Since February when Russia invaded Ukraine, on the grounds that the latter country’s intention to join NATO is a grave existential threat to Russia, US President Joe Biden’s unquestionably hypocritical refrain is that Ukraine must be allowed to exercise its sovereign right not only to seek both EU and NATO membership but generally to choose its own friends and allies without hindrance. In truth, this is as it should be, i.e., the right and freedom to choose whom to associate with, be friends with, trade with and have other interactions with, legally belongs to all sovereign states without exception.
But the exception here is that the US, the main purveyor of this time-honoured dictum, is also the most egregious violator of the right of other states to choose their own friends and allies. American leaders are by far the most hypocritical when it comes to making pious and seemingly noble statements but notoriously derelict with actual implementation. The US only upholds this right selectively, that is, interprets the entitlement to enjoy this right not broadly but according to its own narrow, selfish ideological, political, diplomatic and economic interests and preferences.
Hypocrisy is integral to the American psyche, any wonder that their Declaration of Independence affirms the equality of all men created by God but yet their constitution classifies the African-American three-fifths of a human being for definition of citizenship!
Venezuela, in the eyes of the US, does not deserve to enjoy the right to freely associate, neither do Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, and now African states. When Cuba in the early 1960s pivoted to the then Soviet Union, all hell was let loose by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations which both masterminded a military invasion of the island country and almost precipitated a nuclear Armageddon. Only recently in June 2020, Donald Trump succeeded in bullying the Cape Verde government to arrest and detain a Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, who was on a diplomatic assignment for his country. This was in spite of the international diplomatic immunity which he legally enjoys under the Vienna Conventionon Diplomatic Relations (1961), and despite the ECOWAS Court of Justice that ruled the detention illegal, unjust and gross violation of international law. Reality is that when it comes to America’s selfish objectives, international law, ethics, rights, morality and other such niceties be damned. That’s America for you!
Now comes the latest egregious and highly condemnable violation of African states right to choose who to associate with in pursuit of their national interests: the diabolical new legislation titled “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act.” The intent of this abominable law, which has reportedly received overwhelming bipartisan endorsement in the House of Representatives and would receive similar majority endorsement in the Senate, is to empower the US government to punish African countries that exercise the sovereign right to choose Russia as a friend or align with it in any way because Joe Biden solely and selfishly defines that as unacceptable.
According to the wording of the legislation, it would direct the Secretary of State “to develop and submit to Congress a strategy and implementation of plan outlining United States effort to counter the malign influence and activities of the Russian Federation and its proxies in Africa.” Here, African countries that exercise independent judgement in their international relations, rather than allow themselves to be corralled into America’s Russo-phobic club, are labelled proxies. Is it any wonder the US is bitter about Mali’s recent engagement with Russia?
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