HYPOCRISY AND DOUBLE STANDARDS ARE INEVITABLE IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD

First posted 11th April 2022.

While both Britain and America happily supply weapons and logistics to help Saudi Arabia bomb some of the poorest people of the world in Yemen they are both up in arms about the Russian campaign in Ukraine. This raises many questions regarding both double standards and hypocrisy.

Who are the true perpetrators of the horrors of war in this world and who are those who get the blame?

In historical terms you don’t have very far to look for an answer to this question. Even recent history should bring the answer to mind immediately. One need only mention the names of certain nations. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria for example. However, the litany of names of nations attacked, subverted, undermined and with multiple fatalities, especially when it comes to the USA , is very long indeed. Chief among these is of course Vietnam.

But despite the history, despite the track record of Britain and the USA (colonialism, slavery, genocide) they find it an almost obsessive requirement that they point blood-soaked fingers elsewhere. Currently that elsewhere is Russia. Later it will be China.

What is usually heard from both the USA and UK is that they require to protect their ‘national interests’. This is perhaps all well and good, but at times it appears as if no other nation has a right to these but they. Only they are allowed; it seems, to have what they refer to as ‘spheres of influence’. Russia is certainly precluded from such a right. And also to any right of national security.

What is going on here?

It seems to me we are looking at a very long assertion of the rights of power. The nations in question have come to believe that they and they alone have the right to sit in judgement on the world, they and they alone are capable of assessing what is right and what is wrong and delivering the only valid punishment when they assess that a wrong has been done. We can clearly see then that in their estimation what is happening in Yemen is good and what is occurring in Ukraine is bad… VERY bad.

All is based on their interests of course, though they will deny this and instead speak of much more idealistic concepts. This is where their hypocrisy reaches its peak. Saudi Arabia is an extremely important ally to the USA and UK. Russia? Not so much. Ukraine is in their ‘sphere of influence’ now they will tell you (since the coup in Kiev in 2014) and no longer anything to do with Russia. Russia’s sphere of influence extends only to its borders and no further.

Asserting your own rights as supreme and in this case virtually, if not actually, worldwide, means you regard yourselves as ultimate arbiters, judge, jury and executioner, world dictators, police, unipolar power, hegemon… whatever form of words you wish to use.

Britain’s political and corporate elites have long believed that they have a natural (and racist) supremacy over all others. Likewise those of the USA see themselves as exceptional. (If you in particular are exceptional what does that make the rest? Unexceptional? The elite U.S. attitude appears to assert this, as does the U.S. foreign policy.)

In recent years the United Nations and International Law have inevitably been sidelined as U.S./UK supremacy has been asserted. The most obvious cause were the events which took place on the eleventh of September 2001…with the result being the ambition to gain ‘full spectrum dominance’. But as we have seen by the litany of past attacks on others (along with colonial ambitions and invasions) the somewhat fascistic views of those wielding supreme power over lesser nations and nationalities, has a much longer history.

The double standards and the hypocrisy that flows from them are inevitable where you have those asserting their right to be rulers of a unipolar world. How could it be otherwise? They are always in the right due to their sworn determination and requirement to protect their national interests within their sphere of influence… and that sphere of influence is quite clearly worldwide.