking to each other to end their conflict; the warmongering proxies are put on hold and will have time to change their software. Consequently, reality was perhaps on the way to being better understood.
For some, this neglect of Ukraine is a scandalous move by Trump. But the scandal emerged much earlier under the Biden administration. Many representatives and senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, were happy to invest in a war that could weaken Russia without causing any American deaths. Whether it was Adam Schiff or Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham or Lloyd Austin, the loss of Ukrainian lives seemed to matter little to them.
Europe, too, is finally emerging as a partner that no longer counts. By forcing Europeans to interrupt purchase of Russian gas and oil, and by blowing up the Nordstream gas pipeline partly financed by Germany, the Biden administration was already back then demonstrating its contempt for Europe, and in particular for Germany. The only difference is that this contempt is now coming into full light.
Unfortunately, these observations are not made. The prejudices against Russia seem unshakeable for some people. Those who question them are called pro-Putin or pro-Trump. Trump is blamed for being the one who sidelines Ukraine, which suggests that Biden, for his part, was showing necessary solidarity with this country, even though he engaged it in a war that was lost from day one, the sole aim being to weaken Russia. Public opinion is struck by the meeting between two so-called authoritarian leaders of “fascist” tendency, and they apprehend the issue once again from an ideological perspective linked to the internal politics of these two countries. They are unaware of the fact that states have rights and interests independently of those who lead them. The only novelty is that this far-right authoritarianism applies to the United States and not just to Russia.
A different perspective is possible. What Trump does openly, previous administrations did just as much, except that it was in secret. We could mention the internal spying practiced by the NSA. The whistleblower Edward Snowden who exposed this practice was forced into exile. We could mention the illegal actions of the military, the CIA and the State Department that were exposed by Wikileaks. Julian Assange paid a heavy price for having the audacity to reveal them to the world. His imprisonment had a chilling effect on journalists critical of the American administration. We could mention the mendacious maneuvers concerning Russiagate, which were meant to associate Trump with a Russian plot against the United States. The influence of USAID on the financing and control of international journalism could also be underlined. One might also highlight the role of the media, the CIA and the Biden administration in the campaign to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop affair. Some of the material on that laptop could have led to the president’s impeachment. Biden’s last-minute pardon of his family members put the lid back on the pot.
Trump’s arrogant policy towards the media excluded from his press conferences is also in perfect continuity with the measures previously taken by the Biden administration. The ban on broadcasting the Russia Today and Sputnik channels offers a clear illustration of this, both medias being perceived as vectors of Russian disinformation. It is as if American media were not themselves outlets for American propaganda. The law approved by Joe Biden against the presence of Tik Tok on American soil could also be mentioned. Finally, one must not forget the behavior of the Biden administration towards Twitter, revealed by Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files, and of Mark Zuckerberg’s admission that the government required that some contents circulating on Facebook be censored.
Conclusion
All of this is going under the radar screen of the North American population, because they are stunned and terrified by the antics of a new president who is as unpredictable as he is menacing. Certainly, one should not turn a blind eye to a growing number of Western countries that are struggling with far-right political parties. These are movements that must be fought. But we must not do so by ignoring the past, present and future of the West’s geopolitics.
Russophobic, Sinophobic and Islamophobic prejudices should not be held. It is not appropriate to wage a “civilizational war” while being complacent towards American imperialism. It is wrong to assert the supremacy of individual rights while neglecting the collective rights of peoples. One should not be indifferent to the 800 American military bases, to the 250 military interventions of the United States since 1991, to the 900 billion dollars invested annually in the military-industrial complex, and to the 18,000 “sanctions” imposed unilaterally against individuals, companies and countries. It is not acceptable, supposedly in the name of “democracy”, that several million people die as a result of military interventions or “sanctions”. We should not, like Madeleine Albright, consider it worthwhile to kill 500,000 Iraqi children in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. A US-backed genocide in Gaza is not to be trivialized. Nor should the conflict in Ukraine be gotten wrong.
The conflict in Ukraine did not begin on February 24, 2022. The conflict in the Middle East did not begin on October 7, 2023. And American imperialism was not born on January 20, 2025. It cannot be said enough: the realities of international politics cannot be reduced to questions of domestic politics.
