Trend Daily News (Azerbaijan)
January 14, 2015 Wednesday 10:38 AM GMT +4
Hypocrisy of Barack Obama
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan.14
“Azerbaijan” newspaper has published an article headlined “Hypocrisy
of Barack Obama” on its website. Trend presents the article.
In 2009, President of the USA Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international
diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. This happened only nine
months after Mr Obama`s inauguration as president. Before assuming the
powers the USA`s first Afro-American leader declared that he would
quite his country`s one-sided foreign policy and that apart from
America`s interests, he would protect interests of other countries
too. He even pledged to sit at the negotiating table with Iran and
close the Guantanamo Bay prison. In the eyes of Americans and the
entire world, Mr Obama was a head of state advocating peace and
lasting stability. But, as sages say, only great personalities live up
to their high ideals by their deeds.
In their “The End of Hypocrisy. American Foreign Policy in the Age of
Leaks” article published on , Professor of
Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington
University Martha Finnemore and Associate Professor Henry Farrell
described the Obama Administration`s foreign policy as a vivid
evidence of hypocrisy. They say “hypocrisy is central to Washington’s
soft power – its ability to get other countries to accept the
legitimacy of its actions. After army private Bradley Manning turned
over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy
group WikiLeaks and following the disclosures about U.S. spying
programs by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency analyst,
Washington “faces what can be described as an accelerating hypocrisy
collapse – a dramatic narrowing of the country’s room to maneuver
between its stated aspirations and its sometimes sordid pursuit of
self-interest”. The entire world has learnt that the USA is monitoring
and collecting incriminating evidence of high-ranking officials,
including heads of state, of not only rival countries, but also those
Washington considers its friends. It was proved that the US secret
services bugged the European Union office in Brussels, the office of
the Council of Europe in Washington and New York, and embassies of
tens of countries. The USA appeared to be ready to elaborate a
frame-up scenario against any person, just like in the case of
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Managing Director of the International
Monetary Fund. This resulted in world leaders` losing confidence in
the USA and its trying-to-look-sincere president.
Mr Obama, who vowed “to protect interests of other countries”, not
only failed to live up to his promise, but even turned America`s
traditional allies into an ocean of blood. In April of 2009, while on
a visit in Egypt, the US President made statements on the
strengthening of cooperation between the two countries and support for
Egypt, and even said that the USA`s relations with the Islamic word
entered a new era. But after a while Hosni Mubarak, who was obediently
fulfilling Washington`s instructions during his 30-year presidential
tenure, was overthrown. Egypt slipped into civil war, with its former
president put on trial. In addition to silently observing how the
Egyptian army ousted legally elected President Mohammed Morsi,
Washington, which loves to make beautiful statements about democracy,
even refrained from calling the coup “a coup”. And it was no
coincidence because it was the USA that stood behind the plans to
remove both Mr Mubarak and Mr Morsi from power. Neither official
Washington nor the Freedom House led by its president David Kramer,
former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, had reacted to the Cairo court`s sentencing more than 500
members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death.
What has happened in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya and Syria after the September 11th terrorist attacks in
New York in 2001 clearly outlines America`s “peacemaking” policy and
Mr Obama`s statement about “a new chapter in the relations with the
Islamic world”. People in these countries better know the hardships of
the color revolutions, Arab spring and other coup scenarios, and can
tell whether these changes are needed or not.
Reports of killings, loss of life that have been coming from Iraq now
come from the center of Europe – Ukraine. Once a powerful Soviet
republic with enormous potential, Ukraine has become a battlefield of
civil war as a result of efforts of the USA and its European allies.
The country`s economy is in recession, social problems are deepening,
Crimea is lost, the east of the country is controlled by separatists.
It is difficult to say how many decades Ukraine will need to
rehabilitate its standing in the system of international relations.
But the Ukraine events revealed another reality. A leaked telephone
call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US
Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt disclosed the whole truth about
the essence, initiators and executors of what happened on Maydan. Ms
Nuland`s “…EU” phrase used during the phone talk expressed
Washington`s failure to change the government in Ukraine through the
European Union. If Ms Nuland`s distributing cookies to demonstrators
on Maydan in December, 2013 was the USA`s support for the EU`s Ukraine
policy, her using strong language about the EU has been understood as
“you are ineffective, stay away, we are coming” message.
In their article, Martha Finnemore and Henry Farrell say: “The ease
with which the United States has been able to act inconsistently has
bred complacency among its leaders. Since few countries ever point out
the nakedness of U.S. hypocrisy, and since those that do can usually
be ignored, American politicians have become desensitized to their
country’s double standards.” As François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld,
said “we are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the
end we become disguised to ourselves”.
Indeed, Mr Obama`s tenure sees the USA pursue an inconsistent and
obscure policy on Azerbaijan. Under George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush, it was absolutely clear who is who and who is
responsible for what in the United States. They gave promises and, at
least, attempted to live up to their word. The USA`s supporting
Azerbaijan`s independence, joint large-scale energy projects,
Azerbaijan`s comprehensive support for anti-terror war and other
issues elevated the relations between the two countries to the level
of strategic partnership. Anyway, both countries only benefited from
this. However after Mr Obama`s coming to power Washington`s
Azerbaijan-related priorities started to resemble “a mirage in a
desert”. On the one head the American President says he attaches great
importance to cooperation with Azerbaijan and that he is ready to
continue to work with Ilham Aliyev, but on the other, Washington does
nothing to support Azerbaijan.
As one of the mediators in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, the USA made double standards part of state policy. The
Obama Administration even tried to look helpless when it came to
appointing Mathew Bryza as Ambassador to Azerbaijan. However, the
disclosures of Snowden and Wikileaks clearly demonstrated who and how
instructs the Congress Foreign Affairs Committee. In addition, some
circles in the USA attempted to execute various scenarios with the aim
of ensuring some government changes in Azerbaijan. The US media and
NGOs are expanding their smear campaign against Azerbaijan. And it is
impossible to understand the reason of this hypocrisy. The Obama
Administration appears to fail to figure out how to continue its
relations with other countries after Washington has suffered a series
of exposures and had the world`s trust in it shaken.
However, one nuance, taken by Mr Obama as a personal offence, should
be emphasized. In 2009, the US President traveled to Ankara at a time
when the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border was on the forefront
of the world`s attention. Both the then Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Mr Obama himself invited Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev to Turkey. The aim was to win the Azerbaijani President`s
consent to the opening of the borders between Ankara and Yerevan. But
Ilham Aliyev declined the invitation, and by doing so he insured
Turkey against being involved in an anti-Azerbaijani policy and
offending its self-respect, and, at the same time, demonstrated that
as a courageous and far-sighted head of state he placed uppermost
importance on Azerbaijan`s interests. It seems that Mr Obama has not
yet forgiven the President of Azerbaijan for this.
So experts say that Mr Obama`s tenure as the president saw the threat
of terror spread throughout the world, while the scale of hot spots is
expanding, the number of countries hit by civil clashes is rapidly
growing, economic crisis is destroying the global economic system,
even developed countries are experiencing social problems,
inert-civilizational and inter-cultural dialogue are being excluded by
clashes among peoples and nations and mutual accusations, etc. The
worst thing is that despite being a superpower, the USA not only seems
helpless in solving these problems, but in some cases even acts as the
driving force of negative trends.
Now experts put a question: when did the Nobel Committee start to
award Nobel Peace Prize for empty statements rather than for concrete
actions? Does not this have a negative impact on the prestige of the
Nobel Prize? On the other hand, what prize is meant for those whose
words do not much with his actions?
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