Please sign this petition to demand that the Biden administration stop using our taxpayer dollars to fund genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and now the bombing of Yemen––promoting enormous loss of life in order to profit, and bringing all of us ever closer to a nuclear war. We are again the victims of taxation without representation. This is not ho we are as Americans. We are in need of a “Great Reset” of US foreign policy.

The shortsighted, opportunistic actions of this administration are putting the entire world at great risk. Our tax dollars are being used to send more and more lethal weapons into eastern Europe, threatening all of us with a deadly and unpredictable conflict that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The US supplying of cluster munitions to Ukraine is shameful. Generations of young men are being sent by the Ukrainian government to die in record numbers for a war that our US government continues to prolong for profit, and if there is a nuclear disaster in Ukraine, the land will become a wasteland. The people of Ukraine are the greatest victims, but not the only ones. 

The irresponsible use of our taxpayer dollars to flood Israel with weapons and military support, forces all of us as US taxpayers into the position of funding genocide, funding acts of terrorism, funding targeted assassinations. Outside of the EU, US and UK, much of the rest of the world now views the United States government as morally bereft.

The Foreign Policy of Narcissism
Wars of Opportunism

A narcissist is exploitive, immature, untrustworthy, irresponsible, and violent, and this is how much of the Global South now views the United States.  A narcissist creates chaos among people in order to maintain control of them; narcissistic foreign policy destabilizes countries to control them and obtain access to their resources, and to eliminate perceived economic competitors. Ukraine is the target for US corporate interests; Russia is the target as a geopolitical competitor. The economic forums and pledges to Ukraine made by various US corporate conglomerates and weapons manufacturers even as the war rages–and the very inexperienced President Zelensky's apparent selling of his country to the highest bidder, with no concern for the massive loss of life of his own people–is a hallmark of narcissism. Senator Lindsey Graham recently shockingly stated that the spending of US taxpayer money for the war in Ukraine was “the best use of our money”, and there are numerous comments by war-supporting social media pundits and armchair generals declaring the same: There is no loss of American lives, and we are supposedly weakening Russia. (If only we could send all of these war profiteers and politicians to the front lines.) A narcissist coerces others to do the dirtywork; this war is happening at Ukraine’s great expense, and Europe’s expense–but it is proving very profitable for US corporate interests. Remember US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline a “tremendous opportunity”. And so it is a great opportunity for the United States to replace Russia as the supplier of natural gas to Europe and reap enormous profits. No mention at all of the catastrophic environmental damage caused by the explosion; very surprising for a US administration that continually talks about the perils of climate change and the need for protection of the environment. 

As the US continues to show a complete lack of leadership for a diplomatic resolution, it has become impossible to ignore that the conflict in Ukraine, like many US-driven wars of the past thirty years, is a war of opportunism and US government officials’ special interests. True leadership works to avoid war, and real diplomacy can prevent war. True leadership does not seek conflict in order to profit from it. Skilled leaders understand that violent conflict has a ripple effect and ultimately reaches the shores of those who attempt to use it for their benefit. 

Some History: 
This conflict did not begin in February 2022, and–despite all of the breathless pro-war propaganda from US/UK news media and public officials– this war was not “unprovoked” and is not the Marvel comic struggle of good against evil continually sold to US citizens. According to respected US diplomats, former US ambassadors to Russia, and many members of the US military and intelligence communities, this war is the sad and predictable result of decades of misguided and immature US foreign policy. The continued expansion of NATO and the resultant placement of US military bases and missiles ever closer to Russia’s borders–constantly devaluing and ignoring for decades the legitimate security concerns of a sovereign nation and nuclear superpower–have been the largest missteps of US foreign policy regarding Russia. Contrast that policy with the way the current US government views as a threat the mere possibility of a Chinese-led military alliance building Chinese bases near our OWN borders–or even thousands of miles from US borders–as clearly stated by this quote from an April 2022 article by British newspaper The Guardian: “One of the most senior US officials in the Pacific has refused to rule out military action against Solomon Islands if it were to allow China to establish a military base there, saying that the security deal between the countries presented “potential regional security implications” for the US and other allies.” 

A Pattern of US Foreign Policy:
If you are young and reading this petition, you may not remember the US-led invasion of Iraq, twenty years ago in 2003. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Iraq war also remember the constant barrage of US media propaganda aimed at US citizens, to manufacture our consent to pay for what was an assault on the nation of Iraq by military troops primarily from the US and the UK–without any backing from the UN. You can easily research and discover that this war was started on the false premise that Iraq’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction. This false premise was presented by the US to the UN, but there were no weapons of mass destruction. According to human rights organizations, the resulting US-led invasion killed nearly one million Iraqi citizens (Lancet, 2006) Night after night on televised news, we US citizens were told incessantly that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a necessary struggle of good against evil, of democracy over dictatorship, of human rights, of making Americans safer after 9/11. Exposed to constant, overwhelming propaganda, many Americans were led to believe that the 9/11 attacks on our own soil somehow justified invading Iraq, a country that was not the perpetrator of 9/11. Our nightly newscasters extolled the sheer power of the US-led “shock and awe” military campaign as Iraqi cities were relentlessly bombed, causing enormous human suffering and loss of life. But Iraqi civilian casualties were not discussed in our news; we never saw pictures of them on TV. The US military dropped nearly 30,000 bombs on Iraq, killed civilians with cluster bombs. Iraq has still not recovered, and Americans are not safer. 

That war toppled the government of Iraq, and the obvious benefits from the war were lucrative oil industry contracts given to American oil contractors like Halliburton and Baker Hughes. “Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” according to oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz. “But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973.” (Al Jazeera).  According to a 2011 New York Times article discussing Iraq’s postwar oil exploitation, “The oil industry was essentially privatized and dominated by foreign oil companies.” A Middle East analyst estimated that “roughly half of the expected $150 billion the international oil majors planned to spend at Iraqi oil fields over the next decade would go to drilling subcontractors, most of them American.” Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, famously stated in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'"

The Architects of the Iraq war, and Now Ukraine:
The US/UK war against Iraq was not about liberation or democracy; it was a war of corporate opportunism. And so is the war in Ukraine. Our US State Department–currently running the war in Ukraine–is unsurprisingly staffed by some of the same people who planned and executed the US invasion of Iraq. This group of career opportunists–who have deep ties to weapons manufacturers, energy companies, and plans for US corporate exploitation of Ukraine– have promoted a destructive foreign policy path through more than one administration and both political parties. This is the foreign policy of narcissism.

Public records, declassified US government documents, and the embarrassingly loud and foolish proclamations of our own government officials, demonstrate very clearly the US pattern for destabilizing the governments of other countries: The US by its own admission spent large sums of (US taxpayer) money to destabilize the government of Ukraine’s President Yanukovich, including US funding and by some accounts, the directing of violent protests in Ukraine and the involvement of US Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain. When the Yanukovich government fell in 2014, the US was instrumental in replacing him with a pro-Western, anti-Russian president, one more agreeable to US State Department interests. This is the “regime change” policy that has become a hallmark of US and UK foreign policy: targeting the government of a country that resists US corporate aspirations, or using that country to topple a geopolitical competitor. Regime change efforts include paying protesters, offering large sums of US (taxpayer) money to the country’s opposition parties, engaging in election interference, spreading disinformation, funding terrorism. US government officials, think tank propagandists and even members of our own media engage in a campaign to vilify and most shamefully, call for the assassination of the targeted country’s leader. Any dissenters whether at home or abroad, are relentlessly accused by US officials and by our own media of being traitors. I remember the incredible and overwhelming media abuse directed by US government officials toward France for opposing and voting against the US-led invasion of Iraq. France was demonized with an enormous US-led propaganda smear campaign for refusing to participate in the Iraq invasion.

A Narcissist Ultimately Betrays Everyone
In exchange for being an instrument of US foreign policy, Ukrainian actor-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky has received benefits from the US that most entertainers can only dream of: starring appearances at music and film festivals, a parade of visits from Hollywood celebrities, appearances at the UN, at Stanford University, feted as the subject of books and movies, recreated by the US/UK media as a modern-day Churchill, and billions of US taxpayer dollars for himself and his government officials. Purposefully or unwittingly, Zelensky has been very vocally a US weapons Salesman of the Year, bowing to US pressure to refuse to negotiate and end the war early on, before so many more people were killed. Now, it’s hard to imagine he can reverse course, considering all the treasure he has been given by the US/UK and EU nations, and the enormous number of casualties. Undoubtedly following US State Department instructions, Zelensky has also allegedly removed labor law protections for Ukrainian workers and has offered much of Ukraine to western corporate investment. There have already been conferences regarding privatizing and bidding on Ukraine’s industries and on reconstruction: dividing up the pie of Ukrainian resources among US and European corporations even as the war continues. Of course, the more destruction the war causes, the more profit there will be for US corporations in rebuilding Ukraine. There is also, of course, US/UK think tank talk about forcibly carving up Russia into smaller states (presumably with installed, pro-Western governments that will invite US corporations in to exploit resources).

A Narcissist Always Overplays His Hand
Narcissism, by definition requires a shortsighted belief in exceptionalism and entitlement–a core tenet of the Monroe Doctrine, Wolfowitz Doctrine, and of the current State Department neocons. A narcissist is incapable of self-reflection, empathy, or of accepting responsibility for actions, so it is impossible for a narcissist to admit blame and reverse course. A narcissist does not respect or value others, even allies–and has no conscience–so it’s impossible for a narcissist to determine how much is too much. A narcissist can never sense the point at which those who do have a conscience will turn away in disgust at all the carnage. So the narcissist keeps going. This is evidenced by the escalation of the war, including media reports of US/UK giving Ukraine depleted uranium munitions (reported by many studies to be responsible for birth defects and cancers in Iraq and in the former Yugoslavia after US bombing of those countries), providing cluster munitions, longer range weapons, and the Ukraine military’s continued attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The rest of the world has noticed, and in the same way that a narcissist predictably loses support over time, the US has lost a wealth of international support and respect as other countries begin to fill the leadership void. The enormous human cost of prolonging the war, the contamination of the land of Ukraine through environmental terrorism, and the daily deluge of lies from the US/UK/EU media, have caused a collective turning away from the US. Finding a pathway to peace– a just peace that considers both Ukraine’s and Russia’s interests and not just the interests of the United States–is the work of true leadership. The countries whose leaders are calling for peace and diplomacy are the rising powers in this world.

The Narcissist Always Has a Blind Spot
A narcissist’s blind spot is their own grandiosity. Engaging in devaluing and dehumanizing statements about Russians, the narcissist always underestimates the abilities of their perceived opponent. It’s patently ludicrous to assume that Russia– a nation that has produced some of the world’s best scientists, mathematicians, engineers, economists, athletes, writers, artists and musicians–is somehow inadequate and its people worthy of derision. The US/UK anti-Russia propaganda is designed to mislead US/UK and European taxpayers so we will continue to fund this war.  

A Narcissist Implodes and Brings Down Others 
Wars are always unpredictable, and this war has not turned out as the US planners had originally planned. Due to US economic sanctions and US/UK/EU seizure of foreign assets, unexpected new alliances are being formed among countries whose leaders now mistrust US/UK/EU custodianship of investments in our Central Banks. US citizens may ultimately may find ourselves in deep financial distress if the US dollar is no longer the worlds reserve currency and the US is unable to continue amassing enormous debt.

For most Americans and Europeans, US narcissistic foreign policy does not represent our character. Yet when a narcissist suffers an inevitable collapse, their associates also fall. Europe is discovering this now, especially Germany (whom the US government made sure to punish harshly for their energy cooperation with Russia).

A Great Reset: of US Foreign Policy
The rest of the world is growing up politically and economically, yet US foreign policy, like the narcissist, has not evolved. We seem to be currently in an era of complete lack of skilled diplomats in the US, the UK, and the EU nations. The Biden administration is already laying the propaganda path for US taxpayers to fund aggression directed at China via Taiwan. This US State Department is driving the President, and the rest of us, off of a cliff toward a nuclear war that most of us would not survive. 

There is so much inflated talk of the “Great Reset”: a re-imagining of government and industry partnerships, stakeholder capitalism, and of a one-world government. However, there is currently no one remotely qualified to govern on this scale, because without a Great Reset of US/UK foreign policy, our current western leaders cannot even govern their own countries well, or earn back the trust of other parts of the globe.

The only way to change course is if we the people refuse to let ourselves again be victims of taxation without true representation, and stop allowing our tax money to be used to pay for the foreign policy of narcissism, for endless US-driven wars for profit. If there are enough of us, then our government by, for and of the people, must listen. Sign this petition. Let your voice be heard. Vote for candidates, if there are any, who are not completely compromised by US corporate interests. Don’t buy into and be misled by the foreign policy of narcissism. We need US leaders with the maturity to address respectfully, and speak respectfully about, the leaders of other sovereign nations. Say no to any government official who denigrates the leaders and the culture of other countries. This is not leadership. Say no to government officials who claim that the image of the United States can be improved on the world stage simply by further use of propaganda and disinformation, or by further censorship. Be wary of politicians and pundits who try to rebrand narcissism as “realism”.  Vote out politicians who label as traitors or try to silence anyone who is opposed to this war or to the foreign policy of narcissism. Those behaviors are not democratic. 
It is long past time for US foreign policy to mature. This is the Great Reset that the world actually needs.