HERE COME THE BOLSHEVIKS!
Atlantic Council Hawks Enraged as Think Tank Publishes Slightly Less
Anti-Russia Article
So powerful is the ideology of American exceptionalism that any suggestion
that the U.S. is not uniquely and fundamentally benevolent all the time is
met with a storm of denunciations from Washington insiders.
by Alan Macleod
March 12th, 2021
By Alan Macleod
WASHINGTON - Serious strife has broken out in the halls of power this week,
after NATO-cutout organization The Atlantic Council published an opinion
piece that was slightly less anti-Russian than usual. Some 22 Atlantic
Council staffers revolted against it, claiming that it "missed the mark" and
its argument was beneath contempt.
The article, entitled "Reality Check #4: Focus on interests, not on human
rights with Russia," was written by two members of the New American
Engagement Initiative, a subdivision of the Atlantic Council paid for and
established by controversial libertarian multi-billionaires the Koch
Brothers. Its authors, Emma Ashford and Mathew Burrows, argue that there is
a "tension" between U.S. interests vis a vis Russia and pursuing human
rights inside the country. While decrying the treatment of anti-Putin
campaigner Alexey Navalny, they maintain that President Joe Biden should
seek to build a "less aspirational policy toward Russia" and "minimize the
use of sanctions," at least until new nuclear weapons treaties can be signed
with Moscow.
While acknowledging that U.S. intentions are benign, they contend that
securing anti-ballistic missile treaties with Russia should be prioritized
over "largely symbolic sanctions" over human rights abuses.
Their article elicited a chorus of condemnation and an open revolt from
other staffers of what might be the world's most influential think tank.
Twenty-two council employees signed a denunciation of the piece, claiming
that it was "premised on a false assumption that human rights and national
interests are wholly separate," and insisting that "U.S. policy toward
Russia was and remains driven by human rights concerns."
A think tank of two minds
Charles Koch and his late brother, David, who traditionally favored more
isolationist policies, gave $4.5 million to the Council to set up the New
American Engagement Initiative. This stance strongly conflicts with the rest
of the Atlantic Council, who have consistently been among the most extreme
hawkish voices on Russia and other foreign affairs.
Speaking to Politico, many staffers felt that Koch money was poisoning their
pristine organization. "The Koch industry operates as a Trojan horse
operation trying to destroy good institutions and they have pretty much the
same views as the Russians," said one employee, adding that they were
disappointed their bosses had accepted money from such a questionable
source.
The controversy even brought in former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik
Ilves, who commented:
So the people who know anything about Russia disassociate themselves from
the Koch-funded, sinecured isolationist shills who do not, and who say the
U.S. should not, care about human rights violations in Russia. Follow the
money. It's not a pretty path."
The Atlantic Council is funded by the U.S. government and multiple Middle
Eastern dictatorships; weapons manufacturers Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and
Lockheed Martin; Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs; and petrochemical
giants like BP and Chevron. It was also given a six-figure donation by
Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, which gave Joe Biden's son, Hunter, a
$50,000-per-month spot on its board.
"It closes the eyes on a bipartisan tradition of integrating our values and
human interests from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. It's Cato Institute
meets Donald Trump," one scandalized employee said of the article. Another
senior fellow told Politico that it could "undermine the credibility of some
of the work that the Atlantic Council is doing on the Russia issue."
In 1986, the International Court of Justice found the Reagan administration
guilty of 15 counts of international terrorism. A U.S. court also convicted
senior Reagan official Oliver North of selling weapons to Iran and using the
money to fund death squads that rampaged across Central America. Meanwhile,
when he left office, President Obama was bombing seven countries
simultaneously. Thus, it is not clear what exactly these values are.
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Positions with real-world consequences
Founded in 1961 as a NATO offshoot, the Atlantic Council has risen to become
the pre-eminent foreign policy think tank. Situated less than 700 yards from
the White House, its board of directors is a who's who of high state
officials, including Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell as well as senior
military commanders such as Wesley Clark, David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster and
James "Mad Dog" Mattis. Also on the board of directors are no fewer than
seven former CIA directors. As such, it could be said to represent the
collective opinion of the national security state. This is why this incident
is not simply a minor tiff, but a disagreement with potentially profound
repercussions.
On Russia, the Atlantic Council has been the source of many of the most
hawkish and bizarre conspiracy theories that have dominated the news cycle
over the past four years. In a series of reports, the Council has gone so
far as to claim that virtually every European party challenging the centrist
establishment is secretly controlled by Vladimir Putin. From Labour and UKIP
in the U.K. to Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece and PODEMOS and Vox in
Spain, all are actually the "Kremlin's Trojan Horses" in the Council's
estimation.
This has had real-world consequences, with tensions escalating to arguably
their most dangerous point in history. In 2020, the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists - a scientific organization including 13 Nobel laureates - moved
its famous Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds to midnight, meaning they
believed that the world is currently in a more perilous situation than at
any point in history - even at the height of the Cold War. Aggressive U.S.
actions against a nuclear-armed Russia are a principal reason for their
estimation, the scientists explain.
The Atlantic Council is also behind much of the most hawkish anti-China
sentiment emanating from Washington. Last month, it published an anonymous,
26,000-word report advising that Biden dramatically ramp up military efforts
against Beijing, drawing a number of "red lines" around the country. These
include Chinese attempts to expand into the South China Sea, a move to take
the disputed Senkaku Islands, a cyber attack on the West, or even a North
Korean strike on one of its neighbors. If any of these red lines are broken,
the U.S. must use the power of its military; otherwise, the Council insists,
it would lead to national "humiliation."
The council also has enormous influence over what the world sees and reads
online. In 2018, the organization announced that it was partnering with
Facebook to help it decide what the mega-platform's 2.7 billion users see in
their news feeds. A senior council member also holds a directorship position
at popular social media website Reddit. The council claims that its digital
forensics lab is uniquely placed to be able to distinguish between fake news
and genuine information online. Yet much of the most questionable
information on foreign affairs is emanating from the Atlantic Council
itself.
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Good will to power
The entire argument between different factions of the Atlantic Council is
premised upon how much the United States' foreign policy should be based
around human rights, rather than its own interests. However, serious
analyses of U.S. foreign policy have concluded the opposite: that human
rights never come into question. The U.S. supports three-quarters of the
world's dictatorships with military aid, while it attempted to overthrow
foreign governments 72 times during the Cold War alone. Professor Lars
Schoultz of North Carolina University also found a close correlation between
U.S. foreign aid distribution and human rights violations in Latin America.
The worse a state treated its citizens, the more money flowed to the
country.
Henry Kissinger is a director of the Atlantic Council. In 1969 he ordered
the U.S. military to kill "anything that moves" in Southeast Asia, a command
that directly led to the deaths of millions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
"It is hard to find a declaration with such clear genocidal intent in the
archival record of any state," remarked political theorist and dissident
Noam Chomsky. That an organization boasting Kissinger on the board could be
concerned with human rights is highly questionable. Yet so powerful is the
ideology of American exceptionalism that any suggestion that the U.S. is not
uniquely and fundamentally benevolent all the time is met with a storm of
denunciations from Washington insiders. Hence the reaction to the recent
Atlantic Council report.