Russia Switches To Western Diplomatic Language: Russian MFA Briefing

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Spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova

Dear friends,

Recently, significant changes have taken place in the diplomatic policy of Russia. It seems that Moscow has finally changed its rules and switched to a language that has long been used by the West. For example, such a change can be seen in the speech of the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova at a recent press briefing on March 26. We bring to your attention a part of this briefing that addresses US policy around the world and highlights shift in Russian public diplomacy.

On illegal operations by the United States

I would like to tell London, NATO that in a historical context, and I am not speaking about some distant times, let’s look through the latest history, what really threatened the world not only in theory, but also in practice (I mean the actions of the United States). Against the background of the fact that the USA, NATO, Great Britain are constantly accusing our country; we are constantly told of being engaged in some kind of hybrid operations, undermining Western democracies, striving to influence the outcome of elections, etc. Here I would like to make a brief remark.

The American elites, as well as ordinary Americans,  tend to stand for of ​​a special role of the United States in the world, a kind of American messianship. The notion that the United States allegedly has the right to interfere in any affairs all over the world is their justification for having a bearing upon other countries. They feel free to give the law to others, they feel free not only to dole out lessons to the whole world, but to impose on other countries, peoples, civil societies around the world their idea of ​​how these countries and the whole world should evolve.

I repeat once again what our country and our leadership are talking about on a regular basis. We are not engaged in regime change, interference in the internal affairs of other states, or staged provocations abroad. We call for respect and compliance with the fundamental premises of the U N Charter. At the same time, we note that such technologies have been perfectly mastered by those who, in particular, blame us for this, namely the United States, which have accumulated very ample experience in this area. The list of their merits and examples of bad behavior around the world is impressive. Previously, there were still doubts, but now we will definitely open a section in our briefing and we will regularly acquaint you with such examples.

The United States regularly violates the national sovereignty of other countries by interfering in their internal affairs. The favorite tactic of the American intelligence services is to intervene in the electoral processes of foreign states and carry out coups in order to change inconvenient regimes.

This is recognized both by experts and former employees of the American special services. Former head of the Russian department of the CIA, S. Hall, in an interview with The New York Times in 2017, said that “the United States absolutely certainly undertook operations to interfere in the elections of other countries” and he hopes that this practice will continue. The same newspaper gives the assessments of an expert professor at the University of Pt. Georgia L. Johnson, who claimed that the CIA had interfered in foreign elections since its creation in 1947.

According to a study by political scientist D. Levin from Carnegie Mellon University, based on declassified documents of American intelligence, in the period from 1946 to 2000 the USA has interfered in elections more than 80 times in 45 countries all over the world (without including the military coups and “color” revolutions, i.e. only those that were done by peaceful means). Those were secret operations that included financing and preparation of electoral campaigns, disinformation and propaganda, as well as economic pressure on the leadership of certain states. According to D. Levin, in 59% of cases the Americans achieved the desired result.

Independent experts, for example, N. Turse (investigative journalist, historian and author of the site TomDispatch.com, researcher at The Nation Institute) argue that the United States is waging a hidden war in 141 out of 190 countries across the globe. He is not the only one to have such opinion. W. Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, gives similar assessments: “Most Americans will be surprised if they learn that US special operations forces are deployed in three quarters of the world’s countries. There is little or no transparency about what they are doing in these countries, whether their actions are enhancing security or provoking more tensions and conflicts. ”

Spokesman for the US Special Operations Command in Europe M. Weisman once said: “Excluding Russia and Belarus, we are involved in training personnel in almost any country in Europe, either bilaterally or on the basis of various multilateral agreements. Special Operations Forces have been deployed on a permanent basis and at the invitation of our allies in the Baltic States and Poland since 2014, as part of the broader US European Command and Department of Defense Containment Initiative. The ongoing presence of US Special Operations Forces and our allies carries a clear message of US commitment to supporting our allies and protecting NATO. ” Now, at the last meeting of the NATO Foreign Ministers Council, were these data discussed or the United States is again in an exceptional position and their actions are never discussed?

In 2019, the Joint Special Operations University, which is the training unit of the US Special Operations Command, published a 250-page report entitled Supporting the Resistance: Strategic Mission and Effectiveness, in which the author, a former Army Special Forces officer USA W. Irwin analyzed in detail the approaches, practice and results of known cases of direct US interference in the internal affairs of other states.

The author emphasizes that his research relies exclusively on open and declassified sources, noting that the overall picture of the Pentagon’s subversion against other states is in practice much broader than the facts set out in the report. Nevertheless, the author does not deviate from the usual propaganda patterns. So the US-backed forces are almost everywhere called “rebels” or “resistance”, although often they were directly created by the Pentagon or the CIA. But this is also a factual confirmation of the subversive activities of the United States, interference in the internal affairs of other states, manual control of electoral processes in countries that declare themselves to be democratic.

This report clearly shows that the US policy towards other countries has always been based on the principle of Washington’s “exclusiveness”, which implied the “legal right” to interfere in the internal affairs of other states that was declared by the United States itself. The point is not that it is impossible to interfere in the affairs of other states; the point is that everyone else, except the United States of America, cannot interfere in the affairs of other states. And the United States, as they believe, has an absolute right to this, because they are “exclusive”, and because only they know how the modern world should evolve.

To justify such a one-sided position, U. Irwin even has to go for a direct forgery, stating that all the victim states at the time of the special operations were under the control of a “repressive, authoritarian regime”, or, when it looks absolutely ridiculous, to assert that their governments were formed out of “unfriendly and occupying forces”. In fact, this is what representatives of the American establishment are declaring now on a regular basis, even if the governments were formed as a result of normal democratic procedures.

In addition, the author of the report emphasizes that the document does not deliberately address current operations,  because of “the secret status of information about them or the uncertainty of the final result.” However, the author himself is forced to admit that none of the administrations of the White House (with a view to those after the Second World War) in the end could not avoid conducting special operations against other countries – even if officially, when elected, the U.S. presidents declared their rejection of this kind of policy.

US readiness to intervene, including through the military or special services operating under diplomatic cover, in almost any process, political dispute, is well illustrated by an anecdote invented on this topic, which, unfortunately, has already become a reality: “Why are there never coups in Washington? Because there is no American embassy there. ”

As it was clearly demonstrated at the beginning of this year, Americans try not to ignore problems in the United States. And they simply called all their internal problems (without thinking that it looks both funny and scary at the same time) “internal terrorism.” Once again, I want to say that we will return to this topic on a regular basis. Our American partners left us no other choice.

You can read the full text of the briefing here: Link.

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