RNA - According to internal State Department emails obtained by the Western press outlets, Secretary of State Tillerson has ordered the department to redefine its stated mission. A draft that was circulated within the department read:
“We promote the security, prosperity, and interests of the American people globally. The State Department will strive to lead America's foreign policy through global advocacy, action and assistance to shape a safer, more prosperous world."
This contrasts with the department's mission statement from 2016, which defined its purpose as shaping and sustaining "a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and fostering conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere."
However, it’s still safe to shrug at the news, as the US government has never truly acted as a promoter of democracy and peace on the world stage. Any doubters should ask Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. They prove beyond any doubt that the US government has never had a change in direction as it always shifts away from concerns about worldwide peace, justice, and security. Last month, Tillerson even proposed shuttering the Office of Global Criminal Justice, charged with helping to bring war criminals to justice. The department also eliminated its website dedicated to human rights issues.
Why? Because the US government only focuses exclusively on self protection and enrichment, rather than promoting democracy, peace, and justice. By creating so many failed states in the Middle East and North Africa, the US government had already removed all reference to International Law, universal values, and the common good. The only significant change now is that the State Department has made it public, announcing the US doesn’t want those things anymore to be used as pretexts for future interventions and regime change wars.
Although it’s a rather significant change, it’s not necessarily going to signal broad policy changes for the US, but rather might save Washington a lot of effort in trying to spinning America’s often overtly anti-democratic policies, like backing despotic regimes in the Persian Gulf or terror proxy groups in Syria.
At any rate, the US government will continue to take Americans into war by justifying it as a fight for freedom and democracy. It will rationalize it as an anti-tyranny fight, a pro-peace fight, and a pro-democracy fight, even though it will be invariably faulty, weak, deficient, exaggerated, illogical and mistaken.
We now know that great doubt surrounded the meaning of the Iran nuclear threat and its motivation. We now know that there were no WMDs in Iraq and that Afghanistan never orchestrated the 9-11 attacks. We also know that the imaginary “moderates” in Syria were in fact Qaeda-allied terrorists and that the US-led coalition was an imagined entity not on any march to fight terror. The lessons of ISIL and Al-Qaeda are that America should not have invaded the Muslim world, should not have created so many failed states that led to insecurity and terror attacks in the West, and should have stayed out of the Arab uprisings.
The final argument is that without the US government upholding the international rule of law of the UN, war and chaos will not result. America’s unpopular interventions and regime change campaigns created war and chaos. The US launched these wars without international approval. The upholding of International Law by US military force and occupying troops was imaginary. As is, the US government is never after freedom and democracy in every land on earth and for all of its peoples. This is a practical impossibility that results in permanent war.
The bottom line is that there is no quick, cheap, or reliable way for outsiders to engineer a democratic transition and especially when the intervening country in question has little or no interest in international protocols and contains deep social divisions itself. Promoting democracy is desirable, but force is not the right tool.
In short, the US will do a better job of promoting democracy in other countries if it first does a better job of living up to its own ideals. The US is no longer regarded as a just, prosperous, vibrant, and tolerant society. It is one where inequality is rampant, politicians are xenophobes, and the prison population is the world’s largest. Add in Guantánamo, targeted killings, illegal wars, support for terrorists and despots, and the reluctance to hold war criminals accountable, and you end up with a pretty tarnished brand.
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