Today in Well, Duh

The invaluable Caitlin Johnstone obsers that that the US foreign policy establishment has absolutely no concern for human rights beyond using it as a hammer, and observes that we are now, after over a decade of ignoring the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is suddenly concerned now that New Dehli is lukewarm on anti-Russia sanctions.

She cites a Politico article where Rex Tillerson was literally instructed by a State Department stalwart that Human rights is taught that human rights is only used as a cudgel against uncooperative nations.

I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here. (Your winnings sir.)

The United States is suddenly very concerned about human rights violations in India, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken telling the press on Monday that “we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

While it is true that India’s right-wing government is guilty of human rights abuses and has been for years, it is also true that the US State Department does not actually care about human rights abuses.

A leaked State Department memo from the early days of the Trump administration showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, “human rights” are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable insight into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren’t.

No, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken’s remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow.

………

In an article last week titled “India to Face Significant Cost If Aligned With Russia, U.S. Says,” Bloomberg reported the following:

President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser said the administration has warned India against aligning itself with Russia, and that U.S. officials have been “disappointed” with some of New Delhi’s reaction to the Ukraine invasion.

“There are certainly areas where we have been disappointed by both China and India’s decisions, in the context of the invasion,” the director of the White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told reporters at a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The U.S. has told India that the consequences of a “more explicit strategic alignment” with Moscow would be “significant and long-term,” he said.

This is completely unsurprising.