Root cause of the European refugee crisis

Migrants look out from the window of a train as they wait to depart from the railway station in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 21, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Thousands of refugees, from Syria, Iraq and Libya, are fleeing the conflicts raging in their homelands and seeking asylum in Europe. Such a large scale displacement of people is a crisis not only for the refugees themselves but also for the European nations as they struggle to provide for these unfortunate asylum seekers.

As the refugee crisis arose, the official response of the United States was that it trusted the European nations would be able to deal with it without outside help. If they needed expertize to deal with the refugees, the US Coast Guard, which has experience in dealing with such a problem, would be more than willing to share ideas. However, as the pressure mounted for the US to provide help, it first offered to accept 10,000 refugees, and then revised the number to 100,000 by the year 2017.

Despite the Western rhetoric about human rights and international laws not many Western nations want to take in large numbers of refugees. The so-called democratically elected Western governments are supposed to represent the opinions and interests of their own constituents, most of whom are unwilling to share what they have with the unfortunate asylum seekers, so it is not surprising that many Western nations, including the US, are unwilling to accept the refugees.

Donald Trump is the frontrunner to be the Republican candidate in the US presidential election, partly because of his campaign rhetoric that he would deport the 11 million illegal immigrants in the US if he was elected.

I do not like Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. But I like his candid remarks about the root cause of current refugee crisis in Europe. He said that George W. Bush was a disaster as president, and that if Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still in power, the Middle East region would be stable.

If the legitimate government in Iraq had not been toppled by Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq, there would not have been the civilian casualties and refugees from Iraq. If the US, the United Kingdom and France had not bombed Libya in a concerted manner, and if the US had not sent Christopher Smith to coordinate the action of Libyan rebels to overthrow the legitimate government of Gaddafi, there would not have been such an exodus of refugees from Libya.

Meanwhile, the ongoing civil war in Syria, which has killed thousands of civilians and displaced even more, is the main cause of the current refugee crisis in Europe.

Ever since the collapse of Soviet Union, the US government has become arrogant. As the only superpower in the world, it began to label countries it did not like as "outposts of tyranny", and began to instigate rebellions and revolutions in these countries to topple the legitimate governments. In the last couple decades, regime change in these countries has been a stated policy of the US government. Many troubles in the world are directly related to the foreign policy of the US.

The US government's use of regime change as a stated foreign policy is a serious violation of UN Charter. For the sake of the world peace and the well-being of people around the world, no power should be allowed to change other people's destinies by covert and open military means.

The author is a guest professor at Hebei University and a professor at Warren Wilson College.