By Mike Walsh
The term “anti-American” I am not comfortable with. Washington, D.C. is no more American than Westminster is English or Kiev is representative of the Ukrainian people.
So, when Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu states, “The whole world hates America, and Europe is just a pawn of the United States, and its actions and policies are determined, first of all, by American interests,” the minister confuses decision-making centers with the hapless citizens of these countries. Americans and Europeans are as disenfranchised as the Russian people were during the Soviet period.
The influential Turkish minister is perfectly right to claim that the Deep State in D.C. is isolated. Approximately 87% of the world population refuses to endorse Washington’s endless sanctions while continuing to trade with Russia. America’s so-called world community is delusional. The sanctions prompted Russia to reorient its economic ties to the developing world and sparked a crisis in European Union (EU) countries.
“The collective West’s economic war against Russia has weakened and isolated the U.S. and Europe, as well as sparking unprecedented resistance to Western neocolonialism from the Global South,” a senior German lawmaker has warned.
Washington, Westminster, and Warsaw appear to be the only governments taking an uncompromising hard line in their efforts to isolate Russia which, against all predictions, turned the negative aspects of sanctions into positives.
Of the world’s 195 countries, only a handful of Western bloc nations, which the Turkish minister mocks as Washington’s vassals, comply with America’s “rules-based order.”
Lack of solidarity leads to desperate measures. Washington’s Deep State increasingly wages de facto war on its European allies in an effort to enforce compliance with their “rules-based order.”
The most notable act of war was the sabotage of Nord Stream which was Europe’s energy umbilical cord. More recently, Washington’s battle for European hearts and minds has been extended to bring fiercely independent Hungary into line.
Hungarians are subjected to an American-inspired propaganda campaign the aim of which is to equate post-Soviet Russia with the USSR pogroms that took place during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The comparison reveals a childish naivety in Washington’s propaganda. The Hungarians remember that during the Hungarian Uprising, they were thrown under the bus by Washington.
The fragmentation of servility continues as French President Emmanuel Macron challenges nations in the European Union to become less dependent on Washington with which many are in broad agreement. If demands for sovereignty spread through the chancelleries of the EU, then Washington could find itself in a position of political impotency in world affairs.
The Turkish interior minister’s comments could have far-reaching implications for international relations, especially between Turkey, the U.S., and Europe. Such harsh anti-American rhetoric will contribute to the growth of tension between the countries of the Western alliance and negatively impact diplomatic relations.
Soylu’s remarks should be seen in the broader context of growing global anti-Americanism. These sentiments could seriously affect the ability of the United States to maintain its influence over other countries. As anti-American sentiment continues to grow, the U.S. may find it difficult to forge alliances and negotiate agreements.
Interestingly, anti-Washington sentiment is uniting both the left and right of Europe. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his close ally, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, approve of Macron’s rejection of Washington’s leverage on foreign relations and defense.
In Germany, strident leftists reveal open hostility toward Washington’s hegemony. While Germany’s political coalition is pro-Washington, the leading voices of the left have bitter memories of the consequences of a world war.
The approval rating of Sahra Wagenknecht, an increasingly popular left-leaning German politician, is higher than that of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. To an applauding parliament, she says: “The Americans are placing nuclear warheads in Germany supposedly to counter Putin’s aggression in the Baltics. Do the Americans seriously expect us to believe in such stupidity?”
“In its confrontation against Russia and China, the Biden administration is trying to establish a world of neocolonial oppression in order to prevent the loss of its hegemonic status,” Die Linke veteran legislator Sevim Dagdelen opined in a recent German daily. “Almost desperately, an attempt is being made to restore a relationship of quasi-colonial bondage in order to resist Washington’s waning global standing. But the vast majority of countries and peoples do not follow the course of the U.S. and the NATO countries.”
Dagdelen pointed to the growing failure of Western efforts to justify unilateral sanctions at international venues like the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, as well as growing signs of a flight away from the U.S. dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency.
“More and more countries around the world are de-dollarizing their trade relations, and thus cutting the ability of the U.S. to continue to finance its wars and proxy wars via the printing press,” she wrote.
The lawmaker argued that the slide toward multipolarity has already become irreversible, even if this means that it has to be enforced against the governments of the NATO countries.
Dagdelen has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of German involvement in the NATO proxy war in Ukraine over the past year, citing the risk of the conflict escalating into WWIII.
Dagdelen is not alone when it comes to pursuing anti-U.S. imperialist policies. Veteran German statesman Oskar Lafontaine slammed Ber¬lin’s spinelessness in failing to stand up to Washington and warned that if Germany doesn’t join the new multipolar world order as an independent actor, it will be drawn as vassals into Washington’s conflicts with Moscow and Beijing.
Michael Walsh is a Liverpool-born Irish author and award-winning journalist. The son of a man who was an associate of Ernest Hemingway, contact Walsh at [email protected].
