WASHINGTON, June 11 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova - When talking about the de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine, one has to understand that it is a mistake to assume any rationality in US foreign policy, believes Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
“The US, it pains me to say, is like a drunk on a ten year bender with alcohol. Everything it has touched so far has been a disaster,” McAdams told RIA Novosti during a video conference between Washington and Moscow on Tuesday.
He explained that, as of today, the second largest city of Mossul in Iraq has fallen to al-Qaeda.
“We all know what Libya looks like. We know what Syria looks like. Unfortunately the interventionists that run Washington DC – they always misinterpret their failures as great successes,” the expert asserted.
McAdams thinks the Ukrainian crisis is not something that started in February.
“This process started much earlier, and we see a continuation of the orange revolution [from the mid-2000s] where the US was involved and had some success initially in Ukraine,” he said.
The expert emphasized that it is impossible to start a dialogue when there is no access to the full range of information.
“America’s huge problem is enormous information deficit,” he said. “The mainstream media in the US is absolutely lockstep. All you have to do is to pick up the New York Times or Washington Post in the morning to see that.”
McAdams, who spent 12 years on Capitol Hill in Congress, stressed that members of Congress, with very very few exceptions find all of their information as filtered to them through their staff members who read exclusively WP, NYT, the very mainstream publications which all have the same prospective on Russia right now.
Patrick Basham, director of the Washington-based Democracy Institute, added that American mainstream media view the rest of the world in very sophisticated terms.
“It is very much a case of someone wearing black hats and someone wearing white hats, Basham told RIA Novosti Tuesday, noting that as a consequence of that, once the Ukrainian conflict was pronounced in the American media, and on Capitol Hill, and from the White House as one that the US must be taking an interest in, it was made very clear that some side is good and some side is bad.
“As a result, transgressions on one side are not reported or at least do not receive much media oxygen while transgressions on the other side are front page news and receive whatever visual footage,” he said. “And whether we are talking about Ukraine versus Russia, President Assad in Syria versus those forces, it is always the case that there are white hats versus black hats, good versus bad.”
“Then eventually the American media and the American policymakers are shocked to discover that within the side that wears the black hats, there are actually people who might have a genuine case to be heard, and on the side of those wearing the white hats, there may be those who've done some very bad things and have some evil intent or ill will towards countries such as the United States. And the Syrian rebels, I think, are the perfect example of this,” Basham added.
The expert is certain that eventually it will be clear that the situation in Ukraine, both from its genesis through the events, and into the short or medium term future is that the situation has never been, is not and will not be a black and white situation.
“We will have the opportunity, after the fact, to learn some painful lessons. American foreign policymakers do not have a strong track record in recent decades of learning those lessons. But I remain cautiously optimistic that even in the case of Ukraine perhaps these lessons will eventually be learned,” Basham concluded.
