DISCLAIMER: While the USA is not the focus of this piece, it is not to suggest that we are ignorant of, or in any way attempting to justify-by-comparison, the history of its founding upon the backs of generationally enslaved Africans and amidst the systemic genocide of the native civilizations its national crimes, like the nuclear bombing of two heavily populated cities its covert and overt attempts to violently overthrow numerous socialist-democratic countries its persistent support for multiple apartheid/genocidal regimes as well as its ongoing internal theocratic repressions and external jingoistic global isolationism. Non-the-less, Western medias hyper-focus on USA-exceptionalism (both in support and condemnation of those actions) should not overshadow, and be used as cover, by other criminal imperialist ambitions in the rest of the world. Hence, this Reverie:

Its striking how common it is for otherwise morally intelligent people to defend the violent expansion of foreign autocratic empires. It is as if they are vigorously siphoning CCP or RT propaganda directly from their respective Left AND Right media proxies.

Take, for example, the Chinese Communist Partys opposition to the liberation of Tibet. They use the same assertions of entitlement over another culture as in their open declarations of intent for the violent conquest of Taiwan. For that matter, the assertions are identical to the CCPs re-absorption and repression of the democratic people of Hong Kong AND their aggression against Vietnam over passage through the so-called South China Sea. That is, because those willfully autonomous nations neighbor Chinas perceived sphere of influence, the CCP then claims to be justified in conquering and forcibly assimilating those people, just because they can. Instead of convincing people to unify through ethical reasoning, they just coerce and exploit. This Might Makes Right philosophy is in gross violation of the post-WWII civilized agreement on the conduct of nations.

All authoritarian regimes utilize Propaganda (such as justifications for violent expansion), Censorship (like the erasure of the Tienanmen Square protests), and Misinformation (today, that means using network bots, wiki-editing, social astro-turfing, and grooming AI search results).

A false-equivalence is then made over Western hypocrisy regarding Europes brutal history of colonization and modern USAs wars of so-called liberation (as opposed to territorial expansion). However true such critiques are, any condemnation of the Wests failures to live up to the principles of the signed and stated Universal Declaration of Human Rights in no way excuses the ongoing crimes of others. We must not fall into the self-centered, tribalistic Fallacy of Relative Privation by allowing the crimes of one to obscure the atrocities of another: Either EVERY member of our species is entitled to human rights or none of us are.

In such misleading ways is accurate Western criticism silenced in regards to the brutality in Russia, by Putins KGB thugs. Even here, Western nations are guilty of a kind of exceptionalism: wherein Eastern nations are quietly deemed to be somehow unworthy of being held to the same Humanist standard of behavior. Could that be why precious few in the international community cared enough to effectively condemn Putins Purges of Russian free-thinkers for the past 25 years? So eager was the West to make an ally of the tyrant, they looked the other way on his repeated invasions and atrocities in Chechnya (to rile up authoritarian militarism against Muslims), Georgia (to prevent their EU membership), Ukraine (in the first invasion for Crimea), and Syria (against the Kurds, on behalf of the genocidal dictator Assad). Even in the second invasion of the sovereign country of Ukraine, many in the West wrung their guilt-ridden (or tyrant-admiring) self-obsessed hands, parroting Russia Today propaganda about how Putins crimes were really all NATOs fault. Instead of aiding those besieged nations, desperately aspiring to the same democratic liberties, the West used their freedoms of speech to take a perverse sort of credit for the trouble, and argued instead about the merits of autocracy! This, more than the past crimes of long dead colonizers, should be the new shame of the modern West.

There exist many other examples: Irans malign influence in the Middle East and the torture of their own citizens; Israels theocratically-justified thefts of land and violence against Palestinian civilians; the international communitys firm disinterest in the continued generational enslavement of N. Koreas own people; ethnic enslavement and purges in modern-day Sudan; a religiously-inspired genocide in Myanmar; autocratic repression in numerous countries in South America; and no doubt many others of which we are woefully ignorant.

The point of all this is not necessarily that we should go to war with every single country that fails to live up to the values of Universal Rights, rather that we must cease equivocating and apologizing for the crimes perpetrated against the people of other nations. An example of an effective non-military intervention to that end was the financial unity displayed by Western allies in support of Ukraine amidst the atrocities against civilians in the second Russian invasion.

For condemnation to be effective, it must include unified support by all countries who truly do oppose territorial aggression, and the inevitable human rights violations involved. This requires not merely financial censure of the culprit, but sustained political costs as well; not only ethical support for the victims, but significant defense-funding too.

Our geopolitical perspectives on the crimes of foreign nations should not be motivated by narrow self-interest or a primitive desire to defend entrenched tribalistic positions, but rather be guided by an enlightened Humanist concern for the well-being of all people, Everywhere and Always.