WHEN IT COMES TO PRINCIPLE, HYPOCRISY RULES
“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” Attributed to U.S. Vice-president (1893–1897) Adlai Stevenson I, the quote is an apt warning that strident avowals of Western leaders to go all out to help Ukraine are as much a thin veneer covering self-interest and hypocrisy, as they are firm and unshakeable policy.
Arms shipments from NATO nations to Ukraine, promises and plans to end energy purchases from Russia and diplomatic moves to keep Moscow isolated, are crucial. How strict they will be and how long they will be maintained, however, is very much tied to Western leaders’ domestic political aims and ambitions, and arms industry profits.
Data from official arms exports registers winkled out by “Investigate Europe”, a team of journalists from eight European Union (EU) nations, found that between 2015 and 2020, at least 10 EU member states sold Russia a total of 346 million Euros (U.S. $380 million) worth of “military equipment”. The term can include missiles, bombs, torpedoes, guns and rockets, land vehicles and ships.
Seventy-eight percent of it was supplied by French and German firms. How that squares with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ initial reluctance to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine because it could lead to nuclear war isn’t clear.
According to official government figures, between January and November 2021, Italy delivered 21.9 million Euros (U.S. $24 million) worth of “rifles, pistols, ammunition and accessories” to Russia.
It was all legal, courtesy of a loophole in the 2014 EU embargo prohibiting arms sales to Russia in the wake of its annexation of Crimea and landgrab in the Donbas region.
Admiral Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, described avoiding the embargo through loopholes as “effectively a crime and breathtakingly stupid.”
ABNORMAL AS NORMAL
Using a crisis for political gain isn’t an actual crime, morally corrupt though it may be. Sadly, from a political point of view it is both normal and rational, and voters are for the most part willing to tolerate if not ignore it if it benefits the economy. But most of us would appreciate being spared taken for fools by the façade of pretending it’s based on altruism or principle.
French President Emmanuele Macron’s several futile trips to try to talk sense to Vladimir Putin were admirable for the effort. But it’s a safe bet the clever (and justified) line he used in the election debate that if Marine Le Pen had been sitting there, she’d have been talking to her banker, was somewhere in the back of his mind. If it wasn’t, Macron isn’t half the politician he’d like French voters to think he is.
Then there’s Boris Johnson. Given his record, it’s fair to conclude the British Prime Minister’s leap to be the first leader of a NATO member country to visit Kyiv was as much a calculated effort to distract from his “Partygate” scandal woes as it was intended as a boost for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The reckless war rhetoric posturing of his hapless Foreign Secretary Liz Truss takes cynical political manoeuvring to new levels, all low.
THE MAJOR PLAYERS’ VIEW
A headline in New York Times April 26 inadvertently summed up the U.S. version of crisis profiteering quite neatly: “Emboldened by Ukraine’s Grit, U.S. Wants to See Russia Weakened”. The story quoted Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III as saying: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
A cynic might interpret that as “willing to confront Russia to the last Ukrainian.”
Although it is damning with faint praise, the EU can’t hold a candle to Moscow in the hypocrisy stakes. The Russian defence ministry promised to bomb targets in Kyiv in response to what it said were “terrorist and sabotage” attacks on its territory carried out by Ukraine’s “nationalist regime”, meaning Ukrainians who didn’t genuflect when invaded.
Energy producers, in contrast, make no bones about where they stand. In mid-March, sixty percent of executives at 141 oil companies told a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas they weren’t pumping more oil to meet shortfalls caused by sanctions on Russia — because their investors feared it might hasten the end of high oil prices.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have taken a similar stand. No surprises there.
To give them their due, at least the oil companies aren’t claiming moral high ground. The champion hypocrites on that score are surely Ukraine’s neighbours Poland and Hungary. They have no problem accepting (deserved) praise for welcoming Ukrainian refugees, while doing the brutal opposite to Afghans, Syrians and sub-Saharan Africans fleeing conflict and repression.
To help ensure the nations that make up the newly-formed “Ukraine Contact Group” don’t find or use loopholes for their commitments, perhaps it would be helpful to have the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus as a podium background at their monthly meetings: “Cheats and hypocrites are those who do everything with words and do nothing with actions”.
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2 thoughts on “WHEN IT COMES TO PRINCIPLE, HYPOCRISY RULES”
Another thought provoking piece .. the hypocrisy on so many levels is staggering. It hadn’t occurred to me that oil companies in general are NOT raising their production levels and just sitting on their hands enjoying the profits of high prices .. that’s just evil.
hypocrisy?…
hell no…
it’s capitalism one of whose most important pillars is the military-industrial sector…