U.S. Secretary of State Vows USA will Leave Diego Garcia
26.01.2022
As we all know, the USA is a principled State. It practices what it preaches. When it pronounces a principle, you can take it as a vow. The top American government minister, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, yesterday clearly stated the principles by which the USA is guided in foreign policy. He stated, “This is so important ... for the whole world. What is at stake here are some very basic principles of international relations that have been established since two World Wars and a Cold War that have kept peace and security, principles like ‘one nation can’t go in by force and change the borders of another’” (CNN, 24 Jan 2022, interview with Dana Bash). On the basis of this sacrosanct principle, perhaps President Biden should immediately act so as to leave Diego Garcia. The USA should:
* Stop recognizing Britain’s unilateral drawing of the borders of another country, Mauritius, and Britain’s “annexing” part thereof, the Chagos Archipelago. This means the US can then no longer lease a part of Chagos (Diego Garcia) from the UK to house its big military base on. This was, in fact, the very reason that the UK-USA connived by the sheer force of colonial power to change the borders of Mauritius. The USA will then begin to respect its own principles as enunciated by Mr. Blinken. It will then, in practical terms, not be able to conduct torture and renditions on Diego Garcia ever again. It will then be able to move towards stopping being the biggest polluter in the Indian Ocean, by simply closing its base down, cleaning up, and getting the heck out. This way, the re-unification of Mauritius will be possible on its proper borders, and this way the Chagossians can return to the islands of their birth and of the birth of their forbearers, before they were so cruelly displaced by the USA-UK axis. The “principle” Mr. Blinken referred to has been upheld, as he must be delighted to know, by the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice by a near-unanimous judgment, as well as being re-stated by Tribunals under binding UN treaties like the Convention on the Law of the Sea. The principle was even put to the vote before the General Assembly of the UN on this same issue of Britain carving up the boundaries of Mauritius and dividing it by force. The only States that voted against Britain’s being in the wrong to have changed the borders of Mauritius by force were the UK, Australia, Israel, Hungary (Maldives though it voted against, as a form of protest on another issue, has since recanted) and ..... the USA.
So, yes, it is good to hear now that Mr. Blinken’s own “principle” is a vow that the USA will leave Diego Garcia, despite this negative vote in June 2019.
And while President Biden and Secretary Blinken are in this new mode of respect for “principles” – they are not always – they could also, urgently, for example:
* Stop recognizing the Golan Heights that Israel stole from Syria and occupied from 1967, that Israel then somewhat unconvincingly “annexed” in 1981. The USA in 2019, under Biden’s predecessor Trump, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. To respect its own principles, the USA must immediately call on Israel to end its occupation of the Golan Heights. Indeed ‘one nation can’t go in by force and change the borders of another,’ as Mr. Blinken puts it. And perhaps Israel could withdraw from the Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem.
* Stop occupying the hell-on-earth the USA has made of Guantanamo Bay, that part of Cuba that the USA colonizes and uses to torture people on, having imprisoned them there without trial.
If anyone reading this article thinks that Antony Blinken may perhaps have made a slip of the tongue in his interview with the sharp journalist Dana Bash, here is what he said in his written statement published by the US Embassy in Russia (also 24 January) just after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: We respect, he said, “the principle that the borders and territorial integrity of a state cannot be changed by force.”
See! So, get off Diego Garcia and help free Chagos!
He also said, in an example of “projection” of one’s own crimes so flagrantly on to another that it makes you dizzy – coming as it does so soon after US withdrawal from Afghanistan after occupying the country for ... 20 years – “I think one of the lessons of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it can sometimes be very difficult to get them to leave”. The Americans were in the Afghan people’s house, and it took 20 years to get them out. The USA has been in our house in Mauritius on Chagos, for over 50 years, and we still can’t get them to leave. The whole United Nations can’t. Cuba has not been able to get rid of them from Guantanamo Bay for over 100 years, and despite a revolution.
In the Dana Bash interview, Blinken also refers to “principles, like the fact you cannot, now in the 21st Century, purport to exert a sphere of influence to try to subjugate your neighbours to your wealth”. Nor “dictate to another its policies, its choices”. How nice to hear Blinken say so. But does he hear what he says? Does he respect his own principles?
This, if applied to the USA itself, would mean a whole series of other foreign policy changes, like cancelling US and NATO expansion encircling Russia, and cancelling all those demonstrations of US military force, like giant armadas, that go on in the South China Sea.
Principles are what they sound like, “principles”, and principles apply to all.
Unless of course Biden and Blinken believe that Americans are “ubermenschen”, while the rest of us are either “ignoble” or “subhuman” “untermensch” – to quote from the Nazi playbook – and that these “principles” of international behavior that Antony Blinken quotes only apply to people the USA wants them to apply to (like, at the moment, Russian or Chinese leaders), and not to themselves as American leaders.
On an equally bright note
On an equally bright note, there has been, at least we note this “in words”, an important inflection in the USA foreign policy in a good direction. In this last episode with Russia over Ukraine, the USA has abandoned its policy of what can best be called a policy of serial-red-herrings under the curious name of “rules-based international order” that the USA had pretended, since the 1990’s, was the regime for world geo-politics. “Principles” are certainly better than “rules”, when the principles are embodied in international agreements and institutions, whereas the “rules-based” order (abbreviated to RBO) touted by Washington for a couple of decades before, was really just make-it-up-as-you-go-along. It meant essentially that the USA makes up, and breaks, rules as it goes along, and everyone else has to just wait until the USA decides what “rules is rules” and what “rules is not rules” and then, maintaining a short memory so as not to go mad, or look mad, follow suit.
Blinken is now referring, once again, at least in his words, to “international principles”, although still not “international law”. But it is not easy, let us be generous to the poor man, for Blinken to be preaching “principles” to anyone else on the planet when the USA just three years ago in broad daylight broke a fully-fledged UN-backed “treaty” it with Iran and the five Permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, and proceeded thus to impose illegal sanctions on Iran – until now. That was not just breaking rules, but going against the principle of human decency, keeping your word.
As one contributor to the US-based, Australia-rooted magazine, Ben Scott, in his article in August 2021 edition of “The Diplomat” analyzed the US’s problem, entitled, “The Trouble with Washington’s ‘rules-based-order’ Gambit”: The head of the Chinese Central Commission for Foreign affairs simply responded to this so-called “rules based order”, “with an audacious bid for the moral high ground. He declared that ‘what China and the international community follow or uphold is the United Nations-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called rules-based international order.’” Ben Scott went on that this riposte “correctly identified a U.S. vulnerability. The ‘rules-based order’ is a novel and vague description of how the world should work. More established and legitimate descriptions refer to the United Nations and international law.” Blinken seems to have taken note.
So, principles are better than mere “rules-based order”. And international law would be better still. But, whatever the case, it would be good if the USA, for a start, heeded its own warnings to Russia over Ukraine about going against principles established during two World Wars and a Cold War, and changed its own foreign policy to fall in line with its own principles.
Lindsey Collen, for LALIT
