Members of the African People’s Socialist Party alongside non-African supporters. Chairman Omali Yeshitela (front center) is in a black beret, while his wife and Deputy Chair, Ona Zené Yeshitela, stands behind him in a blue hat / credit: African People’s Socialist Party
Black political organizations and other anti-imperialist groups condemned the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raiding early Friday morning the properties of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and its solidarity organization in Saint Louis, Missouri, and in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Based on the description, APSP appears to be one of several unidentified groups and people implicated in a 25-page indictment of a Russian national, Aleksandr Ionov. The Moscow-based founder of the nonprofit Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) has been accused of attempting to influence U.S.-based groups to turn against the United States and work in favor of Russia.
“Anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism or who has made common cause internationally is endangered,” Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley wrote on Facebook. “Not surprising that a Black organization is the first on their hit list.”
The raid began at 5 a.m. July 29 at the Saint Louis home of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela and his wife and APSP Deputy Chair, Ona Zené Yeshitela.
Yeshitela said in a Facebook livestream later that day that the APSP was targeted for its support of Russia during the military operation the country has been undertaking in Ukraine since February 24.
Among several allegations, the FBI accused Ionov’s group of paying U.S. activists to attend two conferences in Russia. It also said Ionov helped a group conduct a tour in the United States to drum up support for a petition charging the U.S. government with committing genocide against African descendants. Yeshitela admitted meeting with Ionov twice in Russia.
“Suddenly, we’re supposed to become tools, like Black people don’t have minds of our own to find out what our reality is and who’s responsible for it,” Yeshitela said in the livestream. “It’s white people doing self-criticism and uniting to give money. That’s where the money is coming from, Uncle Sam.”
‘Crisis’ of U.S. Imperialism
Yeshitela said while the United States was targeting Black activists, it has failed diplomatically.
“They’re doing this, in part, because not a single African country—not even neocolonial sycophants—want to unite with the United States and the United Nations in terms of how they are targeting Russia in this Ukraine-Russia question,” he said, referring to the economic sanctions slapped on Russia after it entered Ukraine in February. When Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky recently held a virtual meeting with African countries, 93 percent of heads of state did not attend, despite Western pressure.
“This exposes the crisis the United States, that U.S. imperialism, is in,” said APSP Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai in a livestreamed press conference in Saint Petersburg. Anai said FBI agents lured her outside her home early Friday morning, saying her car had been broken into. Upon opening her car, they forced her to hand over her devices, she said.
Yeshitela, 80, said he and Ona were awoken Friday morning to the sound of a voice blaring through a megaphone outside their home, asking them to come outside with their hands up. Flashbang grenades were set off throughout the working-class Saint Louis neighborhood, Yeshitela added. He also said a drone almost hit Ona’s face after she opened the home’s front door. Law enforcement agents lately have deployed drones into buildings to conduct a visual search before agents enter.
Yeshitela said FBI agents handcuffed the couple and forced them to sit on the street curb while agents scoured their home. “They indicated they had a search warrant related to the indictment,” he said. The FBI freed the couple after several hours, but not without confiscating from their home all of their devices, such as computers and phones, according to Yeshitela’s livestreamed account.
The FBI was unavailable as of press time.
Black Scare, Red Scare
Black activists have long denounced the U.S. government’s anti-communist rhetoric going back to the early 20th century, saying such calls to take down communists really have translated into attempts to dismantle Black liberation movements and other liberation movements in the United States.
“In reality, what anti-communism/anti-Marxism does is to transform anything counter-hegemonic or non-conforming into subversion, foreignness, or disloyalty by punishing it as communist, communist inspired, or communist infiltrated and therefore illegal, illicit or criminal,” said Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly in a recent talk.
Burden-Stelly, an associate professor of African-American Studies at Wayne State University, has written a soon-to-be-released book, Black Scare, Red Scare (2023). It attempts to document how the U.S. government’s anti-communist policies repress Black and other oppressed people for organizing for their liberation. This, she has said, helps to protect what she calls “racial capitalism,” in which the most degrading labor is forced upon increasingly exploited racialized groups.
U.S. Government’s ‘Hysterical Response’
Black political groups denounced large segments of the U.S. political left for believing Black activists are stooges of Russia, or the former Soviet Union.
“We agree that APSP doesn’t have to apologize for fighting for justice for all oppressed and particularly African People like our ancestors Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Black Panther Party who were spied on, jailed and assassinated for standing up for the freedom and justice for African People worldwide,” said the central committee of Pan-Africanist organization All-African People’s Revolutionary Party in a statement issued Saturday.
Activists like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were called communists, were assassinated. Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, who advocated for the unification of Africa under Pan-Africanism and the end of European colonialism in Africa, was briefly imprisoned in Atlanta for what some consider the politically motivated charge of mail fraud. Trinidad and Tobago-born U.S.-based communist Claudia Jones—after whom Toward Freedom‘s summer editorial internship was named—was deported to the United Kingdom for her activism.
“We believe this repression to be a hysterical response to the United States’ loss of legitimacy in the context of the deepening crisis of capitalism and U.S. global hegemony,” said the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)’s Coordinating Committee in a statement released Saturday. “The unleashing of policing and counterintelligence forces domestically and increased militarism and warmongering abroad in the name of national security are the only avenues left to the U.S. ruling class that is engulfed in an irreversible economic crisis. They represent the hallmarks of a naked fascism that the U.S. ruling class appears to be increasingly committed to in order to maintain the rule of capital.”
Then BAP added a warning in its statement.
“While it is APSP today, it will ultimately be the rest of us tomorrow. Resistance is our only option.”
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky (left) with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Background: Israeli flag / credit: Toward Freedom photo illustration
Editor’s Note: This article was first published in The Grayzone.
Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.” The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.
Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia. According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion).
“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters. “But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas—there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.” Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”
For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement. Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council—NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington—published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.”
Authored by Daniel B. Shapiro, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, the document posited that “the two embattled countries share more than you might think.”
Just as former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig presented Israel as “the largest American air craft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,” Shapiro put forward a vision of Ukraine as a hyper-militarized NATO bastion whose national identity would be defined by its ability to project U.S. power against Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, January 2020
Israel and Ukraine: “Old, Loyal Friends”
Despite Israel’s reluctance to join the Western sanctions campaign against Russia, it has aided Ukraine’s militarily, sending two large shipments of defensive equipment since February of this year. In the past, however, Israel’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been more than defensive.
Back in 2018, over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons. As Israel’s Ha’aretz noted at the time, “The militia’s [Azov] emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias… One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew.”
Zelensky, a Ukrainian Jew, was apparently unperturbed by Israel’s alleged arming of Nazi elements in his country. One year after his 2019 election, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to launch what he called a “prayer for peace,” and to attend an event titled, “Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.” Ahead of the junket, Zelensky heaped praise on Israeli society, remarking in an interview that “Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” and that Israelis are a “united, strong, powerful people. And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”
Happy Birthday, @netanyahu! I wish you and all the Jewish people good health and the strength to face all the challenges of the rapidly-changing world. At a time like this, old loyal friends are more valuable than ever. #Ukraine and #Israel have a friendship such as this. pic.twitter.com/jhonXgiqAl
“There are many countries in the world that can protect themselves, but Israel, such a small country, can not only protect itself, but facing external threats, can respond,” Zelensky said, adding that he had visited the country “many times.”
In a birthday message later that year to Israel’s then-Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Zelensky commented that “old loyal friends are more valuable than ever. Ukraine and Israel have a friendship such as this.”
Since the escalation in fighting between Kiev and Moscow in February of this year, dozens of Israelis have traveled to Ukraine to join the country’s Foreign Legion.
More and more Israeli soldiers are showing up in Ukraine, ready to fight against the Russian Army.
In August, the Canadian government-backed Kyiv Independent published an investigation which accused Ukraine’s Foreign Legion of stealing arms and goods as well as carrying out sexual harassment and other forms of abuse.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continually heaped praise on Tel Aviv, especially after an Israeli Supreme Court decision to lift restrictions on citizens traveling to Ukraine.
“The rule of law and respect for human rights is exactly what distinguishes a true, developed democracy!” the Ukrainian President tweeted following the July ruling.
I commend the decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Israel, which obliges the government of 🇮🇱 to abolish any additional restrictions on the entry of citizens of 🇺🇦. The rule of law and respect for human rights is exactly what distinguishes a true, developed democracy!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 3, 2022
A Hyper-Militarized Apartheid State As a Model for Ukraine
By April of 2022, Zelensky’s admiration for the Israeli state had apparently reached new heights. Immediately following his declaration that Ukraine would soon become “a big Israel,” Washington’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, Daniel B. Shapiro, published a blueprint for Zelensky to achieve that dream at the Washington D.C.-based, NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council.
“By adapting their country’s mindset to mirror aspects of Israel’s approach to chronic security challenges, Ukrainian officials can tackle critical national-security challenges with confidence and build a similarly resilient state,” Shapiro, an Atlantic Council “distinguished fellow,” wrote.
The nearly 900-word outline offered eight bullet points detailing how Ukraine can become more like Israel, a country recently described by Amnesty International as an “apartheid state.” The points included advice such as to place “security first,” maintain “Intelligence dominance,” and remember that “technology is key.”
According to Shapiro, a central component of Israel’s security strategy is that “the whole population plays a role.”
“Civilians recognize their responsibility to follow security protocols and contribute to the cause,” Shapiro wrote of the Israeli population. “Some even arm themselves (though under strict supervision) to do so. The widespread mobilization of Ukrainian society in collective defense suggests that the country has this potential.” These comments align directly with Zelensky’s prediction that in a future Ukraine, “people with weapons” will be present in nearly every aspect of civilian life.
Like the propaganda touting Israel’s “success” as a security state, Shapiro’s blueprint imagined Ukraine’s citizenry united by a “common purpose” with help from Tel Aviv’s “high-tech innovation” in the military and intelligence sectors. His game plan portrays Israel’s advancements in security to as an almost mythical achievement owing purely to the feisty, innovative spirit of its citizens, overlooking the single greatest material factor in its success: unprecedented levels of foreign military assistance, particularly from the United States. Indeed, without U.S. taxpayers virtually subsidizing its military through yearly aid packages amounting to untold billions of dollars, it is difficult to see how a country the size of New Jersey would have attained the status of the world’s leading surveillance technology hub.
Even as Shapiro urged Zelensky to maintain “active defense partnerships,” he simultaneously downplayed the role foreign aid has played in preserving Israel’s settler-colonial imperatives, arguing that the “single principle” informing Tel Aviv’s security doctrine is that “Israel will defend itself, by itself—and rely on no other country to fight its battles.”
Shapiro must have forgotten that principle when he tweeted, “Thank God Israel has Iron Dome”—a reference to Israel’s air defense system that U.S. taxpayers funded to the tune of $1 billion in 2021 alone, on top of $3.8 billion in military assistance earmarked for Tel Aviv that year.
Thank God Israel has Iron Dome to protect its citizens from Hamas rocket from Gaza. But Israel's ability to defend itself doesn't in any way lessen the outrage of a terrorist organization firing at civilians from within civilian areas.
In his advice to Zelensky, Shapiro also emphasized that “Ukraine will need to upgrade its intelligence services” in a similar manner to Israel, which “has invested deeply in its intelligence capabilities to ensure that it has the means to detect and deter its enemies—and, when needed, act proactively to strike them.”
Then-Amb. Daniel Shapiro speaking at the 2016 conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, which would later employ him.
A U.S. Diplomat Stays Behind in Israel, Goes to Bat for Its Top Spying Firm
Shapiro would know a thing or two about the Israeli intelligence apparatus. In mid-2017, after opting to remain with his family in Israel, rather than return to the country that had employed him as a diplomat, he joined the Israeli tech firm NSO hacking firm as an independent advisor. There, Shapiro helped evaluate potential clients for NSO’s notoriously invasive digital spyware, known as Pegasus. NSO’s many government clients include the Saudi Monarchy, which has used its Pegasus system to monitor and persecute human rights campaigners and journalists.
Shapiro has also enjoyed close ties with Israeli intelligence through the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank in Tel Aviv. During the better part of his four years as a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” at the institute, its executive director was Amos Yadlin, the Israeli Defense Forces’ former chief of Military Intelligence. Yadlin helped devise the doctrine of disproportionate force employed by the Israeli military against Gaza in which civilians were redefined as the “terrorists’ neighbor,” and thereby stripped of protections under the Geneva Conventions.
In 2018, INSS paid Shapiro more than $20,000 to testify before Congress on its behalf, despite him not registering as a foreign agent. Like NSO Group, INSS maintains a veneer of independence from the Israeli government even though its founder, Aharon Yariv, also served as the head of Israel’s military intelligence.
In the US, Shapiro had a stint at WestExec Advisors, a consulting founded in 2017 by now-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and described by Politico as “Biden’s Cabinet in waiting.” Prior to the election of Joe Biden, Shapiro ran cover in the media after the Democratic Party’s platform removed language opposing further annexation of land in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
War—It’s Good for Atlantic Council Donors
It is likely no coincidence that Shapiro published his prescription for converting Ukraine into an Israeli-style security state in his capacity as a “distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council. If Ukraine is ever transformed into the permanent military fortress he and Zelensky imagine, the NATO think tank’s weapons industry donors stand to benefit immensely.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing were all listed among the Atlantic Council’s top benefactors in 2021. Raytheon Chairman and CEO Gregory J. Hayes also happens to sit on the think tank’s international advisory board. As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, the Atlantic Council has also served as a de facto laundromat for money from Ukrainian interests like Burisma to members of Biden’s inner circle.
The three aforementioned arms companies, which form the heart of Washington’s military industrial complex, have already reaped massive profits from the war in Ukraine. Boeing, which faced a public relations crisis after malfunctions in its 737 Max plane’s operating system resulted in two high profile crashes, could be on track to reclaiming its status as the world’s top aircraft manufacturer as a result of the conflict.
Though Boeing suffered two consecutive quarterly losses in 2022, by July it claimed to be “building momentum” for a recovery. In June, the aerospace giant secured a contract to supply heavy-lift helicopters to Germany’s government after Berlin created a $107 billion fund for military investment in direct response to the Ukraine war.
Meanwhile, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin both manufacture the Javelin anti-tank missile system that have been dubbed a “symbol of Ukraine’s resistance” on the battlefield.
During his visit to Lockheed Martin's Troy, Alabama plant, Joe Biden pushed for approval of his proposed $33 billion military aid package to Ukraine by claiming Ukrainians were naming their children "Javelin" and "Javelina" after the anti-tank missile the plant manufactured. pic.twitter.com/zNPiKRjSrw
“They’ve been so important, there’s even a story about Ukrainian parents naming their children—not a joke—their newborn child ‘Javelin’ or ‘Javelina,’” U.S. President Joe Biden gushed during a May visit to a Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Alabama, underscoring the company’s vital role in the Ukraine war with absurdity.
The United States has sent more than 8,500 Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine since February at a cost of roughly $178,000 a pop, according to the Pentagon’s 2021 budget. Eager to keep the gravy train flowing, Lockheed Martin is seeking to double production, aiming to manufacture 4,000 Javelin systems a year. Lockheed’s 2022 stocks are up more than 20 percent over the previous year, reaching their height just two weeks after Russia’s military operation began.
With inspiration from Shapiro’s NATO-sponsored “road map” to success, Zelensky’s fantasy of a perpetual militarized, high-tech Sparta bolstered by a gun-toting civilian population will require a massive investment in weapons and surveillance technology on the part of the government in Kiev. If this war is any indication, Ukraine will likely look to the Atlantic Council’s donors once again as it ventures to fulfill Zelensky’s dream of establishing a “big Israel” on Russia’s border.
Alex Rubinstein is an independent reporter on Substack. You can subscribe to get free articles from him delivered to your inbox here. If you want to support his journalism, which is never put behind a paywall, you can give a one-time donation to him through PayPal or sustain his reporting through Patreon. He can be followed on Twitter at @RealAlexRubi.
Residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic set off fireworks and waved Russian flags on February 21 after Russia recognized the independence of the breakaway republic as well as that of the Lugansk People’s Republic / credit: Tasnim News
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s analysis.
With Russia recognizing on February 21 two breakaway republics in Ukraine’s Donbass region, war between Russia and U.S.-backed Ukraine appears closer than ever. However, such an escalation means Europe is bound to face an energy crisis, as sources of oil and gas remain too small or unreliable to meet its needs.
The United States and the European Union are expected to impose severe sanctions on the Russian Federation. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, announced it will impose sanctions on Russian banks. The United States could eventually pressure all European countries to stop purchasing Russian energy, one way or another. U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order immediately after Russia recognized the two republics. The order bans business that would develop the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. Although the order states medical supplies and other basic needs would not be barred, U.S. sanctions have been found to shrink economies and kill people by denying materials to produce medicines. Moreover, Biden announced today the “first tranche,” which includes restrictions on Russia’s sovereign debt.
“That means we’ve cut off Russia’s government from Western financing,” Biden said.
On September 10, the sections of the second Nord Stream 2 pipeline laid from the German shore and Danish waters was connected in a so-called above water tie-in. The opposing pipe strings were lifted from the seabed by the lay barge Fortuna and the pipe ends were cut and fitted together. The welding to connect the two lines took place on a platform located above the water on the side of the vessel. Then the connected pipeline was lowered to the seabed as one continuous string / credit: Nord Stream 2 / Axel Schmidt
Europe’s Energy Conundrum
With the march toward war, Germany halted approval for Nord Stream 2, an undersea pipeline that would have doubled the amount of natural gas flowing from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, bypassing the U.S.-backed Ukraine.
About 43 percent of natural gas consumed in the EU comes from Russia. Moreover, Russia is the main supplier of crude oil to the EU, making the alliance of European states heavily dependent on Russian energy. If the EU completely cuts energy ties with Moscow, power outages could become the norm, especially given European gas storages are already half-empty. Even if the United States pressures other producers to increase energy supplies to Europe, it remains uncertain what can replace Russian oil, gas and coal in the interim.
Europe is not the only place that will suffer from what seems to be an inevitable war between Russia and Ukraine. The two countries are the world’s fourth and seventh largest producers of cereals, respectively. That means West Asian countries, significant importers of the Russian and Ukrainian foodstock, are expected to experience food shortages if Ukrainian sea ports are blocked due to a war or if Russia is cut off from the global financial system.
Still, it remains to be seen if such severe sanctions will come as a result of the Kremlin’s recognition of the Donbass republics, or if the West will wait for major clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Why Russia Recognized Breakaway Republics
The Kremlin’s recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic is only the beginning of a large-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The two republics, located in the coal-rich Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, are now Moscow’s allies, which means Russia will openly support them if Kyiv does not end hostilities that erupted in 2014.
Map of Donetsk People’s Republic (lavender) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (peach) within Ukraine’s Donbass region / credit: STUmaps/Wikipedia
Ukraine has been firmly in the U.S. geopolitical orbit since violent neo-Nazi protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Square resulted in the 2014 overthrow of the allegedly pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Yet, Russia did not attempt to help the then-Ukrainian leader stay in power. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2018, Washington had asked him to persuade Yanukovych not to use force against “peaceful protesters.” Putin agreed. As a result, anti-Russian forces came to power in Kyiv, leading the people of the Donbass region to vote in favor of leaving Ukraine.
“I don’t think anyone can claim that the Ukrainian regime, since the 2014 coup d’état, represents all the people living on the territory of the Ukrainian state,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on February 22.
In 2014, however, Russia recognized the results of the Ukrainian presidential election, organized by the post-Maidan authorities. Lavrov even called newly elected President Petro Poroshenko the “best chance” for Ukraine. Eight years later, the Kremlin has completely changed its rhetoric on Ukraine. Now, Lavrov openly questions the very sovereignty of Ukraine, while Putin indirectly threatens to continue the process of fragmentation of the Eastern European country. In his speech on February 21, Putin said the Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.”
“You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine,” Putin stressed.
Does that mean Russia plans to seek pre-Bolshevik borders with Ukraine, which would include incorporating the Crimean peninsula into the Russian Federation?
Map showing Crimea and the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugantsk / credit: Congressional Research Service
From the Russian perspective, recognition of the Donbass republics will not resolve the problem Moscow has with Washington. The United States is using Ukraine merely as an instrument against Russia. This comes as the Kremlin uses its Donbass proxies as a tool against the U.S.-backed Ukraine in an escalation of a Cold War game between the two nuclear powers that was sparked with the 2014 Maidan events and Russia’s subsequent actions in Crimea and Donbass. But the latest developments suggest Moscow intends to raise the stakes. Quite aware Ukrainian authorities will never recognize the secession of breakaway provinces and will continue to fight, the Kremlin hardly has a choice but to eventually install a Russia-friendly regime in Kyiv.
Such an operation undoubtedly means war. But war is inevitable, one way or another. Russia has deployed troops to the newly recognized Donbass republics. If Ukrainian forces do not end hostilities, the Russian Army is in the very near future expected to engage in a direct confrontation against Ukraine. Given that the Eastern European country has received at least $200 million in U.S. “lethal aid” as well as other Western-made weapons over the past two months, it is not probable Kyiv will accept a new geopolitical reality. Ukraine is not in a position to refuse to accept Western arms and Ukraine has often said it would never capitulate to Russia. Refusing arms would mean a de facto capitulation to Russia.
The Inevitability of War
Sooner or later, the Donbass conflict will escalate. Shelling has increased along the entire front line, which seems to be part of preparations for a military offensive. Ukraine aims to restore its sovereignty over the Donbass, while the Lugansk People’s Republic demands Kyiv withdraw its troops from the entire Lugansk Oblast (region). Both republics control relatively small portions of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts. Two-thirds of the regions are still controlled by Kyiv. Given that on May 12, 2014, a referendum on the status of Donetsk and Lugansk was held on the entirety of the two oblasts, it is entirely possible Moscow also sees the two republics as part of a much bigger territory than what is currently under control of the pro-Russian forces. Their final borders, however, are likely to be determined after a war.
For now, the region will remain in a state of limbo. If Ukraine breaks off diplomatic ties with Russia, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced, it will be a clear indication the two countries are on the brink of war.
That several Western countries have moved their embassies from Kyiv to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, and that around 10 airlines have canceled their flights to Ukraine, suggests the breakout of war is just a matter of time.
Nikola Mikovic is a Serbia-based contributor to CGTN, Global Comment, Byline Times, Informed Comment, and World Geostrategic Insights, among other publications. He is a geopolitical analyst for KJ Reports and Enquire.
Editor’s Note: This article was produced by Globetrotter.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other members of the Biden Cabinet are fond of proclaiming the “rules-based international order” (RBIO) or “rules-based order” every chance they get: in press conferences, on interviews, in articles, at international fora, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cocktails. Along with the terms “human rights” and “democracy,” the RBIO is routinely used to claim a moral high ground against countries that they accuse of not following this RBIO, and wielded as a cudgel to attack, criticize, accuse, and delegitimate countries in their crosshairs as rogue outliers to an international order.
This cudgel is now used most commonly against China and Russia. Oddly enough, whenever the United States asserts this “rules-based order” that China (and other “revisionist powers”/enemy states) are violating, the United States never seems to clarify which “rules” are being violated, but simply releases a miasma of generic accusation, leaving the stench of racism and xenophobia to do the rest.
This is because there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the RBIO.
The RBIO isn’t “rules-based,” it isn’t “international,” and it confounds any sense of “order,” let alone justice. It is, at bottom, the naked exercise of U.S. imperial power and supremacy, dressed up in the invisible finery of an embroidered fiction. The RBIO is a fraudulent impersonation of international law and justice.
There are many layers to this misnomer, to be deconstructed piece by piece.
‘RBIO’ in Contrast With ‘International Law’
First, the RBIO is not “international” in any sense of the word.
There actually is a consensual rules-based international order, a compendium of agreed-upon rules and treaties that the international community has negotiated, agreed to, and signed up for. It’s called simply “international law.” This refers to the body of decisions, precedents, agreements, and multilateral treaties held together under the umbrella of the Charter of the United Nations and the multiple institutions, policies, and protocols attached to it. Although imperfect, incomplete, evolving, it still constitutes the legal foundation of the body of international order and the orderly laws that underpin it: this is what constitutes international law. The basic foundation of the UN Charter is national sovereignty—that states have a right to exist, and are equal in relations. This is not what the United States is referring to.
When the United States uses the term RBIO, rather than the existing term “international law,” it does so because it wants to impersonate international law while diverting to a unilateral, invented, fictitious order that it alone creates and decides—often with the complicity of other imperial, Western, and transatlantic states. It also does this because, quite simply, the United States does not want to be constrained by international law and actually is an international scofflaw in many cases.
The United States as International Outlaw
For example, the United States refuses to sign or to ratify foundational international laws and treaties that the vast majority of countries in the world have signed, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), ICESCR (the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), CRC (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ICRMW (the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families), UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), PAROS (the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), the Ottawa Treaty (the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention), and the majority of labor conventions of the ILO (International Labor Organization). In fact, the United States harbors sweatshops, legalizes child labor (for example, in migrant farm labor), and engages in slave labor (in prisons and immigration detention centers). Even the U.S. State Department’s own 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report acknowledges severe problems in the U.S. of trafficking and forced labor in agriculture, food service, manufacture, domestic service, sex work, and hospitality, with U.S. government officials and military involved in the trafficking of persons domestically and abroad. Ironically, the United States tries to hold other countries accountable to laws that it itself refuses to ratify. For example, the United States tries to assert UNCLOS in the South China Sea while refusing—for decades—to ratify it and ignoring its rules, precedents, and conclusions in its own territorial waters.
There are also a slew of international treaties the United States has signed, but simply violates anyway: examples include the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, UN treaties prohibiting torture, rendition, and kidnapping, and of course, war of aggression, considered “the supreme international crime”—a crime that the United States engages in routinely at least once a decade, not to mention routine drone attacks, which are in violation of international law. Most recently, the AUKUS agreement signed between the United States and Australia violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by exploiting a blind spot of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
There are also a multitude of treaties that the United States has signed but then arbitrarily withdrawn from anyway. These include the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, the Agreed Framework and the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, the Geneva Conventions, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and many others.
There are also approximately 368 treaties signed between the Indigenous nations and the U.S. government; every single one of them has been violated or ignored.
There are also unilateral fictions that the United States has created, such as “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FONOPs): this is gunboat diplomacy, a military show of force, masquerading as an easement claim. FONOPs are a concept with no basis in international law—“innocent passage” is the accepted law under UNCLOS—and it is the United States and its allies who are violating international laws when they exercise these FONOPs. Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZs) are likewise notions that have no recognition in international law—the accepted concept is “sovereign airspace”—but the United States routinely claims that China is violating Taiwan’s ADIZ or airspace—which covers three provinces of mainland China. These are some examples of the absurd fictions that the United States invents to assert that enemy states like China are violating the RBIO. This is weaponized fiction.
The United States also takes great pains to undermine international structures and institutions; for example, not liking the decisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has disabled the WTO’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism; it has undermined—and threatened—the ICC (by passing the American Servicemembers Protection Act [ASPA], also known as the Hague Invasion Act), and more recently, sanctioned the ICC prosecutor and her family members; it thumbs its nose at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its decisions, and generally is opposed to any international institution that restricts its unbridled, unilateral exercise of power. Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, in blunt candor, asserted that there is “no such thing as the United Nations,” but this unhinged ideology is quietly manifested in the day-to-day actions of the United States throughout successive U.S. administrations.
Whose Rules? The United States Applies Its Laws Internationally
On the flip side of this disdain for agreed-upon international law and institutions is the United States’ belief that its own laws should have universal jurisdiction.
The United States considers laws passed by its corrupt, plutocratic legislature—hardly international or democratic by any stretch of the imagination—to apply to the rest of the world. These include unilateral sanctions against numerous countries (approximately one-third of the world’s population is impacted by U.S. sanctions), using the instruments of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. legislature and courts, as well as currency and exchange systems (SWIFT). These unilateral sanctions are a violation of international law and humanitarian law, as well as perversions of common sense and decency—millions have perished under these illegal sanctions. To add insult to injury, the United States routinely bullies other countries to comply with these unilateral sanctions, threatening secondary sanctions against countries and corporations that do not follow these U.S.-imposed illegal sanctions. This is part of the general pattern of the exercise of U.S. long-arm jurisdiction; examples abound: the depraved arrest, imprisonment, and torture of journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange—an Australian national—for violating U.S. espionage laws; the absurd kidnapping of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou (a Chinese national) on Canadian soil, for violating illegal U.S. sanctions on Iran (which Canada does not itself uphold); and many other examples, too many to enumerate.
This long-arm bullying is often exercised through a network of kangaroo courts within the United States, which arrogate to themselves unitary, plenipotentiary international powers to police the citizens of other countries. Not surprisingly, the United States also applies its own laws in a similarly corrupt way within its own borders, with its own gulag system fed through these kangaroo courts. The most dramatic examples of the corruption of these courts can be noted in the routine exoneration of police-inflicted murders of civilians, except under the most extreme protest and activism; and absurd judgments, such as the prosecution of Steven Donziger by a Chevron-linked corporate law firm; or the exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse by a judge allowing the accused to run the juror lottery. Note, however, the system itself is set up for conviction: over 99 percent of federal cases that go to court result in conviction; most do not even go to trial: 90 percent of U.S. federal indictments are settled by defendants pleading “guilty” or “no contest” to charges filed against them. The idea that there is any impartial notion of justice is belied by the fact that fair and adequate legal representation is unaffordable for most defendants; that appointed public defenders are so overstretched that they often spend literally minutes on each case, simply counseling defendants to plead guilty—which most do—and individuals, in the rare cases where they do win, are often bankrupted and psychically destroyed by a system that has unlimited resources and finances to beat down its victims. This corrupt system of oppression, despite its obvious injustices and iniquities, is exacerbated within vast gray areas of the justice system where even counsel, appeal, scrutiny, or oversight does not apply, and where a single individual may be judge, jury, and executioner. These include, for example, certain parole and probation systems, review boards within prisons, debt collection systems, immigration proceedings, asset forfeiture systems, and many other quasi-judicial systems of oppression.
Generally, these violations and injustices are excused or erased by the international and national media, which are complicit in maintaining an illusion of impartial, high-standards justice in the United States. This is an illusion without substance: the U.S. legal system, like the U.S. health care system or the U.S. educational system, is essentially a failed system that is designed to work only for the rich and powerful. It delivers substandard, so-called care, if not outright abuse, harm, violence, and death, to the vast majority of people who have the misfortune to enter its sausage-making chambers.
Routine Exemptions, Deadly Disorder
Nevertheless, from time to time, dramatic incidents of the United States flaunting the international “rules-based order”—i.e., international law by the United States—occasionally make headlines (before being rapidly silenced).
One type of recurring violation is the abuse of diplomatic immunity. This type of case is mundane and repetitious: a U.S. (or Western-allied) government employee kills or harms native citizens; the United States immediately claims diplomatic immunity. Sometimes the perpetrator is drunk, out of control, or paranoid; often they are spies or contractors. For example, according to recent reports, Anne Sacoolas seems to have been a drunk U.S. spy who killed a British teenager in 2019. She was spirited away immediately as a diplomat.
Raymond Allen Davis was a U.S. contractor, possibly acting CIA station chief, who shot dead two people in the street in Pakistan. Another person was killed by a vehicle picking up Davis to take him away from the crime scene. Davis was spirited out of the country, no explanations were given, and the murders were erased from media consciousness.
This mindset of exceptionalism and impunity is not anecdotal, but manifests on a general, structural scale in the numerous one-sided U.S. status of forces agreements (SOFAs) in the countries where the United States has troops stationed. These give a blanket immunity similar to diplomatic immunity: the violating U.S. soldier or contractor cannot be arrested and rendered to domestic courts unless the United States chooses to waive immunity; U.S. extraterritorial exemption/immunity can be applied despite cases of murder, mayhem, violence, torture, rape, theft, sexual trafficking, and a host of other sins.
This type of exceptionalism also applies to national health policies and international health regulations. For example, multiple COVID-19 outbreaks have been traced to U.S. violations of domestic public health measures—screening, testing, contract tracing, and isolation—in many territories or countries (especially island regions) where the United States has military bases. For example, several major COVID outbreaks in Okinawa have been traced to U.S. troops entering the island without following local health protocols.
The United States takes the cake for hypocrisy, however, when, in several COVID lawsuits, it accused China—without evidence—of violating UN/World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations by failing to notify the United States and the rest of the world in a timely manner about the outbreak of COVID-19. This is entirely refuted by the facts and the well-established timelines: no other country has worked as assiduously and as rapidly in investigating, ascertaining, and then notifying the world of the initial outbreak, as well as sharing necessary information to control it. The United States, however, has carved out a pandemic-sized exemption from reporting any infectious diseases to the WHO if it deems it necessary for its national security interests. Ironically, this exemption is carved out for the single institution most likely to propagate it—the U.S. military: “any notification that would undermine the ability of the U.S. Armed Forces to operate effectively in pursuit of U.S. national security interests would not be considered practical.”
When the United States disingenuously uses the term RBIO, or rules-based international order, it may be playing at international law, but once its applications are unpacked and defused, it becomes clear that it is a weaponized fiction that the United States uses to attack its enemies and competitors.
If “hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,” the RBIO is the vicious first tribute that the United States sends to its law-abiding opponents to undermine international order, no less dangerous for its falsehood.
K.J. Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.
