Eleven years ago this week, the U.S. decided to sidestep international law in its rush to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. In doing so, charge critics, it has helped open a pandora’s box of imperial lawlessness that is now rearing its head in Ukraine.

Amid warnings that what’s taking place as Russia battles the U.S. and European nations over a new government in Kiev and Crimea’s vote to officially secede from Ukraine is the beginning of a new ‘Cold War,’ many observers have called out western hypocrisy when it comes to the White House and Downing Street pointing fingers at the Kremlin.

“In an era in which exceptionalism has become the norm, where the cavalier disregard of domestic and/or global objections is considered politically acceptable, and where powerful nations can exercise a free hand in determining the future of less powerful ones when strategic interests are involved.” —Randall Amster, Georgetown University

Taking that point further on Thursday, Randall Amster, director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University,  argues in a piece at Common Dreams that despite all the rhetoric, sanctions, and threats of further “punishment” coming from Washington, the missing analysis about Ukraine is how it represents a kind of “foreign policy blowback” resulting from “the US-led wars and interventions of recent years” in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amster points out that by ignoring international law when it suited their own interests, the U.S. and U.K. set the stage for others (at least those with the requisite military and political might) to follow suit:

In an editorial by The Nation posted Wednesday, the magazine’s editors also invoke US transgressions in the context of Ukraine. “Yes, Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea trespasses on international law,” they write, but it’s “difficult to bear US officials’ invocation of a principle that Washington itself has often violated (see, most recently, Kosovo and Iraq, the latter now marking the eleventh anniversary of an illegal US invasion and occupation).”

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And author and historian Howard Friel, also at Common Dreams, defies the western media’s dominant anti-Putin line not to defend Russian motives or actions, but to cast a light on U.S. violations that now make it impossible for Washington to stand as a moral authority on issues of international law. In a string of rhetorical questions, Friel asks:

According to The Nation editors, the only thing that can now resolve the crisis in Ukraine and the brewing ‘Cold War’ redux between Russia and the western powers is a true and meaningful focus on diplomacy. Threats of military escalation must be averted, they say, and the “war parties” on all sides must be pushed aside in the name of a peaceful agreement going forward.

And while Amster agrees that a negotiated settlement should also be the focus, he argues strongly that time should be spent reflecting on how previous examples of cast-off international obligations—now the “modus operandi of powerful interests across the globe”—have brought us to this point.

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