Many are the references in the speeches of US Presidents about the need to "lead the world", an arrogant and intrusive approach from those elected by a percentage of their own people and nobody else. Yet today, what has America's "leadership" led to, where has it led the USA and its allies, what is its standing in the hearts and minds of the international community?
The Helsinki Final Act, or Helsinki Declaration, of 1975, was perhaps the visible face of the stance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, looking for friendly relations with the West while it brought generations and millions of oppressed persons education, healthcare and decent public services, freeing them from the yoke of imperialist tyranny.
By 1989, the USSR was spending on average 250 billion dollars - a quarter of a trillion USD - on development projects overseas, implementing policies which guaranteed the right to basic services in countries where imperialism and colonialist policies had syphoned off the resources, placing corrupt political figures in power so as to guarantee the one-way direction of resource flow - outwards.
Scroll back seventy years, when the Russian Revolution was for the first time bringing backward societies into the front line of industrial development, guaranteeing housing, for free, free public utilities, free or heavily subsidized communications, subsidized public transportation, free primary and secondary education, free higher education, free healthcare, free dental treatment, zero unemployment, safety on the streets, security of the State, social mobility, indexed pensions, guaranteed basic foodstuffs, leisure time activities, free sports facilities, free cultural facilities... and back then we could already see the true mettle of the west.
The psyche of the United States of America, its poodle-in-chief, the UK and in turn the ex-colonies of London, principally Australia and the sickening clique of sycophants which crawl around, licking Washington's legs and feet - namely France and to varying degrees the NATO pack - is in essence Anglo-Saxonic, is based upon wanderlust, imposition of cultural values in a top-down, holier-than-thou approach which saw the same nations drawing lines on maps.
No sooner had the Soviet Revolution taken shape than there they were, interfering in the Russian Civil War, arming White Russians, fomenting bloodshed, in the most shocking act of intrusion. They lost because the Soviet peoples wanted the Revolution. Nobody asked them in 1989-1991 if they wanted to action the clause in the Soviet Constitution which gave the nations the option to withdraw voluntarily from the Union as the political leadership unilaterally tried an experiment - monetarist market economics.
With this experiment came calls to break up the Warsaw Pact, promises being delivered in a cynical fashion by NATO member state leaders that NATO would not encroach eastwards if the Warsaw Pact was folded. It was, and NATO did. To Poland, to the Czech Republic, to Slovakia, to Romania, to Bulgaria, to the Baltic States, forming a ring around Russian territory, a vice around Russia's throat. True, any concentration of NATO troops would be obliterated by a salvo of missiles so thick that it would blot out the Sun and a further salvo would send the States allowing such troops to build up on its territory back to the Paleolithic Era. However, the point is that NATO lied.
Like all liars, NATO has something to hide. It was patently obvious back in 1919, it has been patently obvious since then with its numerous imperialistic ventures, installation of Fascist repressive regimes, labeling progressive policies as dangerous when we see today that a "dangerous" label from NATO is in fact a humanitarian medal because those it derides have the best social political records.
With the USSR, there was a counter-weight to NATO's evil; after 1989-1991, there was a twenty-year gap while Russia found its feet. Now with Vladimir Putin back at the helm, we see Russia today is calling the shots, while Washington flounders in the excrement of its own policy-making - Iraq, today a failed state and far worse off than it was under President Hussein, ditto Libya, where Muammar al-Qathafi was to receive a UN prize in 2011 and which was leading the human development indices for Africa.
The Taleban was to all intents and purposes a failed CIA experiment, Operation Condor turned Latin America against the United States of America, Cuba comes across as the poor little good guy, successfully implementing socially progressive policies and even exporting excellent education and healthcare policies abroad despite an inhumane economic blockade imposed by the worst perpetrator of human rights records on the island - the USA and its Guantanamo Bay torture camp.
Yet this comes after the CIA torture flights, it comes after Abu Ghraib and it comes with Syria, where the west's support for terrorists has destabilized vast swathes of territory, where the west's darling "rebels" have committed the most shocking human rights abuses, including decapitation of children and where the west's darling terrorists have used chemical weaponry, trying to blame this on president Assad.
The fact that the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US) jumped to conclusions so early after months of trying to incriminate President Assad, and the fact that Russia so masterfully managed to stop NATO's next little war, speaks volumes about where Washington and its poodles, and Moscow, stand today in the hearts and minds of the international community.
The former come across as greedy, interfering warmongers without one iota of moral values, underlining their collective history of massacres of innocent people striving only to preserve their freedom, and the latter comes across as a balanced and responsible member of the international community, backed up by the BRIC block and countless other member states of the UNO increasingly sick and tired of Paris, London and Washington, the FUKUS Axis.
Today we can understand that the Cold War was about the West trying to paint a grey picture of the USSR, yet in this the West has failed miserably. Soviet values and ideals - fraternity, peace, respect for sovereignty, development over deployment - live on and the social and economic system which was successfully implemented over seventy years shines like a beacon for today's repressed societies, struggling to put food on the table, struggling to pay energy bills, struggling to find a house, struggling to maintain a job, while the super-rich clique of corporate elitists rub their hands in glee at their ever-increasing profit margins.
This was predicted, seventy years ago. How long will it take for the people of the world to discover than an alternative exists, one that has been tried and tested and one which, by and large, can work?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru