On October 1st, the Literary and History Society hosted a debate in the Fitzgerald Chamber on the motion ’’There is no moral difference between Russian and US foreign policy.’’ Six speakers addressed the topic, and at the end, the chair, Katie O’Sullivan, hesitantly announced that the opposition had won the debate, based on the audience vote.
Aaron Maté, a Canadian writer and journalist for The Grayzone, opened the debate for the proposition. While the rest of the speakers acknowledged that Russian foreign policy is the great evil in this debate, Maté did not defend that standpoint. Maté is widely criticised as a major amplifier of pro-Russian geopolitical disinformation.
Major disagreement came up when Maté claimed that “the US was so devoted to regime change in Damascus” that they allied with al-qaeda to reach their goal. Scott Lucas took a point of information, quoting a comment from Maté on social media saying, “I never claimed expertise on Russia, Ukraine or Syria”, for which he got applause from some members of the audience. He further said that after taking out Syria, (…)the US and Israel had moved on to target Iran, making it sound like the US and Israel have a long-term plan to dominate the Middle East.
Furthermore, Maté claimed that “Moscow would not have committed all this carnage if not for US actions,” for which he received many shames from the audience. Maté further states that the US “welcomed the overthrow of the (Ukrainian) government” and that the US policy could have prevented the Russian invasion.
The second speaker for the proposition was the student Eoin Medlycott; he remarked that both the US and Russia do not respect the integrity of other countries, following a “domestic nationalist-focused view”. He remarked that the foreign policies of both countries shifted in the last few years since the reigns of Putin and Trump to a foreign policy driven by national self-interest. Joe Greevy, a PhD candidate in engineering, was the 3rd and last speaker of the proposition. He began his speech poetically, saying that the US is morally bankrupt. Greevy built his argument by condemning the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam by the US. He furthermore stated that during the Vietnam War, ” America was opposed by the loss of American lives,s not the crimes committed against the Vietnamese.’’ He closed his speech by saying, ” There has been a lot of talk about rules-based order, and I tried to talk about people. And I think suffering has a limit.’’
The second speaker of the evening and the first speaker for the opposition attacking the motion was Michael Kimmage, a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. Kimmage, like all opposition speakers, emphasised that US foreign policy is imperfect but that there is a significant difference between the two countries’ political systems. So he argues that Russia fails to condemn their soldiers for war crimes, but instead they were given an award ” for what they did. Russia, unlike the US, also does not have a free press, and Kimmage refers to the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed, presumably by the state. And lastly, Kimmage critiques that there is ’’zero accountability for the autocrat who is in charge of Russia, meaning Vladimir Putin.
The second speaker of the opposition was Stephen Hall, a political scientist and lecturer at the University of Bath. Hall started his speech explaining that ’’the US is a democratic system ” which ’’has established a rules-based order that has kept us to a large extent safe.’’ The audience did not receive his introduction well, and he was interrupted by a point of information asking whether the motion would address US domestic or foreign policy. Hall sees good US morals in the effort the state puts into NATO, and he sees Eastern European countries’ desire to join NATO as proof that they want the US to protect them from Russia.
The last speech of the debate was delivered by Scott Lucas, who is a lecturer at the UCD Clinton Institute, and seemed to be the audience favourite before his speech even started, as judged by the applause he received. Lucas started by explaining that he ’’cannot stand US foreign policy ” and also explained that ’’this motion is not about parts of US foreign policy; it is about all of US foreign policy.’’ While Lucas acknowledges that the US has done bad things in the past and in the present, such as providing weapons to Gaza, he also emphasises the good it has done, such as the Marshall Plan after WWII. Scott’s main argument centred on US intervention in Syria. He emphasised that the US was fighting the Assad regime and voting for the proposition would ’’bury and erase all the civilians.’’ He also condemned Maté’s claim that the US was allied with al-Qaeda because ’’he (Maté) did not read the full document, ” doubting his abilities as a critical journalist. Scott finished his speech by saying that it was neither the US nor NATO that attacked Ukraine in a full-scale invasion,n but Russia.
Finally, if the audience did as the chair, Katie O’Sullivan, said and took a shot every time she said ’’order’’ then no one would have made it through the evening. Especially at the end, during the Q&A, the disagreement towards Maté became clear when a student shouted a shut up ” in his direction because he kept interrupting the chair. However, the whole Q&A round almost went out of control, and Katie O’Sullivan was close to dispersing the chamber. The debate finished, and the motion failed, which came as no surprise when taking a look at the opposition, which was filled with three professors, and the proposition,n which was defended by two students and a highly criticised journalist.
Selina Ohner – Contributor