United States of America has a long history of meddling in the affairs of other countries. It is worth recalling in the context of recent imposition of tariff on Indian goods
Mohammad Mosaddegh, an Iranian legislator introduced a Bill to nationalise the country’s British owned oil industry.It was approved in the Parliament and he was jailed as a national hero.
Mosaddegh was elected prime minister and implemented the law. It threatened Western oil interests.
The US along with UK deployed a tactic it would replicate throughout the Cold War in countries like Indonesia, Guatemala and Chile. A coup was orchestrated that toppled Mosaddegh’s elected democratic government.
It was replaced by a US-friendly regime that reopened Iran’s oil industry to foreign companies. This is an ancient beginning of US interference foreign countries dating back more than seven decades.
It gains relevance now as President Donald Trump’s dispensation trying to impose a moral reckoning on India for its purchase of discounted Russian crude. This is about questioning the locus standi of a country that has time and again toppled democratically elected governments.
The US has been complicit in the assassination of democratically elected leaders. It has funded proxy conflicts to safeguard it’s own economic interests.
It is not in a position to claim moral high ground. Nor can it impose punitive tariff on others.
The list of US intervention in foreign countries is long since World War II.
Iran, Gustemala, Congo (the assasinstion of Patrice Lulumba) Indonesia, Iraq and more.One thing these countries have in common id that they have strongly opposed US interference.
The convenient excuse in most cases has been the looming spectre of Communism ( Iraq allegedly posesding a Weapon of Mass Destruction was an exception). But in most cases it was protection of American commercial interests.
Yet sermons and statements continue to pour forth from US.
Peter Navarro, an adviser of President Trump has been the cheer leader. He is blissfully aware thst there is little room for self-righteous posturing.
The most glaring example is Israel’s destruction of Gaza sponsored by the very administration Navarro works under. No country has received more US foreign aid than Israel.
The money is wired back to American arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. Produced by GD, 10,000 two-thousand pound bombs have been dropped on hospitals in Gaza.
Big tech companies, like Google, Microsoft and Amazon support and profit from Israel’s war. They provide AI, cloud and surveillance
technologies.
There is a misplaced sense of righteousness in US government. After all, while condemning India’s oil trade it is bankrolling Israel’s war.
Meanwhile, Trump is dreaming of “Riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza. He seems to have forgotten all about a military-industrial that Dwight Eisenhower warned of.
It is extensively documented. It is baffling how Navarro missed it and continues to claim moral superiority over India with a straight face.
Navarro seems to be suffering from we can do it, but you can’t syndrome. It has long defined US foreign policy.
US topples sovreign government but invokes sovreignity when convenient. It is the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war.
Yet it claims the authority to decide who may or may not posses nuclear weapons. This is not an exception but a continuation of a recurring pattern in American foreign policy.
