News of the European Union’s most recent sanctions on companies and people from Russia, India, Iran, China and Syria should be cause for alarm here in Europe. Somehow, however, the people of the EU seem resigned to their fate in every regard. One can only consider the point at which Russophobia will become mandatory in countries aligned with Britain, Germany, France, and especially the United States. I only wish this level of lunacy was unprecedented. Perhaps then, we would be in less danger of history repeating itself. I, for one, am not optimistic.
None of the youth being taught in Western schools knows much of anything in international relations, let alone history. In fact, very few people realize how the deep seeds of fear and hatred, or how dehumanizing other nations and races of people, has cost hundreds of millions of lives in the past. A look at America-Japan relations in the period after 1900 gives us prime examples. Here’s a brief history lesson.
Historic Parallels
The United States and Japan shared a period of mutual respect and even admiration from the 1860s up until about 1940. From Japan’s side, statesmen like Prince Iesator Tokugawa led movements which bound our two countries together for generations. Then in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge rammed the Immigration Act of 1924 through in order to solve a pressing societal problem. However, the act contained one horrendous and calamitous element that led to horrific results. Coolidge’s law caused Americans to believe that all Asians were alike. In their infinite wisdom, our lawmakers lumped the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and all the other Asian countries and people’s into one big dehumanized chunk of flesh. What happened next, was predictable.
Once the old guard of pacifists in Japan gave way to the new regime of militarists, predicting Japan joining the Axis Powers in WW2 was certain. Then, the militarists/industrialists in the West were unleashed to begin their own vilification and dehumanizing efforts. This is, in effect, the same way Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin pound out war drums against the “barbarian” Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and others today. These most recent sanctions by the EU target anyone connected in any way to Russia’s defense and security sector. In all, this tranche of sanctions includes 27 new entities to be added to the more than 600 already banned or sanctioned.
Some of you may recall former President Barack Obama’s proclamation of “American exceptionalism” about the time the U.S. and the EU began vilifying the Russians. It’s interesting to compare how the people behind the 1924 law sought to use eugenics as justification for the act’s restriction of races or ethnicities of people. Some even parlayed the idea the law would help to prevent the spread of “feeble mindedness” in American society. No, I am not making this up.
So, when unfathomable sanctions were placed on the Empire of Japan because of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the outcome was as predictable as the measures we see being taken today. And very few historians still classify the December 7th, 1941 attack on the U.S. bases at Pearl Harbor as a surprise move by the Japanese. Not many people in my generation were told by history teachers that President Franklin D. Roosevelt fast-forwarded a mandatory draft a year or more prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. There was a great PR campaign too. Newspaper and newsreel consumers were told that Pearl Harbor caused massive numbers to volunteer for service. But the draft, war manuevers, and a huge military-industrial complex were already in the works long before the end of 1941. Many myths are still being disseminated to Americans. Not one of us in the Boomer Generation was told that the U.S. had embargoed strategic goods like weapons, aviation fuel, and even scrap iron to Japan.
No student of history today is told that Washington placed a freeze on all Japanese assets in the U.S. in the Summer of 1941. The freeze made it impossible for the Japanese to purchase oil. This left the Emperor and his militarist elite only weeks to react before the war in China would grind to a halt. The following from Rear Admiral Frank Edmund Beatty Jr., who was in FDR’s inner circle, spells out the situation then:
“Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me… that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way — and we knew their over-all import — pointed that way.”
And Still More…
There are many other incidents, including the Gulf of Tonkin charade that dragged millions of Americans into the jungles of Indochina and the horrific Vietnam War. And more recently, images of former Secretary of State and former Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Colin Powell holding up a vial of Johnson’s Baby Powder before Congress leap into my mind. Then there’s the $2 billion America gave Chiang Kai-shek to halt Communism. That money is the equivalent of $26 billion today. And that cash ended up in the pockets, Kuomintang Administration officials. So, U.S. policy toward China back then, including the creation of a South Korean Army by the “American Military Advisory Group,” led to the Korean War. If this all sounds familiar to those studying the Ukraine situation, my intent here is complete.
The cruel irony of today’s failed tension between the West and East is a putrid idiocy if looked at from an evidentiary or historical perspective. This is why Russia’s President Putin often turns to historical evidence and reasoning to explain his country’s actions. Looking further back, when the distinguished writer and intellectual Randolph Bourne criticized the Elites, including President Wilson, of urging America into WW1, he was correct. Back then, as today, the elites pretended that American interventions were moral imperatives. Meanwhile, back then, as is the case today, this “in the name of God and country” propaganda mechanism is pushed by big business. Another cruel irony is striking. Some Twenty years after World War I ended, 70% of Americans polled believed that American participation in the war had been a mistake. I guess that number is much higher where Vietnam is concerned. But, I wonder who will be left by the time the elites in the West have pushed the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and a slew of other nations to declare total war finally?
Anyone who cannot see this potential will certainly be irradiated either in the trenches in Eastern Europe, in Taiwan, or back home in Iowa. German generals caught plotting to destroy the Kerch Strait Bridge, after everything that has happened, is just the latest horrific provocation. Now France’s banker elite, Jr. Bozo Macron, says NATO troops in Ukraine are a must. And Mr. Putin warns of the “dire” consequences.
My question for all of you is, “Are you optimistic about our future?”
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
