Probably the most serious and alarming recent development at the UN is the deadly process by which North Korea was referred to the Security Council for “human rights abuses”, and this subject was adopted for the agenda of the Security Council, against the opposition of Russia and China. Meanwhile the Senate torture report is dismissed.
The double standards are glaring, in this, but even more dangerous is the probable motivation for the demonization of the DPRK. It is imperative to expose the reasons for this focus on the DPRK, and its relevance for US/NATO’s agressive agenda toward Russia, and especially China.
What is at stake is another example of the surreptitious manipulation of the UN to facilitate (and if possible, justify) aggressive war.
Double Standards. Security Council Dismisses UN Report on Senate Torture Report
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, stated that senior Bush administration officials who planned and authorized crimes must be prosecuted, along with CIA and other US government officials who committed torture. “As a matter of international law, the U.S. is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice,” Emmerson said in a statement issued in Geneva. “The U.S. Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.” To date, the United Nations has taken no action whatsoever in response to Emmerson’s explosive charges.
On Wednesday, December 10, 2014 the front page headline of The New York Times stated:
SENATE PANEL FAULTS CIA OVER BRUTALITY AND DECEIT IN TERRORISM INTERROGATIONS.
At no point in the United Nations Third Committee human rights debates was the United States held responsible for now documented institutionalization of the most heinous torture of human beings, although newspapers worldwide reported the most horrific criminal actions committed by the C.I.A. against helpless, defenseless prisoners, many of whom they knew to be innocent. The Torture Report further acknowledges that no terrorist act was prevented by the use of torture, and that torture is a failed method of obtaining accurate information. According to The New York Times on December 10, (and multiple other sources):
“At the Salt Pit, outside Kabul, a junior officer ordered a prisoner, Gul Rahman, shackled to the wall of his cell and stripped of most of his clothing. Mr. Rahman was found dead of hypothermia the next morning, lying on the bare concrete floor. Four months later, the junior officer was recommended for a cash award of $2,500.00 for his ‘consistently superior work.’”
On October 4, 2005, The Washington Post’s Dana Priest reported that Mandouh Habib, pulled off a bus in Pakistan, and eventually delivered to Bagram and Guantanamo, ‘during interrogations, Habib was sometimes suspended from hooks in the wall, and repeatedly kicked, punched, beaten with a stick, rammed with an electric cattle prod and doused with cold water when he fell asleep. He was suspended from hooks, with his feet resting on the side of a large cylindrical drum attached to wires and a battery. When Mr. Habib did not give the answers his interrogators wanted, they threw a switch and a jolt of electricity went through the drum. The action of Mr. Habib ‘dancing’ on the drum forced it to rotate, and his feet constantly slipped, leaving him suspended by only the hooks on the wall. This ingenious cruelty lasted until Mr. Habib fainted. Habib says he gave false confessions to stop the abuse.’
In his book, “The Reluctant Spy,” (published in 2007) CIA officer John Kiriakou confirmed that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a single month, “raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.” (p. 191). Kiriakou states (p. 140)
“Even if torture worked, it cannot be tolerated – not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sort of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable.”
Keriakou is currently serving a prison term for having leaked information to the press about the U.S. systematic use of torture.
One prisoner was waterboarded more than 183 times, “The report said the agency had evidently forgotten its own conclusion, sent to Congress in 1989, that ‘inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers. The Democratic Senate staff members who studied the post-Sept.11 program came up with an identical assessment: that waterboarding, wall-slamming, nudity, cold and other ill treatment produced little information of value in preventing terrorism. The report spends little time condemning torture on moral or legal grounds. Instead, it addresses mainly a practical question: Did torture accomplish anything of value? Looking at case after case, the report answers with an unqualified no.
For perhaps the first time, the Obama Administration acknowledged that the US Government was responsible for institutionalizing torture. According to the spokesman for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “The prohibition against torture is absolute.” Under no circumstances is torture permissible or justifiable. The December 10, 2014 New York Times report of U.S. perpetrated gross human rights abuses states:
“In exhaustive detail, the torture report gives a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects. Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.’s medical staff, some prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary ‘rectal feeding’ or ‘rectal hydration,’ a form of rape, – a technique that the C.I.A.’s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert ‘total control over the detainee.’ C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a series of ‘near-drownings.’”
Although efforts were made by other UN member states, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to raise the matter of systemic torture perpetrated by the U.S. government, these efforts were completely ignored. By stark contrast, the resolution adopted by the General Assembly, on December 18, 2014, after referral by the Third Committee, not only condemns the DPRK for human rights abuses, but this condemnation is based almost entirely on an unreliable report by the “Commission of Inquiry,” led by Michael Kirby. The “Commission of Inquiry” based its dubious report upon interviews with some defectors from North Korea. Kirby never actually entered the DPRK, nor interviewed any citizen currently living in North Korea. Indeed, Assistant Secretary-General Simonovic admitted, at a stake- out following the December 22 Security Council meeting, that the Kirby report did not meet the threshold of admissible evidence, and would not hold up in a court of law.
On December 18, and in the subsequent December 22 Security Council meeting, the double standards within the United Nations are shockingly visible, and one can only gasp at the arrogance of the blatantly biased and politically motivated resolution A/69/488/Add.3 which “condemns the long-standing and ongoing systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights in the DPRK.” The resolution condemning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is clearly an attempt to eviscerate the socialist government of North Korea.
The use of allegations of human rights abuses by the United States, the world’s most powerful country, and the powerful country whose own documented record of criminal human rights abuses has just been published, causing revulsion and horror throughout the world, constitutes an assault on justice which so dishonors the United Nations that the adoption of this resolution condemning the DPRK can only be described as shameful. Operative paragraphs 7. and 8. of this resolution are infamous:
7. “Acknowledges the commission’s finding that the body of testimony gathered and the information received provide reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the State for decades.
8. Decides to submit the report of the commission of inquiry to the Security Council, and encourages the Council to consider the relevant conclusions and recommendations of the commission and take appropriate action to ensure accountability, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court and consideration of the scope for effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible for acts that the commission has said may constitute crimes against humanity.”
On November 18, 2014, in the Third Committee, Cuba proposed an amendment to draft resolution A/c.3/69/L28 which stated:
“Delete operative paragraphs 7 and 8 and insert a new operative paragraph reading as follows:
“decides to adopt a new cooperative approach to the consideration of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that will enable (a) the establishment of dialogues by representatives of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with States and groups of States interested in the issue; (b) the development of technical cooperation between the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; and (c) the visit of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the country.”
The government of the DPRK had already agreed to all these conditions which would have provided reliable, factual evidence of the reality of the human rights situation within the DPRK, and would have defused a potentially combustible problem. Clearly neither the European Union nor Japan nor the U.S. had an actual interest in resolving this questions. Human rights is merely a subterfuge concealing their actual agenda.
The Cuban delegate, representing the Non-aligned Movement, stated that politicization and double standards motivated resolutions against countries belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement. Many delegations, including Cuba expressed alarm at the
“trigger mechanism by which the Human Rights Council was becoming a tool for some countries, who were not interested in dialogue, to use to attack other countries. The resolution was being used to establish a pattern that would permanently endanger all developing countries. We are trying to insure that a precedent is not being set here.”
China was opposed to making human rights a pretext for political gains, and stated differences on human rights issues should be resolved through constructive dialogue, and the Council was the wrong forum for dealing with such issues.
The Cuban amendment was rejected. The representative of the U.S. hypocritically opposed the Cuban amendment, stating the Cuban amendment would “‘strip the resolution of crucial language regarding accountability.” The U.S. representative must at that time, have been fully aware of the U.S. Senate’s imminent release of The Torture Report, and her sanctimonious demand for “accountability” hoists her, and her own government on their own petard: as UN Special Rapporteur On Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson stated: former President Bush and Vice-President Cheney must be held accountable for crimes against humanity. Torture is an international crime and perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country to which they might travel,” Emmerson stated.
India voted in favor of the Cuban amendment and stated:
“India was unable to sign the statute of the International Criminal Court because the statute did not allow the court to be free from political interference. It also gave the Security Council powers that went beyond international laws. In the current resolution, operative paragraphs 7 and 8 were the very reasons that prevented India from joining the Rome Statute.”
Pakistan stated:
“As a firm believer in the universality of human rights, Pakistan emphasizes that efforts to advance the agenda of human rights at the global level should be pursued in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation. Human rights violations are not confined to a single country. Pakistan is opposed to the practice of ‘naming and shaming’ through country-specific resolutions. Referring matters to the International Criminal Court would further complicate the situation.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stated:
“The report of the Commission of Inquiry (the Kirby report) was based on fabricated testimonies by a handful of defectors who had fled the country after committing crimes. The report is a compilation of groundless political allegations and has no credibility as a U.N. document. “
His country has consistently prioritized dialogue, but the EU and Japan are provoking confrontation by pushing ahead the draft resolution. People around the world remember how the United States unleashed a “war against Yugoslavia” in the name of “humanitarian intervention.” The sponsors of the draft should be held responsible for destroying the opportunity for human rights cooperation.”
The resolution was adopted by the Third Committee: 111 in favor, 19 opposed, 55 abstained. Those opposed included Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, China, the Russian Federation, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Belarus and Egypt. On December 18, the UN General assembly adopted this resolution 69/188: in support 116, opposed 20, abstaining: 53. With incredible speed, four days later, on December 22, 2014 “The Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was placed on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, against the opposition of China and Russia.
During the December 22 Security Council meeting, in a melodramatic diatribe, the U.S. Ambassador’s lurid litany of alleged atrocities by the DPRK included a defector’s description of the cooking of a newborn infant, spawned of the rape of its mother. This Ambassador is evidently oblivious or indifferent to the current U.S. Senate Torture Report, and the fact that for two decades (1973-1990) the U.S. installed and supported a regime in Chile whose standard method of torture included forcing live rats into the vaginas of female political prisoners, and the drenching with gasoline of teen age political protestors, who were then set on fire, dying in agony. This is documented and published on November 23, 1986 in The Washington Post, in an article by David Remnick. The New York Times had reported these crimes the previous August. As Orwell might have phrased it, all victims of torture are equal, but some are more equal than others. The U.S. Ambassador’s speech to the December 22 Security Council is the grossest example of double standards, and impunity for crimes committed by U.S. client states.
Paragraphs 7 and 8 remained intact:
“Deciding to submit the report to the Security Council, and recommending referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court,..and consideration of the scope for effective targeted sanction.” This ostracizing and demonization of the DPRK slides down the “slippery slope” that leads to military action, regime change, and the destruction of the socialist government and economic system of the DPRK.
Although within the same week the Obama Administration “normalized” relations with Cuba, in The New York Times coverage of the event, on page A17 of its print version, Rick Gladstone’s article is headlined:
“Blacklist shrinks, leaving North Korea as the last Cold War Pariah.”
“The normalization of the diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than a half-century of enmity would leave only North Korea on America’s Cold War blacklist.” Obama’s “normalization” of relations with Cuba, reported, coincidentally on the day the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution virulently attacking the core integrity and legitimacy of the DPRK can be seen as another subterfuge, welcome, perhaps, but also distracting attention from the Resolution’s (69/188) importance for the geopolitical goals of the U.S. “pivot to Asia.”
CHINA IS NOW THE WORLD’S NUMBER 1 ECONOMIC POWER
In its January issue, Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in “Vanity Fair”:
When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the U.S. could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history…..Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States then made two critical mistakes. First, it inferred that its triumph meant a triumph for everything it stood for. But in much of the Third World, concern about poverty – and the economic rights that had long been advocated by the left – remained paramount. The second mistake was to use the short period of its unilateral dominance, between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Lehman Brothers, to pursue its own narrow economic interests – or more accurately, the economic interests of its multinationals, including its big banks – rather than to create a new, stable world order…….The rise of China also shines a harsh spotlight on the American model. That model has not been delivering for large portions of its own population. The typical American family is worse off than it was a quarter-century ago, adjusted for inflation; the proportion of people in poverty has increased. China, too is marked by high levels of inequality, but its economy has been doing some good for most of its citizens. China moved some 500 million people out of poverty during the same period that saw America’s middle class enter a period of stagnation. An economic model that doesn’t serve a majority of its citizens is not going to provide a role model for others to emulate. America should see the rise of China as a wake-up call to put our own house in order.”
Stiglitz’s excellent article would have been enhanced had he included the fact that capitalism obeys its own inexorable dynamic, based on maximization of profit and the concentration of capital in an oligarchy, whose profits are maximized by war, and depend on the military-industrial complex, the oil industry and imperialism. To sustain this irrational and inhumane system, torture is necessary, not as a means of extracting information to “protect” its citizens, but as a means of intimidating its citizens and insuring their submission to this brutally unjust economic order which protects the privileges of the most rapacious and unscrupulous. Unable to change, it can only resort to domination and confrontation with any economic system which, by contrast, provides a more just and equitable economic model. China is precisely this competitor, and cooperation, advocated by Stiglitz, and by the Chinese, themselves, is precluded.
And in multiple ways, the U.S. has been attempting to undermine and destabilize China since 1949. Both the violent Uighur separatist movement, based in Northwest China’s Xinjiang, but whose increasingly frequent terrorist suicide bombings have reached as far as the heart of China: Beijing’s Forbidden City; and the more recent “Umbrella Revolution,” destabilizing Hong Kong, but spawned with the support of Washington’s National Endowment of Democracy,” are efforts to fragment China, incite chaos, impeding China’s ability to govern effectively, and contribute, ultimately to “regime change.” On October 2, 2014, page A8 of The New York Times quoted Lisa Bao, 26, from Zhejiang Province questioning “why Hong Kong people had not staged democracy protests against their former British colonial rulers. ‘In the past they had the British choose their leaders, and they weren’t terribly upset. Now they’re part of China and under our socialist system, and they choose to stand up. I’ve heard that the United States is influencing this.”
In his 2007 book, “Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA,” Tim Weiner describes (p. 301)
“In the name of combating Chinese communism the CIA had spent tens of millions of dollars parachuting tons of weapons to hundreds of Tibetan guerrillas who fought for their spiritual leader, the fourteenth Dalai Lama….The agency set up a training camp for the Tibetan fighters in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It had paid an annual subsidy of some $180,000 directly to the Dalai Lama, and it created Tibet houses in New York and Geneva to serve as his unofficial embassies.”
From the moment of its inception, in 1949, the destruction of the Communist government in China has been one of the highest priorities of the U.S. government. According to Jung Chang, author of a biography of Madame Sun Yat-sen (known as Soong Ching-ling in China) (Page 109) “Just when China desperately wanted a period of peace to rebuild its war-ravaged economy, the Korean War broke out in 1950. The Chinese thought that the Americans were attempting to use Korea as a springboard for the invasion of China to restore Chiang Kai-shek to power. The nation was filled with indignation….Soong Ching-ling attacked the U.S. intervention in Korea and was prominently involved in the international left-wing peace campaign (duly recorded in her FBI dossier). In 1952, when a volume of her texts was published in English in Beijing, Ching-ling dedicated it ‘To the Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers.’ In December that year she headed the Chinese delegation to the Congress of Peoples for peace held in Vienna. There she sat on a platform with Brecht, Sartre, Aragon, Ehrenburg and other radical luminaries. She took an active part in the campaign denouncing America for using germ warfare in Korea and north-east China. She said: “I firmly believe that in the future socialism and ultimately communism will become universal social systems.’”
Soong-Ching-ling was the daughter of the richest man in pre-revolutionary China. She was one of three sisters, (Ai-ling and May-ling) of whom it was said: One loves money, one loves power and one loves China. Soong Ching-ling could have lived in pomp and luxury in exile in Europe or the USA. Instead, she committed her entire life to the well-being of the Chinese people, and her courageous devotion remains an inspiring and sacred example in China today.
The wheel has come full circle. The destruction of the socialist government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is still a top priority of US/NATO, as UN General Assembly Resolution 69/188 made clear on December 18, 2014. The destruction of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, spearheaded by US/NATO powers would result, most probably, in a unified, capitalist Korean peninsula, once again a “springboard” to force “regime change”in China, an insane fantasy. For today, China is a great nuclear-armed superpower, though vulnerable to destabilization and disintegration by separatist movements in the Northwest, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
With indefatigable intelligence and courage, the Chinese leadership and people have endured and overcome almost insurmountable hardship from 1927 through today. They may have to overcome future obstacles, once again, a fact of which they are, no doubt, supremely aware. Historically China has not been expansionist. And following the collapse of the Soviet Union, they could only have shuddered as they witnessed the expanding and seemingly unlimited dominance of the United States, over the Middle East, with the first Gulf War, shamefully endorsed by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, and soon thereafter the US/NATO propaganda and military support for the independence of Kosovo, culminating in the bombing of Belgrade, during which the Chinese embassy was also demolished by bombs. (The US claimed this was an accident because their maps were out-of-date).
According to Aaron L. Friedberg in his recent book “Beyond Air-Sea Battle,”
“A much higher percentage of the weapons delivered against targets in Serbia were ‘smart,’ precision guided munitions, as opposed to ‘dumb’ unguided bombs. Most impressive of all, the US-led coalition achieved its strategic objectives primarily through the use of air power without suffering a single casualty. Ironically, it was the precision of most allied air operations that made it virtually impossible to convince Beijing that a misguided strike on its embassy in Belgrade was an accident.”
“Startled by what they perceived as a new level of American aggression, some Chinese analysts began to question whether peace and development were truly prevailing trends in world affairs. If the First Gulf War revealed the potentially devastating impact of the US technical edge, and the Taiwan crisis (1995-1996) highlighted its apparent proclivity for intervention, the 1999 war in Kosovo reinforced both concerns. This time Washington did not go to the UN for approval, instead rounding up a few of its NATO allies to provide a cloak of international legitimacy. In the First Gulf War, the Americans could at least justify their actions by pointing out that Iraq had invaded another sovereign state; in Kosovo, they were openly supporting what could only be regarded as a separatist movement.”
THE RUSSIAN WARNING
In a historic act of almost unprecedented criminal irresponsibility, Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the destruction of the Soviet Union, which had, for the 70 years of its existence, been one of the great engines of progressive human development, creating the infrastructure necessary to provide a decent standard of living for the citizens of its fifteen member countries. Following the destruction of the Soviet Union, its fifteen member countries were left destitute. As was said to me by a great diplomat of Tadjikistan: “The destruction of our countries, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was as complete and terrible as it would have been if the Nazis had won World War II.”
Today, US imposed sanctions and the manipulation of the price of oil are pulverizing the Russian economy, and threatening the destabilization of the Putin government. This quickly followed the US instigated destabilization and overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Yanukovich, and the installation of a nazi inspired puppet regime in Kiev, which is embarking on “ethnically cleansing” pro-Russian East Ukranians. Putin is in the process of abandoning allies in East Ukraine, to avoid internecine warfare with Ukraine, one of the deadliest form of slaughter, which will further bleed the Russian economy and decimate both countries. China needs no further evidence of what is imminent. Alert to the juggernaut of US/NATO aggression, and its obvious global intent, China recently offered a bailout to the Russian government.
In a brilliant essay entitled “Russia’s Vulnerabiity to EU-US Sanctions and Military Encroachments”, recapitulating recent history, Professor James Petras wrote:
“Over the past quarter century, several trillion dollars worth of public property in every sector of the Russian economy was illegally transferred or violently seized by gangster-oligarchs acting through armed gangs, especially during its ‘transition to capitalism.’ From 1990 to 1999 over 6 million Russian citizens died prematurely as a result of the catastrophic collapse of the economy; life expectancy for males declined from 67 years during the Soviet era to 55 years during the Yeltsin period. Russia’s GNP declined sixty percent – a historic first for a country not at war. Following Yeltsin’s violent seizure of power and his bombing of the Russian parliament, the regime proceeded to ‘prioritize’ the privatization of the economy, selling off the energy, natural resources, banking, transport and communication sectors at one-tenth or less of their real value to well-connected cronies and foreign entities. Armed thugs, organized by emerging oligarchs ‘completed’ the program of privatization by assaulting, murdering and threatening rivals. Hundreds of thousands of elderly pensioners were tossed out of their homes and apartments in a vicious land-grab by violent property speculators……Meanwhile, living standards collapsed, impoverishing two thirds of Russian households, suicides quadrupled and deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV and venereal diseases became rampant. Syphilis and tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions – diseases fully controlled during the Soviet era reemerged with the closure of clinics and hospitals.”
Currently, as Petras continues,
“In the face of Western sanctions Putin’s leading oligarch-allies are his weakest link in formulating an effective response. They press Putin to give in to Washington as they plead with Western banks to have their properties and accounts exempt from the sanctions. They are desperate to protect their assets in London and New York….This highlights the contradiction within Putin’s strategy of working with the ‘economic’ oligarchs who have agreed not to oppose Putin within Russia, while transferring their massive wealth to Western banks, investing in luxury real estate in London, Paris and Manhattan and forming loyalties outside of Russia. In effect, they are closely tied to Russia’s current political enemies. Putin’s tactical success in harnessing oligarchs to his project of growth via stability has turned into a strategic weakness in defending the country from crippling economic reprisals. It is not enough to claim that oligarchs who remain in Russia and declare loyalty to the Putin administration are legitimate economic agents. They have generally disinvested from Russia, transferred their wealth abroad and have questioned legitimate state authority under pressure from Western sanctions…Russia needs a new economic and political revolution – in which the government recognizes the West as an imperial threat and in which it counts on the organized Russian working class and not on dubious oligarchs.”
Further weakening Russia is another current trend, (which would have been unthinkable during the Soviet Union) which Russia may justify as “realpolitik,” but which can also be regarded as unprincipled opportunism, alienating Russia’s most loyal friends, allies and “strategic partners.” An example of this is Russia’s recent behavior toward Armenia, one of its staunchest and most loyal allies. While discussing building a nuclear power station in Armenia, which desperately needs this as its only source of energy, Russia offered to invest one billion dollars in the construction of this power plant. Although the construction required a 5 billion dollar investment, Russia claimed it could only afford to invest one billion dollars to help Armenia. Soon thereafter, Russia agreed to invest 20 billion dollars in Turkey to build a huge nuclear power plant, an act that Armenia could only regard as treacherous, considering the trauma of the Turkish genocide of Armenians, an ineradicable part of the historic memory of Armenians today. Russia’s betrayal of its promise to Armenia, and its unprincipled investment in Turkey drives a knife into the hearts of almost every Armenian.
Prior to that, Russia had sold Bal E rocket system, with immense destructive capacity, to Azerbaijan – weapons which would inevitably be used against Armenia. In desperation, Armenia then bought weapons from China and Iran, infuriating Russia by their independent action, which had actually been precipitated by Russia’s own unprincipled behavior, however rationalized. According to one reliable source, Russia did not want a strong, self-sustaining Armenia, they wanted to enforce Armenia’s dependency upon Russia, in a form of semi-feudal relationship reducing Armenia to the status of a vassal. These actions, unthinkable in the Soviet Union, may be the result of Russia’s desperation, as it embraces a ruthless economic system which is driving it into the abyss, adopting unprincipled policies which are alienating loyal allies.
These tragic developments are largely the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which destroyed the viable infrastructure for human development… China has observed this with alarm, and alerted by this “cautionary tale,” seeks to avoid this catastrophe.
The Security Council meeting on December 22, 2014, on the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, with its attempt to refer the DPRK to the International Criminal Court, is menacing, and a very serious cause for alarm for both China and Russia.
The session, itself, bore an ugly resemblance to the beating of drums of war which preceded the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1973, which authorized the bombing of Libya in 2011, and the beating of war drums which preceded the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 678, in 1990, which authorized the ultimate destruction of Iraq. It will require the greatest skill and strength to circumvent this monstrous outcome.
