Self-Destructing Empire?

[A]lone among the governments in the world, Washington requires sovereign governments to follow Washington’s laws even when Washington’s laws contradict the laws of sovereign countries.

The examples are endless.  For example, Washington forced Switzerland to violate and repeal Switzerland’s historic bank secrecy laws. 

Washington executes citizens of other countries, as well as its own citizens, without due process of law.  Washington violates the sovereignty of other countries and murders the countries’ citizens with drones, bombs, and special forces teams.  Washington kidnaps abroad citizens of other countries and either brings them to the US to be tried under US law or sends them to another country to be tortured in secret torture centers. Washington tells banks in other countries with whom they can do business and when the banks disobey, Washington blackmails them into compliance or imposes fines that threaten their existence. Last week Washington forced a French bank to pay Washington $9 billion dollars or be banned from its US operations, because the bank financed trade with countries disapproved by Washington.

Washington issues ultimatums to sovereign nations to do as they are told or “be bombed into the stone age.”

Washington violates diplomatic immunity and forces down the planes of presidents of sovereign countries to be illegally searched.

Washington ordered its UK vassal to violate the laws and conventions governing political asylum and to refuse free passage to Julian Assange to Ecuador.

Washington ordered Russia to violate its laws and to hand over Edward Snowden. Russia is strong enough to refuse to comply with Washington’s orders.

So what did Washington do?

The city upon the hill, the light unto the world, the “indispensable, exceptional government,” kidnapped Roman Seleznyov, the son of a Russian MP, in a foreign country, the Republic of the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. Seleznyov was seized by Washington as he boarded a flight to Moscow and was spirited away on a private plane to US controlled territory where he was arrested on bogus fraud charges.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.