The end of two decades of cooperation between Moscow and Washington
The end of two decades of cooperation between Moscow and Washington
It has only been 22 years since Moscow’s cooperation with the United States in combating terrorism, under the shadow of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the hostage situations involving Chechens at the Moscow theater and the Beslan school in North Ossetia in 2002 and 2004, to the announcement by Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the US, regarding the end of cooperation and interaction between the two sides in combating terrorism.
Kremlin officials, both during these 22 years and when Russia warned about the transfer of ISIS leaders from Syria, Libya, and other parts of West Asia under the protective umbrella of the US to Afghanistan, should have known that terrorism and the claim of fighting it is merely a card in the hands of White House officials.
ISIS, which once provided the US with a pretext to invade Syria, has now become a punitive tool for Russia to remind it that Russia’s intervention policy in Syria was a strategic mistake. When Putin set foot in Syria, he should have known that American terrorism would punish him. Of course, this card is not just designed for America to play with international politics and world public opinion, but its partners and allies are also allowed to exploit it to their advantage.
Just a few months ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, under the pretext of Hamas defending the trampled rights of the Palestinian people by extreme right-wingers and the start of the Al-Aqsa Storm operation, launched the Hamas-ISIS campaign to follow Herzl’s policy of securitization and turning Hamas into an existential threat to himself, using it to manipulate world public opinion, especially in the West, to his benefit.
In the second phase of this design, after maneuvering on the mentioned keyword, the phrase ‘The West is next’ was introduced to hide the crimes of the Israeli regime’s child army behind this slogan. Even if we consider the Russian Federal Security Service’s report on the connection of the terrorists involved in the Moscow concert hall incident with Ukraine, we can conclude that now it is Ukraine’s turn to play the ISIS card.
Of course, this issue is just one of the recent contradictions in US foreign policy on the international stage, and if we want, we can, like Bernie Sanders’ recent remarks in Foreign Affairs magazine, list a brochure of America’s contradictory actions in the world. Sending three million Americans to Vietnam during the presidencies of Johnson and Nixon to defend an anti-communist dictator in the Vietnam civil war based on the domino theory, which led to the deaths of three million Vietnamese and 58,000 American soldiers.
Supporting military coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries, all in support of autocratic regimes that brutally suppressed their people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty. Arming some of the world’s most dangerous tyrants, as Sanders puts it, from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia by Donald Trump with opportunistic views and relatively selective concern of Washington about human rights, which leads it to view Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy where there is no pretense of democracy.
Citizens have no right to dissent, women are treated as second-class citizens, and the migrant population in Saudi Arabia is often forced into modern slavery. Recently, reports of the mass killing of hundreds of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi forces have emerged, viewing it as a strategic partner and spending billions of dollars to support the Israeli military, which has resulted in the deaths of over 32,000 innocent individuals in Gaza, are just examples of America’s contradictory policies in the world.
Washington’s mistaken policies and strategies are not limited to one party or one person, but both parties in the United States have a consistent yet different strategy. Politicians in both main parties, dating back to the Cold War era, have used fear and blatant lies to involve the United States in disastrous and unwinnable military conflicts on foreign soil.
Ultimately, despite incurring significant losses and spending enormous amounts in wars that should never have been fought, the United States was defeated. As a result, this country severely damaged its credibility both abroad and at home and questioned its claimed values. It is on this false basis of claimed values that Antonov openly states that it was the Russian president who extended a helping hand to the Americans in 2001 and declared readiness to fight terrorism, and today, it is not our fault that all these relations in the field of combating terrorism have been destroyed.