TEHRAN- The European Union is planning to use frozen Russian assets to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. But the widespread damage to so many countries by U.S. and NATO wars, invasions, and carpet bombings has not been met with such efforts.   

The EU’s plans include an attempt to re-invest the international reserves of the Russian Central Bank in Ukraine. 

Moscow’s assets frozen under sanctions imposed by the EU can be divided into two main sections.

Private assets are worth nearly €19 billion while public assets held by state entities are about €300 billion of international reserves owned by the Russian Central Bank.

"Russia must also pay financially for the devastation that it caused,” European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said. Moscow has “to compensate Ukraine for the damage and cover the costs for rebuilding the country." she added.

In the midst of rising inflation across Europe, freezing and selling Russian assets is being viewed as an avenue by the 27-member bloc to raise funds for Ukraine.

However, EU sanctions are always temporary, so the assets at the end of the day must be returned to their original owners.

It seems that before this happens the EU is working hard to move the goalposts and ensure the frozen assets become a solid, bulletproof solution to "make Russia pay," as von der Leyen put it.

Whether Moscow should foot the entire bill for the reconstruction of Ukraine, where the majority of infrastructure damage is in the country’s eastern region of Donbas where ethnic Russians mainly reside, as well as the damage in the southeast and the rest of the country, is an issue that needs to be discussed and considered by the wider international community.

After all, NATO could have prevented this war by not expanding its military equipment and troops eastwards toward Russian borders in the years prior to the war.

The U.S. could have avoided the crisis in Ukraine and the suffering of Ukrainians by choosing to negotiate rather than reject the Kremlin’s proposals of security guarantees, which were sent to Washington months before the conflict erupted.

The Minsk agreements which began in 2014 after fighting erupted between ethnic Russian forces and the Ukrainian army in the eastern Donbas region could have been implemented to avoid a war.

Experts have questioned the double standards of the EU asking why such efforts have not been applied to the U.S.-led wars, proxy wars, invasions, and carpet bombings that have led to the complete destruction of countless countries over the past decades.

The U.S. invasion and 20-year occupation of Afghanistan saw an unprecedented rise in terrorism (ironically Washington invaded the country under the pretext of its so-called “war on terror”). During the two-decade occupation, Afghans witnessed nothing but destruction, terror, violence, mass killings, and other atrocities.

As a result of the spike in terrorism and regular U.S. attacks, the destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the damage caused to Afghan public sectors has left a humanitarian catastrophe after the U.S. fled Afghanistan in 2020.

The Afghanistan country director of Save the Children said in mid-February: “I’ve never seen anything like the desperate situation we have here in Afghanistan. We treat frighteningly ill children every day who haven’t eaten anything except bread for months. Parents are having to make impossible decisions – which of their children do they feed? Do they send their children to work or let them starve? These are excruciating choices that no parent should have to make.”

America’s longest war killed at least 66,000 Afghan national military and police as well as tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians, with different monitoring groups providing different death tolls.

In an ideal, just world, U.S. assets should have been frozen and used to finance the reconstruction of Afghanistan. American assets should have also been frozen and used to compensate the families of Afghans killed as a result of the U.S. invasion.

What happened was actually the opposite. 

Following its embarrassing and chaotic withdrawal, Washington seized Afghanistan’s assets leading to further humanitarian suffering for Afghans, the majority of whom now live in poverty.

Likewise, the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq saw widespread damage to the country’s infrastructure. Damage that has yet to be rebuilt.

Washington claims it waged war against Iraq to remove the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power. Everyone wanted to see the end of Saddam, but very few wanted the U.S. to be involved, especially considering the widespread hatred of America among Iraqis.

Even before the American invasion, U.S.-backed UN sanctions against Baghdad killed at least half a million Iraqi children, with some studies putting the number at around 1,500,000 Iraqis, primarily children, who died as a direct consequence of the imposed sanctions, citing UNICEF estimates.

During the U.S. war itself from 2003 to 2011, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, again because of an unprecedented rise in terrorism as a result of the U.S. “war on terror” and many other civilians were killed because of attacks by the U.S. military.

The damage to Iraq's infrastructure as a result of U.S. interference in the country (in the form of sanctions, airstrikes, and wars) from 1991 until its occupation which is ongoing until this day is estimated to have cost the nation trillions of dollars.

How many Iraqi civilians have been killed because of terrorist groups that did not exist before Washington’s 2003 invasion and U.S. carpet bombings in cities such as Mosul?

With such vast oil wealth, Iraqi infrastructure has been damaged to such an extent that the country still relies on Iranian energy exports for its electricity.

Why are U.S. assets not being frozen and used to finance the reconstruction of Iraq? Why are U.S. assets not being frozen and used to compensate the families of civilians murdered because of terrorism that came with the U.S. invasion?

As many reports have emerged over the years, NATO killed civilians when it waged war on Libya to allegedly help overthrow longtime ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi. The U.S.-led military alliance’s bombing campaign had a devastating toll but, more than a decade after the war, NATO has yet to take any responsibility.

Again, the same theme emerges. There was no terrorism before NATO bombed Libya. Since then, the country has been embroiled in terror with Daesh and other Takfiri groups wreaking havoc in the north African country.

Wherever the U.S. and its NATO allies go, so do terrorist groups.

The U.S. military is occupying regions in eastern and northeastern Syria and looting the country’s oil in an attempt to prevent Damascus from restoring its own infrastructure and services following a decade of U.S.-backed war on the country.

Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia, has faced an eight-year, Saudi-led, U.S.-backed bombing campaign that has destroyed the country’s entire infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have been killed because of U.S.-made bombs, that have been dropped using U.S. intelligence with warplanes whose pilots were trained by the U.S. and UK military.

Rights groups accuse the U.S. and its allies, including Canada and European countries of being directly complicit in the war. Yemeni officials say Saudi Arabia was used as a proxy by Washington and that the U.S. was the one that waged war on it in March 2015.

Such is the damage inflicted on Yemen, which is too difficult to estimate, and U.S. assets should be frozen and used to finance the reconstruction of Yemen.

This is a country that the United Nations has described as having the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.  

Washington’s support for the Israeli regime’s ethnic cleansing, and genocidal terrorism campaign against the Palestinians is well documented.

The list of U.S. wars is long. Washington economically survives on waging wars, and invasions and using proxies to trigger violence, unrest, terrorism, and civil wars in regions well beyond its borders.

From the Vietnam war to the shadow wars in Somalia, Pakistan, and the African continent, why isn’t the U.S. being held accountable? Why are U.S. assets not being frozen? Why are there no punitive actions against Washington? 

A "U.S.-dominated international order?" perhaps needs to be changed. The sooner the better for international peace, security, justice, and accountability.