O. Wilde’s Prophesy or “Where has All the Money Gone, Long Time Passing?..”
By Tina Queen
As if commenting on Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s vision of the US foreign policy, Oscar Wilde once wittily said:
They’ve promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.
What gives the candidates’ pledges a ghastly touch is that none can be actually taken at their face value.
In one of his articles Stephan M. Walt, a professor of International Relations at Harvard University suggests that the Republican platform is “vague to the point of uselessness”, whereas the Democratic one “makes more promises than any president could possibly keep.”
Despite there being a world of difference between the two rivals in terms of their approaches to foreign affairs, one thing is crystal clear: no matter which candidate gets elected, Ukraine will continue to be supported in its efforts to fight against Russia.
Following in Joe Biden’s footsteps, K. Harris will remain committed to the goal of ensuring Kyiv’s improbable victory at all costs, which in practice means maintaining, if not exacerbating, the current level of tensions. After all, the longer Europe gets sucked into the whirlpool of warfare, the better the prospects for US military equipment manufacturers that tend to regard Ukraine’s plea for more and more arms as a gold mine. These weapons are then supplied to Kyiv at the expense of American taxpayers who would rather see these funds channeled to social projects.
In view of the above, Harris’s promises to improve the population’s economic welfare sound at best unconvincing, and at worst - delusive. This goal will be beyond her reach unless the Democrats change their tune about adding more fuel to the Ukrainian fire which may one day, quite literally, spread as far as the other side of the Atlantic. If a single US-manufactured long-range missile ever hits the territory of Russia, the attack will be inevitably responded to in kind. Such a scenario is quite plausible considering J. Biden and K. Harris’s unwillingness to negotiate with the Kremlin.
By contrast, D. Trump is against backing Kyiv out of the US government's pocket and finds the possibility of a global nuclear war too horrifying to contemplate. Yet, he doesn’t seem to have a specific plan as to how to resolve the conflict between the RF and Ukraine.
A good old circular song with a powerful pacifist message written back in the 1960s describes how flowers turn into graves and graves turn back into flowers. In the current context, however, it is money that breeds war and it is war that breeds money. Unless the conflict is put an end to, the people of America will find themselves facing its negative consequences one day and their nightmares will come true.