The European Union (EU) is planning to use frozen Russian
assets to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. A question arise, why United
States and NATO countries having indulged in wars, invasions, and carpet
bombings have not met the similar fate?
The EU’s plans include an attempt to re-invest the
international reserves of the Russian Central Bank in Ukraine.
Moscow’s
assets frozen under sanctions imposed by the EU can be divided into two main
sections. Private assets are worth nearly €19 billion while public assets held
by state entities are about €300 billion of international reserves owned by the
Russian Central Bank.
"Russia must also pay financially for the devastation
that it caused,” European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said. Moscow has “to
compensate Ukraine for the damage and cover the costs for rebuilding the
country." she added.
In the
midst of rising inflation across Europe, freezing and selling Russian assets is
being viewed as an avenue by the 27-member bloc to raise funds for Ukraine.
However, EU sanctions are always temporary, so the assets at
the end of the day must be returned to their original owners.
It
seems that before this happens the EU is working hard to move the goalposts and
ensure the frozen assets become a solid, bulletproof solution to make Russia
pay, as von der Leyen put it.
NATO could have prevented this war by not expanding its
military equipment and troops eastwards toward Russian borders in the years
prior to the war.
The US
could have avoided the crisis in Ukraine and the suffering of Ukrainians by
choosing to negotiate rather than reject the Kremlin’s proposals of security
guarantees, which were sent to Washington months before the conflict erupted.
The Minsk agreements which began in 2014 after fighting
erupted between ethnic Russian forces and the Ukrainian army in the eastern
Donbas region could have been implemented to avoid a war.
Experts
have questioned the double standards of the EU asking why such efforts have not
been applied to the US-led wars, proxy wars, invasions, and carpet bombings
that have led to the complete destruction of many countries over the past
decades.
The US invasion and 20-year occupation of Afghanistan saw an
unprecedented rise in terrorism (ironically Washington invaded the country under
the pretext of its war on terror). During the two-decade occupation, Afghans
witnessed nothing but destruction, terror, violence, mass killings, and other
atrocities.
As a result of the spike in terrorism and regular US
attacks, the destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the damage caused
to Afghan public sectors has left a humanitarian catastrophe after the US fled
Afghanistan in 2020.
The
Afghanistan Country Director of Save the Children said in mid-February: “I’ve
never seen anything like the desperate situation we have here in Afghanistan.
We treat frighteningly ill children every day who haven’t eaten anything except
bread for months. Parents are having to make impossible decisions – which of
their children do they feed? Do they send their children to work or let them
starve? These are excruciating choices that no parent should have to make.”
America’s
longest war killed at least 66,000 Afghan national military and police as well
as tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians, with
different monitoring groups providing different death tolls.
In an ideal, just world, US assets should have been frozen
and used to finance the reconstruction of Afghanistan. American assets should
have also been frozen and used to compensate the families of Afghans killed as
a result of the US invasion.
Following
its embarrassing and chaotic withdrawal, Washington seized Afghanistan’s assets
leading to further humanitarian suffering for Afghans, the majority of whom now
live in poverty.
Likewise, the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq
saw widespread damage to the country’s infrastructure. Damage that has yet to
be rebuilt.
Washington
claims it waged war against Iraq to remove the former Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein from power. Everyone wanted to see the end of Saddam, but very few wanted
the US to be involved, especially considering the widespread hatred of America
among Iraqis.
Even before the American invasion, US-backed UN sanctions
against Baghdad killed at least half a million Iraqi children, with some
studies putting the number at around 1.5 million Iraqis, primarily children,
who died as a direct consequence of the imposed sanctions, citing UNICEF
estimates.
During the US war itself from 2003 to 2011, hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis died, again because of an unprecedented rise in terrorism
as a result of the US war on terror and many other civilians were killed
because of attacks by the US military.
The damage to Iraq's infrastructure as a result of US
interference in the country (in the form of sanctions, airstrikes, and wars)
from 1991 until its occupation which is ongoing until this day is estimated to
have cost the nation trillions of dollars.
How many Iraqi civilians have been killed because of
terrorist groups that did not exist before Washington’s 2003 invasion and US
carpet bombings in cities such as Mosul?
With such vast oil wealth, Iraqi infrastructure has been
damaged to such an extent that the country still relies on Iranian energy
exports for its electricity.
Why are US assets not being frozen and used to finance the
reconstruction of Iraq? Why are US assets not being frozen and used to
compensate the families of civilians murdered because of terrorism that came
with the US invasion?
As many reports have emerged over the years, NATO killed
civilians when it waged war on Libya to allegedly help overthrow longtime ruler
Muammar al-Gaddafi. The US-led military alliance’s bombing campaign had a
devastating toll but, more than a decade after the war, NATO has yet to take
any responsibility.
There was no terrorism before NATO bombed Libya. Since then,
the country has been embroiled in terror with Daesh and other Takfiri groups
wreaking havoc in the North African country.
The US military is occupying regions in eastern and
northeastern Syria and looting the country’s oil in an attempt to prevent
Damascus from restoring its own infrastructure and services following a decade
of US-backed war on the country.
Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia, has faced an
eight-year, US-backed bombing campaign that has destroyed the country’s entire
infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have been killed because of US-made
bombs that have been dropped using US intelligence with warplanes whose pilots
were trained by the US and UK military.
Rights groups accuse the US and its allies, including Canada
and European countries of being directly complicit in the war. Yemeni officials
say Saudi Arabia was used as a proxy by Washington and that the US was the one
that waged war on it in March 2015.
Such is the damage inflicted on Yemen, which is too
difficult to estimate, and U.S. assets should be frozen and used to finance the
reconstruction of Yemen.
Yemen is a country that the United Nations has described as
having the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Washington’s support for the Israeli regime’s ethnic
cleansing, and genocidal terrorism campaign against the Palestinians is well
documented.
The list of US wars is long. Washington economically
survives on waging wars, and invasions and using proxies to trigger violence,
unrest, terrorism, and civil wars in regions well beyond its borders.
From the Vietnam War to the shadow wars in Somalia,
Pakistan, and the African continent, why isn’t the US being held accountable?
Why are US assets not being frozen? Why are there no punitive actions against
Washington?
