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Patrick Foy-Correspondent 

An important article, entitled Russia needs to defend its interests with an iron fist, appeared in the Financial Times the other day, to wit, March 5th. 

It is an analysis of the blow-up in Ukraine from a Russian perspective. 

The writer, Dr Sergei Karaganov, makes perfect sense. 

He is a distinguished academic in Moscow and a leader of Global Zero, the international movement for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. 

Sounds like a great idea and way overdue. 

My own outlook is that the imbroglio in the Ukraine was orchestrated by Neo-conservative elements in Washington. The Neo-conservatives as you may know, began infiltrating the US government and the American news media in earnest during the Herbert Walker Bush administration.

They came into glory during the co-consulship of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. 

In the present instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reacted in a predictable manner to a situation which the Neo-cons have brought about in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, on the southern flank of Russia. 

Did the National Security Council expect Moscow to stand by while Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquartered at Sevastopol in the Crimea was put at risk? 

Does Washington want a new Cold War? If so, why? 

Meddling by Washington in the internal affairs of other nations is certainly nothing new. 

Such activity must be seen in historical context. It has been the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy since the days of the Spanish-American war in 1898. 

The immediate consequences have rarely been salubrious for the people on the ground. 

Under presidents from both political parties, America became a busybody nation, either looking for trouble or deliberately stirring it up. 

Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt are the prime exemplars of outsized trouble-making. 

Both deliberately lied America into war, while loudly proclaiming that they were trying to keep the country out of war. 

It is clear in retrospect that Wilson and Roosevelt had serious psychological problems, not the least of which was grandiosity.

In April 1917 Wilson came to the rescue of the gigantic, far-flung British Empire and of its obtuse, myopic leadership in Whitehall. 

American intervention in the Great War collaterally paved the way for the Soviet Union and handed Palestine, thanks to the Balfour Declaration, over to the Zionists.

The outcome of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 is a Pandora’s box that does not quit. 

The box continues to disgorge its contents to this day. As for Roosevelt, he was uniquely responsible for the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. 

I’m referring to FDR’s rule-or-ruin, sub rosa foreign policy from 1937 onward with respect to the internal borders of Europe, which borders were none of Washington’s business. 

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, France and Poland became pawns of White House intrigue. The result was a trumped-up crisis involving the German port city of Danzig in the summer of 1939, and the outbreak of war in September.

It took a few more years of machinations for FDR to provoke and manoeuvre the hapless Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbour.

l Patrick Foy  is an essayist and short story writer. He graduated from Columbia University, where he studied English literature, European history and American diplomatic history.