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| First Published In Al Mayadeen English. |
Afghanistan
America’s chaotic, disheveled, hasty retreat from Afghanistan was reminiscent of the last flights out of Saigon on April 29-30, 1975, when American troops fled Vietnam and the Viet Cong showed the world how an organized guerilla movement fighting a national war of liberation can free its landmass and its people from foreign imperialist occupation.
After 14 years of continued American aggression on Vietnam, 1961-1975, they were finally forced to retreat in a humiliating defeat.
Those scenes were repeated in Kabul Afghanistan when on August 30, 2021, American troops and personnel left the country in another humiliating defeat for the world's number one self-styled superpower.
While America tried to make Afghanistan, Russia's Vietnam, its own imperialist occupation from 2001, it was eventually defeated by a group of Islamist fighters, the Taliban, who America had previously supported. The men who came from the mountains and the caves of Tora Bora on motorcycles and with four by four trucks defeated American regional designs and forced them to negotiate their departure.
Afghanistan was not Vietnam, the military status quo could have gone on for decades to come. The Americans were militarily defeated in Vietnam but not in Afghanistan. The allied forces, to include imperialist Britain, held the major cities and the Taliban controlled much of the rest of the country.
It could be argued a combination of Donald Trump's America first policy and a pivot away from West Asia to rekindle the cold war against Russia and China deflected American interests from the quagmire of Afghanistan and focused on the new American created bogeyman of the Yellow Peril, China.
Belarus
If we look at a map of eastern European countries we will find Belarus, also known as Byelorussia, to be one of the few remaining pro-Russian former satellite states of the Soviet Union sharing a borderland with Russia.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been claimed that NATO promised the Russian President that it had no desire to encroach into the former Soviet states and would not place NATO troops, weapons, or surveillance onto the Russian border.
If indeed there was an informal agreement then that has proven to have been untrue, as NATO and the European Union have accepted many of the former Soviet states into its embrace, with NATO bases in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Georgia.
Russia has seen NATO march to its borders and with the fall of Ukraine to the 2014 fascist inspired American supported coup, Belarus is seen as the new NATO EU prize and is being destabilized in a new color revolution, thus isolating Russia and the Russian federation from nearly all of its pre-1991 territory and alliances.
Cuba
Cuba is celebrating its 63rd year of freedom from the US-backed military dictator Batista as the embargoed country comes out of the pandemic with increased tourism from Russia, several effective Cuban developed Covid vaccines, and a people still imbued with the ideals of their socialist revolution and immune to the various efforts by America to destabilize the country.
China
China is fast becoming both an economic superpower and a shining light of the newly developing multipolar new world order envisioned by countries that see cooperation not military intervention as the path to global peace and prosperity.
China, which has lifted tens of millions of its citizens out of poverty within its own borders, can now achieve the same globally with its belt and road initiative which will revolutionize travel, transport, and the global economy.
Starting in Eurasia, it will eventually encompass Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean and act as a beacon to kick start local, regional, national and transnational commerce.
China is seen by American corporations, which finance the various political parties' campaigns in the United States, as the main rival to American hegemony over the world.
America took over the mantle as a world superpower from the British after the Second World War.
America relies on global dominance through its vast network of over 800 American military bases strategically encompassing the globe, allied to its support for rogue apartheid regimes like "Israel" and monarchical despots in West Asia and further afield.
From military interventions to destabilizing coups, to funding proxy wars through a network of terrorist organizations, America rules through a combination of fear, war, murder, rendition, secret prisons, and torture chambers.
China on the other hand increases its economic power base through innovation, dialogue, investment, and cooperation.
China will soon eclipse America on the global stage when dialogue is seen to advance mutual interests, whereas America's military-industrial complex will continue to bomb and murder its way to greater profits. China on the other hand will reinvest and redistribute the profits gained through mutual exchange and cooperation.
As America tightens the economic noose around the countries it is trying to manipulate and control, China is raising the standards in many of these very same countries with the gratitude and encouragement of the governments and peoples of those states living under the cosh of western sanctions.
France
France, once a mighty imperialist empire in its own right, is now just a shadow of its former grandeur and colonial stature.
While it still involves itself in Africa to continue its history of exploitation disguised as aiding the incumbent government from terrorism, it will soon be just another failed EU neo-liberal experiment.
Its continued attacks on Muslims in Africa, its destabilization of Lebanon, its machinations in Syria, and its continued Islamophobia at home, leave the French establishment as the racist, Islamophobic leader in western Europe.
Germany
Germany with a change of leadership has witnessed the end of Angela Merkel. What this means on internal and external foreign policy remains to be seen.
Germany like Austria appears to be moving further to the right politically as legislation targets those opposed to the Covid vaccine mandates and regulations.
More trouble may be seen on the streets.
Haiti
Haiti, a country that once led the revolutions in the Caribbean against slavery and imperialist interventions, again finds itself destroyed by American machinations, political assassinations, and chronic underinvestment.
Once a revolutionary beacon it has again been dominated and destroyed by the imperialist colonial aspirations of consecutive American administrations.
If only the people were left in peace to sort out their economic problems, Haiti could once again bloom as a democracy of the people, by the people, for the people.
Iraq
The decision by the Iraqi government to demand an American withdrawal from its territories may yet yield further concessions from an already weakened American presence in the region.
The murder of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani alongside the Iraqi leader Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, peace be upon them, both high ranking figures in the fight against regional terrorism, which is backed by the USA, UK, EU, "Israel", Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf monarchies, may also herald the death of American designs in the region.
From fleeing Afghanistan to being confined to barracks in Iraq, while under constant threat from Iraqi paramilitary units, America is on the back foot.
From the graves of martyrs springs the seeds of victory.
America's tenure in Iraq is nearly over. Twenty years in Iraq may well see another Saigon, Kabul-type American scrambled exit from Baghdad.
Iran
Iran has been under US sanctions just like Cuba from the day and hour the Islamic revolutionary forces removed the US-British-imposed dictator, the Shah, in 1979.
The CIA toppled the democratically elected Iranian leader Mosaddegh in order to allow British oil companies to continue to exploit the Iranian oil fields in 1952.
Installing the Shah in 1952 led to the Islamic revolution of 1979.
The West then fomented the conflict between Iraq and Iran, using Saddam Hussein in their proxy war to destroy Iran, the revolution, and the will of the Iranian people.
Iran since 1979, just like Cuba since 1959, has been striving to maintain the goals of the revolution, to defeat the counter-revolutionary forces the West has sent against them, and defend Gaza, occupied Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Venezuela.
Iran is inspiring the axis of resistance, those opposed to an American unipolar world, has seen Iran allied with Russia in Syria, with China in the one belt one road initiative, and hard at work to stabilize Venezuelan fuel supply and distribution, alongside providing vital anti-imperialist stability regionally and globally.
Lebanon
Lebanon has been systematically bombed, invaded, and destroyed by "Israel" over many decades.
Formerly a French colonial outpost in western Asia it suffered terribly from an internal semi-religious sectarian war that destroyed the government, the country, and society.
With Hezbollah's victory over the Israeli occupation in 2006 and the formation of a national government of reconciliation, Lebanon finally entered a period of peace and stability.
Always a target of "Israel", the EU - led by France - and the US, Lebanon has become ripe with instabilities; the drums of war are again beating in Beirut as the forces opposed to Lebanese stability begin to cry havoc and unleash their dogs of war.
We can only hope Lebanon and Hezbollah can withstand the tsunami of sanctions and destabilization America and others have set in motion.
Russia
Russia under Putin has become another beacon of opposition to the EU Israeli American designs on creating a new world order in their image.
From defending the Donbas republics which rebelled against the coup in Ukraine in 2014, to supporting Syria and increasingly China and Iran, Putin's Russia has again stood up to imperialist aggression and demands to be treated with respect by NATO and its hirelings.
Be under no illusion had ISIS won in Syria it was being sent to the Caucasus on Russia's borders to destabilize Russia?
Syria
Syria was once the backbone of the Arab fight for Palestinian self-determination that has been broken on the wheel of imperialist and Zionist intervention.
Syria has been attacked by a murderous proxy army financed controlled supported by the EU, Gulf Kingdoms, America, and "Israel" to varying degrees.
It has been balkanized and its food and oil resources are being exploited by American and Turkish intervention on the ground.
Without Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia, Syria would have eventually perished.
The sacrifices, especially that of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian revolution guards, have saved the Syrian Arab Republic and its people from a devastating brutal occupation by fundamentalist fanatics.
The Syrian people owe a debt to their own soldiers and their Lebanese, Russian and Iranian saviors.
Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah are in Syria in order to protect their own borders, going forward.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is very much disunited.
With the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, Scotland and Northern Ireland will soon be leaving the United Kingdom.
Ireland under British occupation for 800 years regained partial freedom and independence in 1921 after a national war of liberation.
While the North of Ireland had been partially colonized thereby changing the population demographics, the Irish birth rate in the North of Ireland now means national reunification between North and South between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - partitioned in 1921 should hopefully come to an end in a national referendum in the coming decade.
Scotland has already failed in its first referendum to separate from the United Kingdom but polls show a pro-EU electorate that should ratify independence in the next ten years leaving England and Wales as the last proponents of the United Kingdom.
Brexit the dream of the Conservative party has come to pass and with it the dissolution of the United Kingdom.
Venezuela
Venezuela under Maduro has turned a corner.
With help from Iran, oil production is nearing one million barrels a day.
With help from Cuba and Russia, the people are being vaccinated against Covid, the Guaido-backed coup has failed and the currency has stabilized under a rebranding exercise.
With Latin America and the Caribbean electing socialist and non-neo-liberal candidates to positions of power, a repositioning of the continent into the anti-imperialist axis of resistance is occurring.
Yemen
Yemen is another country subject to regime change war brought there by Saudi Arabia with the help of other Gulf Nations to include the United Arab Emirates and the west continuing its proxy war with Iran.
The former government was deposed by Ansar Allah revolutionaries with the support of elements of the Yemen national army.
This revolution has been bombed by Saudi Arabia and its acolytes with multi-million dollar missiles and armaments supplied by Britain and American alongside their continuing coordination in targeting hospitals, bridges, infrastructure, and schools led by British and American technical support for the targeted bombing campaign.
This alliance of the unholy also controls many Yemen seaports and oil fields.
As the Yemeni national forces expel Saudi and coalition forces, it has liberated land that has been under Saudi occupation for over 6 decades. Once these Yemeni forces have full control over the land and sea borders, they can import all the necessary vital aid required to forestall the ongoing man-made famine that is destroying the country. This catastrophe has reached biblical proportions.
Iran stands ready to assist Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. This all augurs well for strengthening the axis of resistance regionally as well as internationally.
2022 offers hope and despair in equal measure.
Hope for a more equal multipolar world of cooperation, but we will also see continued war, sanctions, man-made famines, and premature deaths globally, courtesy of the usual suspects, "Israel", the EU, the US, and the Gulf States.
π¨The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al Mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
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| Fra Hughes is a columnist with Al Mayadeen. |
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