The dissolution of the Soviet Union removed the constraint on Washington's unilateralism. The neoconservatives, who had just risen to power, seized the opportunity and replaced diplomacy with threat and coercion. One infamous example is from the George W. Bush regime when the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, told Pakistan to
do as you are told or you will be bombed into the stone age. We have this on the authority of the president of Pakistan himself, who did as he was told.
In the case of Russia during the Putin era, this level of threat is excessive as Russia can bomb back. So the threat has been reduced to:
do as you are told or we will impose sanctions.Sanctions are an assertion of hegemony of one country over another. They are an assertion that the imposer of sanctions has extra-legal international authority to tell other sovereign states what to do or to suffer consequences if they do not.
Once the constraint on Washington's unilateralism was removed, sanctions became an instrument of US foreign policy and replaced diplomacy. The Clinton regime used them on Iraq. When the UN reported that the effect of the Clinton regime's sanctions on Iraq was the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, Clinton's Jewish Secretary of State was asked by Lesley Stahl on the national TV program "60 Minutes" if the sanctions were worth the deaths of a half million children. Madeliene Albright said yes, "the price is worth it." The Jews feel the same way about the Palestinians. As the Palestinians' country has been stolen by Israel, what is the point of Palestinians?
Killing them is Israel's answer. As one Israeli minister said, we are only doing what the Americans did to the native Americans known as Indians. As America shares this crime with Israel, little wonder that Washington always vetoes any UN action against Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians. The two criminal states stand united against the world.
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