Revisiting "The Arrogance of Power" & Lavrov's Yalta 80th Anniversary Paper

Senator J. William Fullbright's very important book.

Today 4 February 2025 marks the 80th Anniversary of the start of the Yalta Conference where the outlines of the Post-WW2 world order were discussed and agreed upon. Lavrov’s paper, “The UN Charter should become the legal foundation of a multipolar world,” deals with that history and argues why Yalta-Potsdam remains relevant and the only real choice today for improving the state of humanity. As he notes, the West almost immediately opted to repudiate all it had agreed to. Roughly twenty years afterward, the USA had morphed into the Outlaw US Empire in its quest to win the Cold War against the USSR and the Peoples Republic of China in which its actions prompted the writing and publication of what at the time was a unique book by a person at the center of the Empire’s power structure and policy making. My aim is to briefly revisit the book and then compare Lavrov’s words to that of his near counterpart J. William Fulbright.

My copy is almost 60 years-old, heavily annotated with many pages dog-eared for reference. I once photocopied pages to hand out to students since the college library only had one copy. I was reminded of this outstanding work when some of it was cited by Professor Jeffry Sachs at the end of a panel discussion of the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration—an hour-long discussion I very highly suggest watching for the views and ideas expressed. The Arrogance of Power was written by the chair of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fullbright at a very crucial time in the life of the Outlaw US Empire in 1966 when it was deeply involved in committing genocide against the people of Southeast Asia—Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—while also denying them their right to self-determination as granted by the UN Charter. I used the book at another time of genocide being committed by the Empire, this time against the people of Iraq, where Fullbright’s counterpart at the time, Madeline Albright, said matter-of-factly that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was an acceptable price to pay for attaining the Empire’s policy goal, which was regime change in Iraq. Roughly since the end of WW2, that’s the sort of attitude the Outlaw US Empire had toward all other peoples, including its own citizens. Clearly, oligarchical, totalitarian thought processes remain very deeply rooted in the current version of the Outlaw US Empire as we see and hear from the reinstated President Trump and from those just ousted from power—Team Biden. The genocide currently being made possible now is that being waged by the Zionists occupying Palestine and killing Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians—West Asians generally. No, I haven’t named all the genocides committed by the Outlaw US Empire during that almost 60-year period—Indonesia, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Colombia, and most of Africa. As you might imagine, the Outlaw US Empire’s past actions don’t endear it to very many nations. As Larry Wilkerson stated recently, the collective voices of 6-7 billion people say “we’ve have had enough.”

A myth, or as called today, a narrative regarding the special, unique nature of what would become the Outlaw US Empire was formed at its outset both by those promoting its settlement in England and those who actually arrived on the shores of North America in the early 1600s. Almost immediately it was proclaimed the proverbial—exceptional—Shining City Upon the Hill blessed with a Manifest Destiny Ordained by the Lord. Two of the Colonial Charters had their lands mandated all the way across the as yet unknown breadth of the continent to the Pacific Ocean to lands that were then Spain’s. The North American plantation project as envisioned by the Hakluyts and their Elizabethan sponsors would become a continental empire, and the race was on to capture it. Empire making is a very bloody business; there’s nothing altruistic about it at all. Indeed, the blood and suffering needs to be covered up. The savage settlers who massacred the natives and kept their scalps needed to reverse the immoral/sinful psychology of their deeds and used projection as solace by calling all natives savages, a trait that survives to the present. But as most US-based readers will note, none of that truth is taught in schools or to be found in general textbooks. Essentially, savage behavior is condoned and promoted as a virtue. To his credit, Fullbright seems to have had a sense of this when writing The Arrogance of Power’s Introduction:

[P]ower tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations—to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea aof a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God’s work. The Lord, after all, surely not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword to work His will. German soldiers in the First World War wore belt buckles imprinted with the words “Gott mit uns.” It was approximately under this kind of infatuation—an exaggerated sense of power and an imaginary sense of mission—that the Athenians attacked Syracuse and then Napoleon and then Hitler invaded Russia. In plain words, they overextended their commitments and they came to grief. (pgs 3-4)

As I noted above, my copy is very heavily annotated, meaning there’s a great deal of meaning and reference within the text. I randomly chose page 134 to find:

There is something unseemly about a nation conducting a foreign policy that involves it in the affairs of most of the nations in the world while its own domestic needs are neglected or postponed … There is something fishy about this kind of behavior, something hidden and unhealthy…. By analogy, it seems to me unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or ideal while neglecting the needs of its own people; indeed, it seems far more likely that the nation that does most to benefit humanity in the long run is the nation that begins by meeting the needs of that portion of humanity which resides within its own frontiers. (pgs 134-135)

The last clause is precisely what all BRICS nations are attempting to accomplish while the Outlaw US Empire is still conducting that “fishy” behavior. Returning to the Introduction, there’s one more long citation to be made. It begins with Fulbright citing a portion of page six from Aldous Huxley’s The Politics of Ecology which provides the basis for the important point he makes:

There may be arguments about the best way of raising wheat in a cold climate or of reafforesting a denuded mountain. But such arguments never lead to organized slaughter. Organized slaughter is the result of arguments about such questions as the following: Which is the best nation? The best religion? The best political theory? The best form of government? Why are other people so stupid and wicked? Why can’t they see how good and intelligent we are? Why do they resist our beneficent efforts to bring them under our control and make them like ourselves? (Emphasis Original)

Many of the wars fought by man—I am tempted to say most—have been fought over such abstractions. The more I puzzle over the great wars of history, the more I am inclined to the view that the causes attributed to them—territory, markets, resources, the defense or perpetuation of great principles—were not the root causes at all but rather explanations or excuses for certain unfathomable drives of human nature. For lack of a clear and precise understanding of exactly what these motives are, I refer to them as the “arrogance of power”—as a psychological need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger, better, or stronger than other nations. Implicit in this drive is the assumption, even on the part of normally peaceful nations, that force is the ultimate proof of superiority—that when a nation shows that it has the stronger army, it is also proving that it has better people, better institutions, better principles, and, in general, a better civilization. (pg 4)

Very little has changed in the almost 60 years since the above was published. It did help to support the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, but did very little to alter Outlaw US Empire policy. And since the Agency for International Development is currently under well-deserved fire, I’ll close with Fulbright’s observations about it:

Many programs are justified by the Agency for International Development on the grond they will maintain an “American presence” These programs are too small to have an impact on economic development but big enough to involve the United States in the affairs of the countries concerned. The underlying assumption of these programs is that the presence of some American aid officials is a blessing which no developing country , except for the benighted communist ones, should be denied.

I think this view of aid is a manifestation of the arrogance of power. Its basis, if not messianism, is certainly egotism. It assumes that the size, wealth, and power of the United States are evidence of wisdom and virtue as well; it assumes that just as the right-thinking, hard-working laborer in a Horatio Alger novel might have counted it a privilege to take counsel with the local tycoon, every right-thinking, hard-working underdeveloped country must consider it a privilege to have some resident American around to tell its leaders how to run their affairs.

It is a flattering idea but unfortunately it is an inaccurate idea. Experience has shown—and not just in our case but in that of other big countries as well—that affection is more likely to be won by an American “absence” than by a conspicuous American presence. In fact, the countries that are fondest of us often seem to be those who have had the Russians around for a long time, and I think the Russians have profited in the same way from some of our involvements. This is not because we lack good intentions but simply because people like to make their own decisions and their own mistakes i their own way, and our “presence” tells them hat we do not think them qualified to do so. We can give them all the money and technique in the world, but what is their use if the very act of giving robs the recipients of dignity? (pg 236)

IMO, it’s very clear the Outlaw US Empire hasn’t learned anything and continues to follow the arrogance of power ism/dogma. And we see it in bold print with Trump just as we saw it in bold print with Team Biden. Both exhibit their arrogance in different ways, just as all preceding administrations have going back to McKinley—if not further. On the other hand, IMO the Russians have learned to let those in need ask for what they want, which is what we now see in relations with Africa. It’s also why Assad lost Syria—he never asked for those assets that would have saved his government or at least saved Syria from the Terrorist coup. He was unable to accept the fact that the West and many in the region wanted him and his government eliminated.

We should now move to Sergie Lavrov’s essay, “The UN Charter should become the legal foundation of a multipolar world,” published today in Russian Global Affairs journal. Most readers will have made the connection that any nation imbued with the arrogance of power will be in violation of the UN Charter which was devised in part to help nations purge that trait from their national behavior. And since today marks the 80th anniversary of the Yalta Conference’s start, I want to provide readers with the link to Progress Publishers 1969 publication of the papers from the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences all of which are in English translated from the original Russian. I very much suggest readers use the CTRL-f search function on that book using the word charter to see what it produces. And now for Lavrov’s essay, which IMO is short for him:

Eighty years ago, on February 4, 1945, the Yalta Conference opened, at which the leaders of the victorious countries in World War II – the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain – defined the contours of the post-war world. Despite ideological differences, they agreed to finally eradicate German Nazism and Japanese militarism. The agreements reached in Crimea were confirmed and developed during the Potsdam Peace Conference in July-August 1945. [Italics original]

One of the results of the negotiations was the creation of the United Nations and the approval of the UN Charter, which remains the main source of international law to this day. The goals and principles of conduct enshrined in the Charter are designed to ensure peaceful coexistence and the progressive development of countries. The Yalta-Potsdam system was based on the principle of sovereign equality of states: none of them can claim a dominant position – all are formally equal, regardless of the size of the territory, population, military power or other comparative criteria.

The Yalta-Potsdam order, with all its strengths and weaknesses, which are still disputed by scholars, has been creating a legal framework for the functioning of the international system for eight decades. The world order, at the center of which is the UN, fulfills its main role – it insures everyone against a new world war. It is difficult to disagree with the expert opinion that "the UN did not lead us to heaven, but saved us from hell"[1]. The right of veto enshrined in the Charter, which is not a "privilege" but a burden of special responsibility for maintaining peace, serves as a strong barrier to unbalanced decision-making and creates space for finding compromises based on a balance of interests. Acting as the political core of the Yalta-Potsdam system, the UN is the only universal platform of its kind for developing collective responses to common challenges, whether in the field of maintaining international peace and security or promoting socio-economic development.

It was in the UN, with the USSR playing a key role, that historic decisions were made that laid the foundations for the multipolar world that is emerging before our eyes. I am referring to the process of decolonisation, which was legally carried out through the adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960 at the initiative of the Soviet Union. In that era, dozens of peoples who had previously been under the oppression of the metropolises received independence and a chance for their own statehood for the first time in history. Today, some of the former colonies claim to be centres of power in a multipolar world, while others are part of integration associations that have a regional or continental civilisational scope.

As Russian scholars rightly write, any international institution is, first of all, "a way to limit the natural egoism of states"[2]. In this sense, the UN is no exception with its comprehensive set of rules in the form of the Charter, agreed upon and adopted by consensus.

Therefore, the UN-centric order is called an order based on international – truly universal – law, and it is assumed that every state must respect this law.

Russia, like the majority of members of the world community, has never had problems with this, but the West, which has not been cured of the syndrome of exceptionalism, is accustomed to acting in a neocolonial paradigm, that is, living at the expense of others, the format of interstate interaction based on respect for international law was initially not to its liking. Former US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted in one of her interviews with simple-minded frankness that Yalta was not a good decision for the United States and there was no need to agree to it. This point of view explains a lot about America's behavior in the international arena. After all, according to Nuland, Washington was almost reluctantly forced to agree to the post-war world order in 1945, which was already perceived by the American elites as a burden. It was this feeling that gave rise to the West's subsequent policy of revising the Yalta-Potsdam Peace. This process began with Winston Churchill's infamous Fulton speech in 1946, which effectively declared a cold war on the Soviet Union. Perceiving the Yalta-Potsdam agreements as a tactical concession, the United States and its allies subsequently never followed the fundamental principle of the UN Charter on the sovereign equality of states.

The West had a chance to improve, to show prudence and foresight at a fateful stage, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the camp of world socialism. But egoistic instincts prevailed. Intoxicated by the "victory in the Cold War", US President George H.W. Bush proclaimed on September 11, 1990, in a speech before both houses of Congress[3], the onset of a new world order, which, in the understanding of American strategists, meant the complete dominance of the United States in the international arena, a "window of undivided opportunities" for Washington to act unilaterally without regard to the legal restrictions built into the UN Charter.

One of the manifestations of the "rules-based order" was Washington's course towards the geopolitical development of Eastern Europe, the explosive consequences of which we are forced to eliminate during a special military operation.

In 2025, with the return to power of the Republican administration led by Donald Trump in the United States, Washington's comprehension of international processes after World War II has acquired a new dimension. Very eloquent statements on this matter were made in the US Senate on January 15 of this year by the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Their meaning: the post-war world order is not just obsolete, but has been turned into a weapon used against the interests of the United States. That is, not only the Yalta-Potsdam peace with the central role of the UN is now objectionable, but also the "rules-based order", which, it would seem, embodied the selfishness and arrogance of the Washington-led West in the post-Cold War era. The name of the concept "America First" carries an alarming consonance with the slogan of the Hitler era "Germany first", and the bet on "establishing peace through strength" can finally bury diplomacy. Not to mention the fact that in such statements and ideological constructions there is not a shadow of respect for Washington's international legal obligations under the UN Charter.

However, it is not 1991 or even 2017, when the current owner of the White House stepped on the "captain's bridge" for the first time. Russian analysts rightly note that "there will be no return to the previous state of affairs that the United States and its allies have defended until now, since demographic, economic, social and geopolitical conditions have changed irreversibly"[5]. I think that the forecast is also correct, according to which one day "the United States will understand that it is not necessary to exaggerate the area of its responsibility for international affairs, and will quite harmoniously feel itself one of the leading states, but no longer a hegemon"[6].

Multipolarity is strengthening, and instead of countering this objective process, the United States could become one of the responsible centers of power in the foreseeable historical future, along with Russia, China and other powers of the Global South, East, North and West. In the meantime, it seems that the new US administration will cowboy test the limits of the malleability of the existing UN-centric system and its stability to American interests. I am sure, however, that this administration will soon realise that international reality is much richer than the ideas about the world that can be used without any consequences in speeches to the domestic American audience and to its obedient geopolitical allies.

In anticipation of such a sobering up, we will continue our painstaking work with like-minded people to create conditions for adapting the mechanisms for the practical building of interstate relations to the realities of multipolarity, to the international legal consensus of the Yalta-Potsdam system, embodied in the UN Charter. It is appropriate to note here the Kazan Declaration of the BRICS Summit of October 23, 2024, which reflects the unified position of the world's majority states on this matter, which clearly confirms "the commitment to comply with international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN Charter as its integral and fundamental element, and to preserve the central role of the UN in the international system"[7]. This is the approach formulated by the leading states that determine the image of the modern world and represent the majority of its population. Yes, our partners from the South and East have legitimate wishes regarding their participation in global governance. Unlike the West, they, like us, are ready for an honest and open conversation on all issues.

Our position on the reform of the UN Security Council is well known. Russia is in favour of making this body more democratic by expanding the representation of the world majority – Asia, Africa and Latin America. We support the applications of Brazil and India for permanent residency in the Council while correcting the historical injustice against the African continent within the parameters agreed upon by the Africans themselves. The allocation of additional seats to the countries of the collective West, which are already overrepresented in the Security Council, is counterproductive. Germany or Japan, which are mentioned in this regard, have delegated the bulk of their sovereignty to an overseas patron and are even reviving the ghosts of Nazism and militarism at home, are unable to bring anything new to the work of the Security Council.

We are firmly committed to the inviolability of the prerogatives of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In the context of the unpredictable policy of the Western minority, only the right of veto can ensure that the Council adopts decisions that take into account the interests of all parties.

The personnel situation in the UN Secretariat remains offensive to the world majority, where there is still a dominance of Western representatives in all key positions. Bringing the UN bureaucracy in line with the geopolitical map of the world is a task that brooks no delay. In this regard, the aforementioned Kazan BRICS Declaration contains a very unambiguous formulation. Let's see how receptive the UN leadership, which is accustomed to serving the interests of a narrow group of Western countries, will be receptive to this.

As for the normative framework enshrined in the UN Charter, I am convinced that it responds to the needs of the multipolar era in the optimal and best possible way. An era when the principles of sovereign equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs and other fundamental postulates must be observed, not in word but in deed, including the right of peoples to self-determination in the consensus interpretation enshrined in the 1970 UN Declaration on Principles of International Law: everyone is obliged to respect the territorial integrity of states whose governments represent the entire population living in the relevant territory. There is no need to prove that after the coup d'état of February 2014, the Kiev regime does not represent the residents of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya, just as the Western metropolises did not represent the peoples of the colonial territories they exploited.

Attempts to grossly rebuild the world to suit their interests in violation of the UN code of principles can bring even more instability and confrontation to international affairs, up to catastrophic scenarios. With the current level of conflict, the thoughtless rejection of the Yalta-Potsdam system with the core in the form of the UN and its Charter will inevitably lead to chaos.

It is often said that it is not timely to talk about the issues of the desired world order at a time when fighting to suppress the armed forces of the racist regime in Kiev, supported by the "collective West," continues. In our opinion, such an approach is from the devil. The contours of the post-war world order, which carry the pillars of the UN Charter, were discussed by the allies at the height of World War II, including at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers [and here] and the Tehran Conference of Heads of State and Government in 1943, in the course of other contacts of the future victorious powers, up to the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945. It is another matter that the allies already had a hidden agenda, but this does not in any way diminish the enduring importance of the high statutory principles of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, peaceful settlement of disputes, and respect for the rights of any person – "regardless of race, sex, language or religion." The fact that the West, as is now very clear, subscribed to these postulates with "disappearing ink" and in subsequent years grossly violated what it had endorsed – be it in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Ukraine – does not mean that we should absolve the United States and its satellites of moral and legal responsibility, renounce the unique heritage of the founding fathers of the UN, embodied in the UN Charter. God forbid that someone tries to rewrite it now (under the slogan of getting rid of the "obsolete" Yalta-Potsdam system). The world will be left without common values at all.

Russia is ready for joint and honest work to coordinate the balance of interests and strengthen the legal foundations of international relations.

President Vladimir Putin's initiative in 2020 to hold a meeting of the heads of state of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, who bear "special responsibility for the preservation of civilization," was aimed at establishing an equal dialogue on the entire range of these issues[8]. For reasons known to Russia that do not depend on Russia, it has not been developed. But we do not lose hope, although the composition of the participants and the format of such meetings may be different. The main thing, according to the Russian president, is "a return to an understanding of what the United Nations was created for, and adherence to the principles that are set out in the charter documents"[9]. This should be the guiding thread to the regulation of international relations in the current era of multipolarity.

Footnotes

[1] Bordachev T.V. UN did not lead us to paradise, but saved us from hell // Is it possible to imagine a world without the UN? Round table of SVOP and the Gorchakov Fund within the framework of the project "Laboratory of Historical Memory: What Was Not With Us?" // Russia in Global Politics. 26.11.2020. Available at: https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/mozhno-li-predstavit-mir-bez-oon/ (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[2] Ibid.

[3] George Bush. Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit // The American Presidency Project. Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-before-joint-session-the-congress-the-persian-gulf-crisis-and-the-federal-budget (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[4] Opening Remarks by Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee // Official websites use .gov. 15.01.2025. Available at: https://www.state.gov/opening-remarks-by-secretary-of-state-designate-marco-rubio-before-the-senate-foreign-relations-committee/ (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[5] Lukyanov F.A. Leading Down // Russia in Global Politics. 2025. T. 23. № 1. Pp. 5–8. Available at: https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/vedushhie-vniz-lukyanov/ (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[6] Sushentsov A. Ospakenie mirovogo poryadka i videnie mnogopolyarnosti: pozitsiya Rossii i Zapada [Crumbling of the world order and vision of multipolarity: the position of Russia and the West]. 20.11.2023. Available at: https://ru.valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/osypanie-mirovogo-poryadka-i-videnie-mnogopolyarnosti/ (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[7] XVI BRICS Summit. Kazan Declaration. Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security // Chairmanship of the Russian Federation in the BRICS Association in 2024. 23.10.2024. Available at: https://cdn.brics-russia2024.ru/upload/docs/Казанская_декларация.pdf?1729693488382423 (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[8] Forum "Preserving the memory of the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism" // President of Russia. 23.01.2020. Available at: http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62646 (accessed: 31.01.2025).

[9] Press Conference on the Results of Russian-Iranian Negotiations // President of Russia. 17.01.2025. Available at: http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/76126 (accessed: 31.01.2025). [My Emphasis]

Lavrov’s blend of optimism and realism is essential for a diplomat. His faith that at some future point he Outlaw US Empire will abandon its arrogance and become one of the poles in the evolving multipolar world is probably correct, but it will be a very long waiting period. Although the Outlaw US Empire is currently suffering a military defeat, Team Trump has already shown that debacle will not force it to change its arrogant ways. Unfortunately, arrogance is rife—ubiquitous—throughout the USA. America’s colonizers are to balme, but Americans have perpetuated and made it a national trait. As WW2 began, Billie Holiday saw how arrogance was present within even poor African-American lives as well as internationally when she composed her “God Bless the Child” in 1939 and finally recorded it in 1941. A poem Ms. Holiday made famous was “Strange Fruit” that was finally recorded in 1939 and which the Roosevelt administration tried very hard to censor and ban. Many musicians have covered “Child” but society has yet to show it’s received its message. One of arrogance’s indicators is gross, deep poverty amidst great wealth, and the Empire has that in spades to the point where laws are passed to forbid people helping less fortunate people. And the people enacting those laws call themselves Christians. Yes, and you can be certain that good Christians wearing white robes were present for the events that generated “Strange Fruit.” The savages need to cease their projection and take a good long look at what they actually are while considering what they must do to become what they say they are.

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