The United Nations General Assembly is traditionally a forum for bashing the crimes and follies of the West by countries that have committed far worse crimes and follies themselves. It is also a gathering of brutal hypocrites who spend half of the time condemning the West and the other half begging it for aid and investment.
Our own President Cyril Ramaphosa led the murderous hypocrisy at the latest gathering in New York by accusing Israel of genocide when it reacted violently (overreacted in my opinion) to the atrocious attack on innocent men, women and children on 7 October 2023 but yet never speaking a word against the perpetrators of real genocide in Sudan, where about 300,000 ordinary black people have been carefully, systematically slaughtered.
In January this year, President Ramaphosa greeted Muhammad Dagalo, a racist mass murderer responsible for genocide against black people in Sudan, with a big, friendly smile of welcome. Neither he nor his Foreign Minister Dr Naledi Pandor offered a peep of public protest against this genocidal killer, let alone taking him to an international court. Israel is attacked mainly because it is Western and successful, and only secondarily because it is Jewish.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was almost as bad. He delivered a thundering denouncement against the “Empire of Lies” of the West. His main purpose was to get support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but he did so not by explaining the causes for the war but by accusing the “collective West” of adopting “near-colonial methods of subjugation’ towards the global majority, which included aggression and sanctions. Russia’s own history contains far worse “colonial methods of subjugation” but there are some elements of truth in what he said. In the last 90 years, the West has done some bad things, sometimes by malice, sometimes by greed but mostly by arrogant folly.
Vietnam
The US’s war in Vietnam was started by President Kennedy. In his inaugural address in 1961 he said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” What this meant was that the US, purely out of goodwill, would fight to impose its own version of liberty and democracy on other people, whether they wanted it or not. (Unless you have democracy, of course, it is difficult to know what people do want.)
Under Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam fought and won a war against colonial France. Minh was fundamentally a Vietnamese nationalist but became communist to get support from the communist countries. Kennedy then took over from the French in fighting Minh, thinking that communism would otherwise seize and oppress Vietnam, ignoring the genuine wishes by its people for national independence. So a long, horrible, destructive war was fought to no avail at all. Vietnam did indeed go communist but now leans towards free markets and the West.
I mostly agree with Lavrov about Western sanctions, used to dissuade tyrants and change regimes towards democracy. Usually they do just the opposite: they harden tyrants and prevent democracy. Often too, they are imposed disproportionately, against despots who cause minor suffering but not against despots who cause major suffering. Western sanctions against Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa are examples.
Rhodesia
Rhodesia in 1964 was a British colony where a small white population ruled over a much larger black population. Black people had few rights, were much poorer than the whites and didn’t own much land but they were generally well-fed and, except for activists, did not seek to flee from Rhodesia. In 1965, its Prime Minister, Ian Smith, announced Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain. He did so to preserve white minority rule. The West, led by Britain, immediately imposed ferocious economic sanctions against the country of Rhodesia (not just targeted individuals).
The Royal Navy, including aircraft carriers, imposed a blockade against the port of Beira to make sure no oil got through to Rhodesia. The Rhodesian economy diversified under sanctions, expanded local manufacturing and gained a degree of self-reliance. But the subsequent guerilla war drained the economy of white workers and reduced the white population. The South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, finally put heavy pressure on Ian Smith to make terms with the black leaders, which he did, leading to majority rule in 1980 under President Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe then proceeded to terrorise the black population far worse than Smith ever had done. One of his first acts was to organise the systematic slaughter of Ndebele men, women and children in Matabeleland starting in 1983. At least 20,000, more likely over double that number, were killed. The West did nothing. It imposed no sanctions. It obviously believed it was wrong for white people to kill black people but perfectly acceptable for black people of one race to kill black people of another race.
Here the hypocrisy of the West was at its most sickening. Mugabe piled up atrocity after atrocity against his ordinary black people, causing mass poverty and starvation, forcing millions to flee Zimbabwe, which they had never done under Smith. Eventually the US in the 2000s imposed targeted sanctions against the leading criminals in the Zimbabwe government, but never against the country as a whole. This meant that Robert Mugabe could not fly to London for private medical attention, nor could his wife go there to spend millions of dollars on luxury goods at Harrods. Ramaphosa recently blamed all of Zimbabwe’s problems on this.
Western sanctions against apartheid South Africa probably prolonged apartheid. It would have been much easier for the reforming leaders of the National Party to come to terms with the black majority without them. Apartheid ended because of the economic madness of its ideology, because of mounting chaos and bloodshed in the townships and because an increasing number of Afrikaner leaders felt embarrassed and ashamed of it. The great danger came from a hard core of white nationalists who jeered at FW de Klerk and mocked the reformers at every turn of sanctions: “You see! You make reforms, you give way to the blacks, and what do you get? More sanctions!”
Tyrannical grip
US sanctions against Cuba have been disastrous. All they did was strengthen Castro’s tyrannical grip over the people of Cuba, causing them more suffering. Sanctions against Iran but not Saudi Arabia stink of hypocrisy, especially since Iran had nothing to do with 9/11 and Saudi Arabia had a lot to do with it. I think sanctions against Russia are also stupid and self-defeating, doing a lot of harm and no good. Here, again, I agree with Latov but not of course with any of his justification for Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
The West was wrong not to support Gorbachev fully when he scrapped communism in Russia and allowed all of its colonies peaceful independence. The West should not have encouraged the eastward expansion of NATO even if most of the ex-Soviet colonies wanted to join it. But it did, and Russia feared the possibility of Ukraine’s joining too.
For this and reasons of resentment and inadequacy, Putin ordered the invasion, which badly backfired on him. Western sanctions against him are not going to deter him from continuing his aggression there – quite the opposite. Western energy sanctions against Russia have hurt the West a lot but hardly scratched Russia. For the West to help end this horrible war, the best thing it can do is end sanctions against Russia.
The West rose to prominence by rationalism and scientific method, but is now retreating into irrationalism. The worst example is the West’s climate hysteria, which is fundamentally an assault on science and rationalism. Rising CO2 will have no effect on the climate but will wonderfully improve plant growth. But the West is now committing suicide by trying to reduce CO2 emissions to “net zero”. It is using “colonial methods” to persuade African countries to commit suicide too, and their suicide will be less comfortable than theirs. The West became rich, healthy and clean on the back of fossil fuels but now wants to deny the same prosperity and good health to African countries.
Fortunately many African leaders – not, alas!, President Ramaphosa – are rebelling against this. They want to be prosperous too, and if it takes fossil fuels to do so they want fossil fuels – and nuclear. It does take fossil fuels and nuclear, since the solar and wind beloved by Western ideologues have proved an utter disaster in every country that has tried them. Germany’s terrible problems caused by excessive wind and solar are much in the news now but other Western countries are not far behind in their decline.
Missionaries
In the old days the British imperialists sent missionaries to bring the truth to the natives and a gunboat to enforce colonial control. Nowadays they send environmental bureaucrats and a Greenpeace boat. They are meeting with mounting resistance from natives who are sick of being patronised and told to do stupid things. It so happens that Russia and China, whom African leaders often admire for being anti-Western, are far more rational in this respect.
They seem to regard the climate alarm mania as nonsense, which it is, even if they exploit it for their own ends, such as China selling a lot of solar panels made by its coal stations to the West, which is forsaking coal.
In New York there was a meeting between Ramaphosa and Elon Musk (the world’s richest African). I’d love to have heard what they said to each other. Musk is quite extraordinary; I should never have believed any one man could achieve what he has done. What his views are on climate change I can only guess (I’d be inclined to guess rather cynical) but he has made a fortune making and selling Tesla electric cars, said to be reducing CO2 emissions (they probably don’t). More remarkable has been his astounding success in rocketry.
His Starlink satellite system offers much cheaper internet coverage than existing systems for South Africans outside the urban areas, which is why the established networks want to stop its coming here. Ramaphosa wants it but Musk doesn’t want to bring it on Ramaphosa’s terms. These terms include Musk’s handing over 30% of the value of his company here to a BEE partner – probably somebody like Edwin Sodi, so he can buy another Rolls Royce. If I were Musk I shouldn’t dream of investing in South Africa. It is typical of Ramaphosa’s deceit that he announces that South Africa is “open for business” but shows that it isn’t.
Western Civilization is the greatest there has ever been, bringing enormous advances in human welfare, art, science and invention. It has endured for centuries but it is showing signs of self-doubt and decay. The West remains the place where black people around the world want to emigrate to. They know the West is far freer, richer, kinder and less racist than anywhere else but they still lose no time in attacking it. Sometimes their attacks are justified.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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