Eric Zuesse

The United States now routinely violates a fundamental agreement that had been reached between Russia and the U.S. at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. FDR and Stalin agreed together that though every major power has a right to intervene in the internal affairs of other nations in its “neighborhood” insofar as is necessary in order to block such a nearby nation’s alliance with any hostile major power (an example is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which Kennedy had a right to block Cuba from receiving Soviet missiles), no such right to intervene in a foreign country’s purely internal or domestic affairs (such as “human rights”) exists: i.e., the international right to intervene exists ONLY to protect that given major power’s own national security, but not to intervene into that nearby nation’s internal affairs for any other reason. Nor to post forces nearby that other major power. This was FDR’s view, and it was Stalin’s view. They both agreed to disagree together against Churchill’s view, his view that a major power should be allowed to intervene outside of its own neighborhood, or to “have an empire.” Whereas Churchill insisted upon Britain’s continuing to own India, Burma, and other regions that weren’t in Britain’s neighborhood, FDR and Stalin refused to recognize any such right, of any nation.

This was the fundamental disagreement that FDR and Stalin together had against Churchill. It is likewise today the position of Russia and of China but no longer the position of the U.S. Government, which — almost as soon as FDR died on 12 April 1945 — adopted Churchill’s view, the view that empires are okay.

The Soviet Union violated this FDR-Stalin agreement after Stalin died in 1953, when it tried in 1962 to place its missiles into Cuba, which not only is not in Russia’s neighborhood, but it is only 100 miles away from the U.S. border. So, it’s in another major power’s neighborhood — America’s. On 28 October 1962 , JFK and Khruschev agreed together that the Soviet Union had been violating the FDR-Stalin agreement which had been arrived at in Yalta; and, so, the Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba. JFK likewise agreed that America’s having missiles in Turkey was in violation of the FDR-Stalin agreement at Yalta, and so he ordered those missiles withdrawn, but this would need to be done without being publicly announced, because Turkey was a NATO member-nation. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. recognized and retrospectively honored their commitments that had been reached between Stalin and FDR — but because of Churchill’s opposition the FDR-Stalin agreement could not be publicly announced. UK’s opposition could not affect this bilateral agreement (between U.S. and U.S.S.R.). And the 28 October Kennedy-Khruschev agreement was likewise a bilateral matter, though it did require Turkey’s cooperation, which was provided.

In recent decades, the U.S. Government — now being the U.S. regime, the head of the world’s largest empire — refuses to abide by the FDR-Stalin agreement, and the U.S. demands that both China and Russia accept and adhere to instructions from the U.S. and its ‘international community’ of vassal-nations and international corporations.

By contrast, as was noted on page 18 of the first Yearbook of the United Nations (the 1946-47 edition), “It was first suggested in the [7 October 1944] Dumbarton Oaks Proposals that the name of the organization [that was to replace all empires] should be ‘The United Nations.’ Committee I/I unanimously adopted the name as a tribute to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the first to suggest it. Commission I and the Conference accepted the name without dissent.” That was an immense embarrassment to Churchill and every other pro-imperialism leader, but none could publicly stand against replacing empires — including his own — by this new organization. The reason why they couldn’t, was that this new organization (the U.N.) was being formed explicitly against three imperialistic fascist nations — Germany, Japan, and Italy — and people such as Churchill had to keep up the myth that their own nation differed from those countries in principle, and not only as being members of competing international aristocratic gangs. FDR was running this show, and all of its actors had to play according to his rules. The moment that Harry S. Truman took over, he became faced with the question of whether to adhere to FDR’s vision of a U.N. that has sole authority over all strategic weaponry, or else to revert to there being a global competition between empires; and he, on 26 July 1945, chose (partly because he could and because he was now leading the most powerful nation on Earth) for the U.S. to become the supreme empire, over the entire world, so that the U.N. became, instead, merely a talking-forum — because of him. Power corrupted him. (But privately he expressed pangs of guilt at what he was doing — though he never faced these pangs consciously. He was being manipulated by other men, and had no idea that he was. Few nations’ leaders have ever failed as tragically and as monumentally as he did.)

Up until the time in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended and its communism ended and its Warsaw Pact mirror of Truman’s NATO military alliance ended, the myth of a democratic anti-imperialistic United States of America and its democratic NATO allies could continue to be maintained as being, collectively, not an empire but instead an ideological crusade against communism. However, on 24 February 1990, U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush started secretly telling his vassal-leaders such as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that though the Cold War would soon end on Russia’s side, it was to be continued on the side of the U.S. and its allies. He was telling Kohl that despite the promises that Bush’s people were making to the Soviet then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev — promises that NATO wouldn’t “move one inch to the east” and that if it continued at all, then Russia itself could become a member of NATO — NATO definitely would extend eastward to Russia’s border, and was going to continue until Russia itself becomes part of the U.S. empire (another vassal-nation, like West Germany). That was the instruction. In other words: the ‘anti-communism’ thing was just an excuse, a hoax, for the gulls. All-encompassing U.S. empire was the real goal.

On 9 February 2021, America’s Navy Times headlined “Roosevelt, Nimitz carrier strike groups conduct dual carrier operations in South China Sea”, and reported that “Aircraft carriers Theodore Roosevelt and Nimitz, along with their carrier strike groups, conducted dual carrier operations Tuesday in the South China Sea.” Of course, that’s Theodore Roosevelt, the imperialist, and not Franklin Roosevelt, the anti-imperialist. Brian Cloughly bannered on February 16th “Washington’s Energetic Generals and the Emphasis on Preparation for Nuclear War” and he said: strike groups conduct dual carrier operations in South China Sea”, and reported that “Aircraft carriers Theodore Roosevelt and Nimitz, along with their carrier strike groups, conducted dual carrier operations Tuesday in the South China Sea.” Of course, that’s Theodore Roosevelt, the imperialist, and not Franklin Roosevelt, the anti-imperialist. Brian Cloughly bannered on February 16th “Washington’s Energetic Generals and the Emphasis on Preparation for Nuclear War” and he said:

The mission of this enormous force (which has a total of 120 attack aircraft), according to Admiral James Kirk, commanding the Nimitz Strike Group, was to ensure “the lawful use of the sea that all nations enjoy under international law,” and he was echoed by his colleague, Admiral Douglas Verissimo of the Roosevelt Strike Group, saying “we are committed to promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Obviously neither of them is aware that the United States refuses to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which is considered “the ‘constitution of the oceans’ and represents the result of an unprecedented, and so far never replicated, effort at codification and progressive development of international law.”

That threat is very definitely outside of America’s own neighborhood, and consistent ONLY with America’s being “an empire.”

The U.S. regime is an international bully and any of its allies is just part of its gang. This is exactly the sort of situation that FDR had joined WW II in order to end. When he died, international decency became unAmerican, and Truman committed this nation to that (global thuggery), on 26 July 1945. George Herbert Walker Bush merely informed his vassals, starting on 24 February 1990, that the anti-communism thing had been only an excuse. But it always had been.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event