Thread by @DavidNorthWSWS

As a Trotskyist-socialist opponent of the Putin government - which arose out of the restoration of capitalism in Russia - I am obligated to protest against former Ambassador McFaul's promotion of the US & NATO's dishonest warmongering narrative. 1/

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1490554515296165891

Amb. McFaul denounces "unprovoked, preventive war." How, then, would he describe the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by an "imperial power" against two countries with a long history of colonial subjugation? 2/

He ignores the fact that the 2002 US National Security Strategy adopted the policy of preventive war. The Bush administration asserted the right of the US to wage war against any possible potential threat. 3/

This doctrine, which remains the basis of US military policy, violates the legal principles invoked by the 1946 Nurnberg tribunal in its prosecution of Nazi leaders on charges of war crimes. From a legal standpoint, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were crimes. 4/

In fact, all the wars waged by the US since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, with or without NATO, were of a criminal character. The US now proclaims the inviolability of Ukraine's borders. 5/

But how does McFaul reconcile this principle with the blowing up of Yugoslavia, which was instigated by the United States and Germany in the 1990s? How does he justify the 79-day US/NATO bombing campaign against Serbia to force acceptance of Kosovo as an independent state? 6/

Then there is the bombing of defenseless Libya in 2011, which ended with the gruesome murder of Gaddafi, about which Hillary Clinton joked: "We came, we saw, he died." 7/

The foreign policy of the United States, no matter how it is fumigated with hypocritical phrases about "human rights," is a history of bloody crimes, which has cost the lives of millions of people. 8/

Socialists oppose a Russian intervention into Ukraine, which the US is seeking to provoke. But opposition must appeal to the unity of the Russian, Ukrainian and international working class. That unity requires implacable opposition to US/NATO imperialist provocations. 9/9