Translated from GegenStandpunkt 2-2019
Trump’s Latin America and the Troika of Tyranny
I. Worldwide and in its own backyard – dangers everywhere for America first!
Since Donald Trump decided to become a politician and finally put his great country back in first place on the world political agenda, where it deserves to be, he has, as is well known, noticed many unpleasantries when looking at the world: above all, a world disorder in which grotesquely disadvantageous multilateral treaties, agreements on trade and disarmament, and international laws that were not even made by the USA prevent the USA from securing its political and economic interests in accordance with its potential, i.e., its rights; in which its long-standing enemies, far less powerful than itself, exploit it economically by earning American dollars and at the same time refuse to grant it political respect; in which even long-standing allies steal US jobs, enrich themselves off American purchasing power via unfair trade imbalances, and then get the USA to protect them, free of charge; in which, in short, the USA is shackled and robbed of its opportunities everywhere and in every way by pathetically bad deals on world trade and in world politics. In contrast, since taking office, Trump, always guided by the principle that a US president is first and foremost committed to American interests and nothing and nobody else, has done a lot and withdrawn from disarmament treaties, trade agreements, and the role of dutiful guarantor of the old-style imperialist world order; he has questioned the UN and NATO, as well as old enmities and, above all, old “friendships,” used tariffs to rescue the jobs of hard working Americans and an unprecedented arms buildup to defend the borders of God’s own country, whose – finally! – ruthlessly fair calculation of benefits and overwhelming power should be taken into account by anyone who wants something from the USA or in opposition it.
1. The USA and the Pan-American community: Good fences make good neighbors
And there are far too many of them. Not only in Asia and Europe in the form of calculating leaders who still refuse to acknowledge Washington’s now not-so-new announcements and their implementation and continue their policies which are detrimental to the US. But also directly on the nation’s southern doorstep, in the very different form of terrifying caravans of refugees from all over Latin America who illegally cross the border with all their poverty, insolently lodge themselves in a US labor market that has no room for them, and endanger national security with drug and human trafficking and every other kind of crime.
To turn away this destitution, Trump has promised his enthusiastic voters a beautiful wall to secure the southern border. Although significant progress has yet to been made due to the obstruction of radical leftist Democrats in Congress and like-minded judges, the debate surrounding it and all issues of border security has helped clarify how the superior power on the northern side of the border views the largely impoverished societies on the southern side.
The Yankee power insists in its own way on the solidarity of all Americans, and proclaims April 14, 2019 to be Pan American Day, represented by its leaders, followed by just such a Week, as it has been doing every year since 1930.[1] On this occasion, the president declares to his fellow Pan Americans five times on a single short page of text that “since the 19th century” they have all belonged to the Western Hemisphere, which he sometimes realistically calls “ours,” but also a “hemisphere united in democracy, prosperity and security,” which obviously owes more to the festive atmosphere than to any Latin American reality. And the “proclamation” once again takes up the most important “problems” from the US perspective, those which Trump sees as most important for making “substantial progress” in pan-American cooperation and which, as anyone can see from the list of problems, urgently call for his fabulous border wall, without having to specifically mention them, as sensitivity demands on this holiday of continental unity:
“ … issues such as trafficking and crime, poverty reduction, and safety. [It’s necessary] to disrupt transnational criminal networks, stem drug and human trafficking, enhance citizen security, and strengthen border security.”
With successes in these areas, “the nations of America” could then also renew their “common mission of advancing freedom,” the success of which the business-savvy president measures primarily in terms of “unmatched levels of trade and investment.”
So on Pan American Day, the US government once again proclaims the current version of how Washington views “our hemisphere,” colloquially known as “the USA’s backyard.” According to the superpower, the peoples of the Americas, in their shared mission to advance freedom on the double continent, have a clear division of tasks: those in the south should simply keep to themselves with their poverty, their drugs, and all the crime connected with them that sucks billions of dollars out of the US. Above all, they should simply stop their wretched masses from migrating to wherever they please. In migrating from the misery of the South to the labor markets of the North, they bring every conceivable evil to the US with them and spread nothing but problems and insecurity. In return, the leading nation of global capitalism is also prepared to do its part to promote the coexistence of all Americans: under the command of its own new “immigration czar,” it will do its utmost to radicalize its border regime, deport as many illegal immigrants as possible, write new immigration laws for the top intellects, including those from Latin America, and bolster the will of its southern neighbor with threats of punitive tariffs on imports from Mexico “to stop illegal immigration across the common border into the USA.” (n-tv, May 31, 2019) Otherwise, the Yankees will contact the relevant authorities in good time if there are deals to be made on “trade and investment” across the southern border.
From the perspective of the US government, it should be possible for every country in Pan America to freely earn a livelihood on the world market, which the US so generously supplies with its dollars, for the needs of its state power and the people belonging to it. And if some Latin American countries are unable to do so, the US would be quite happy if the nations in question would not constantly bother it with problems they should resolve themselves as far as possible. Of course, part of the solution involves establishing a rewarding political and business relationship with the US, preparing for US capital investment, and focusing on meeting the needs of their own nations by fairly and diligently serving North American business interests. But it’s quite wrong to hold the foreign business world or the donors of the money they are always wanting to make – and on which they are, after all, dependent as states – responsible for the failure of such projects of national development or survival, which happens again and again. From the US perspective, blaming the superpower north of the Rio Grande for the hardships associated with the struggle for dollars in the poor countries of the South is a violation of the spirit of community within the entire American hemisphere and a widespread and long-standing mistake in Latin America: It is the basis and substance for an unfounded anti-Americanism and Yankee hatred, which has experienced a sad resurgence over the last decade and a half, but is now losing momentum as a result of the electoral successes of realistic forces in countries such as Brazil and Argentina. In any case, the president does not wish to return to the old days when the US exercised its responsibility for the hemisphere’s anti-communist freedom by constantly interfering in every anti-American, socialism-leaning Latino shithole: with US-financed torture regimes, large and small CIA and military operations, exorbitantly expensive, American-organized civil wars, and repeated, necessary, yet ultimately unsatisfactory “nation building,” with ever-new corrupt regimes that lack respect and ungrateful peoples. Trump’s “America first!” policy aims to finally drain this backyard swamp of unwanted imperialist responsibilities and costs, and to commit the Latin American states to a Pan-American community that offers them the only realistic national perspective: serving the superpower, which for its part is committed to nothing but its own benefit.
2. The outsiders – and how they earned the enmity of the USA
Most countries in the southern hemisphere now see this as an offer that should not be refused and, in his Pan-American Declaration, Trump praises the progress that North and South have already made together. This is despite the remaining “current challenges” in the region, by which he means the stubborn, therefore illegitimate and far too long lasting, existence of the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua: These disruptive outsiders in the American family of nations have long lacked such things as a “deep respect for liberty” and the “indispensable condition of representative democracy,” important values specifically laid down – “enshrined” – in the Charter of the Organization of American States, as they have an abundance of “tyranny and authoritarianism,” along with “brutality,” “corruption,” and economic “ruin.” That is why the president is using this new holiday for all Americans to proclaim the duty to “continue to support the people of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua as they fight for the restoration of democracy and liberty.”
This struggle “between dictatorship and democracy, between oppression and freedom” in these countries, which he acknowledges in his “proclamation,” strongly reminds Trump of the old socialism thing, and personal stories from Havana and Caracas has confirmed this to him. Fortunately, however, he has information that “the twilight hour of socialism and communism ... in our hemisphere” has just arrived, as he was able to report as a speaker at a Venezuelan exile community event in Florida. The president, however, does not want to leave the demise of the triply wrong “troika of tyranny” to the setting of the historical sun, but to help it along with the considerable resources of the world power. It is beyond question that the members of this triumvirate have earned the enmity of the USA, even if they are hardly involved in the continuous shipment of drugs and migrants to the US, which so many other southern neighbors are to blame for. They play the role of eternal troublemakers who refuse to cooperate in a win-win situation that benefits the USA, in a different, outrageous, and actually long ago unacceptable way: in place of subservient cooperation, they distance themselves from the superpower in their political undertakings and free themselves from it. They want to wrest the means to do so from the world market – in foreign exchange dollars, of course! – in order to secure their political sovereignty and economic inventory, which they are attempting to further develop by transforming their traditionally largely superfluous masses into resources for their nations. What this necessarily involves in terms of depriving the US of its claims – justified by its imperialist nature – and a critical rejection of American proposals to correct such misguided policies, in other words, its disrespectful resistance to the leaders of the hemisphere in Washington, all of this constitutes a flagrant abuse of the free market order and its good world money, in combination with the continued violation of the USA’s human right to good deals, to which it is perhaps even more entitled in its own Pan-American “hemisphere” than anywhere else in the world. In addition to all this, to the detriment of the three countries which for decades now have been resisting, in addition to impeding, the well-meaning pressure from the imperialist forces of freedom, is the fact that these disturbances have, for several years, successfully fostered the formation of anti-American organizations on their subcontinent and, moreover, offered opportunities for the USA’s strategic competitors, particularly Russia and China, to gain a political and economic foothold near the US border, solely for their own benefit. It is obvious to the Trump administration that these activities must be stopped, given that nobody in the imperialist world actually needs these strange “socialists and communists,” even if one of them disguises himself as a devout Christian friend of business in Managua. Conversely, however, they continue to fight to survive within it and on what they can wrest from this world. The fact that this long overdue end hasn’t already been brought about long ago with the overwhelming power of the USA is a scandal in itself, which those currently in power in the White House are using critically against their predecessors. In any case, they do not want to make the same mistake, and are finally going to do what they have always been able to do because they have always been able to do it.
3. Unrefusable offers of surrender to the troublemakers
To this end, they are relying on a program designed to cripple the economic life of the three countries, already damaged by years of previous economic restrictions, with comprehensive sanctions that all amount to cutting them off as completely as possible from foreign markets as sellers and buyers and from vital dollar revenues. In this way, they should be forced to capitulate sooner or later, either because they recognize the hopelessness of their situation or under the pressure of riots, starving masses, or the domestic military. The US warns against prolonged intransigence in the face of the non-negotiable goal of eliminating hostile regimes and against attacks on any internal opposition that may exist, pointing to its overwhelming military power, which gives it the freedom to “put all options on the table.” This, in combination with the capitalistically essential political license to access the American commodities and financial markets, also represents the groundwork for Washington’s pressure on other states, as in the case of Venezuela, to recognize a quickly provided alternative ruler, and above all to completely prevent any compensatory trade in commodities and financial transactions with the three incriminated states. In this way, the US government is extending its national sanctions regime into a global legal situation which it demands the international community respect.
The threat of military intervention makes the economic extortion inescapable, which is why even Trump, who does not consider a new, costly war scenario necessary to achieve surrender – “we seek a peaceful transition of power...” – doesn’t refrain from repeatedly pointing out: “all options are open.” At the same time, he rebuffs his on-site presidential minion who is pushing for military intervention in Caracas because of his desire for such “premature action.” And he threatens the Venezuelan army, which is still loyal to the government, not with military destruction, but with the long arm of American justice – “you will find no safe harbor...” – including what Trump considers the most acceptable punishment for the military, whom he accuses of enriching themselves at the expense of the people and the public purse: “You will lose everything!”
Trump considers the catchphrase of the “American hemisphere” to be a completely responsibility-free claim on the servitude of the states located there to US interests. He is said to have expressed “frustration” because he does not want “to be pushed into a military confrontation” by his advisors, either in Latin America with reference to imperialist constraints or in Iran. (Washington Post, quoted in FAZ, May 17, 2019) The “hawks” in the White House around Bolton & Co, so named because of their notorious enthusiasm for purely military solutions, are using the repeatedly renewed threats of war to give Trump’s policies a different spin: Bolton announces that “the overthrow of Maduro [is] only the first battle in a much broader struggle for democratic conditions on the American double continent” (NZZ, 2.5.19), thereby shifting Trump’s efforts to force the troublemakers in his backyard to surrender cost-effectively, i.e., without spending dollars and “precious American lives,” using unpredictable but always credible threats of force, toward a mission pursued with all economic and military means. He explicitly justifies this with the fact that “the ‘troika of tyranny’ is located in the American hemisphere” (Bolton, ibid.) and ties it in “quite ideologically” (FAZ, May 6, 2019) with, in light of the Chinese-Russian activities in the region, the old fight against communist evil in the hemisphere.
II. The triple sanctions regime – a decisive stranglehold in the service of freedom
With such imperialistic mixed messages within a “divided administration” (ibid.), the US government is setting out to take on the members of the evil troika one by one and all at once, in order to quickly dispose of them on the famous dung heap of history where they have long belonged.
1. Rich Venezuela
Venezuela, the most important and at the same time most vulnerable case, is known to Trump as once “the wealthiest nation by far in South America,” with the world’s largest oil reserves and therefore “great potential.” Trump takes aim at Venezuela as such, at least in its potential as a nation rich in oil-dollars, which distinguishes it from the other Latin American poorhouses, and which provided it, until the crisis-induced collapse of its oil business and its “Bolivarian” command supply capitalism, with the means to subsidize friendly nations. Given Cuba’s and Nicaragua’s economic dependence on Venezuelan oil deliveries at preferential prices, Trump is certain that if Venezuela falls, the rest will fall too.[2] In his determination to overthrow the Maduro regime, he finds that the conditions for forcing the regime to surrender are ripe in the country in two respects. First, economically: by using the dollar revenues from the oil business and the debt based on it for its national reconstruction program, the country has brought itself to the brink of ruin, especially since the price of its main export fell in the wake of the banking crisis. Its dependence on oil exports provides the US, as the main buyer of oil and at the same time the dominant power in the international financial markets and the global capital and payment flows that go with it, with the decisive weapon to cut the country off from its vital sources of foreign exchange. Secondly, politically: the economic crisis is strengthening the opposition, which has been engaged in attempts to overthrow the Chavistas for many years and now sees the opportunity to turn the situation into a political crisis of state leadership intensively supported by the US.
This is necessary because the Venezuelan people need a new government. They have already made numerous mistakes in the stuggle for power, which has been waged with every trick in the democratic electoral book: first, they gave the opposition a majority in parliament, then they re-elected the Chavista president, thereby failing to resolve the raging dispute over legitimacy between the rival institutions. So the US is deciding the question of legitimacy – someone has to do it – instead of the people, declaring the presidential election invalid, along with the election to the Constituent National Assembly which the Chavista team instituted on account of the illegitimate majority in parliament. Bold intervention by the Americans clarifies the legal situation, so that only a totally legitimate parliament is left and the need for a new president is missing. He is quickly found in the figure of the president of the parliament, who is then endorsed by Washington along with fifty or so friendly heads of state. So everything would now be fine if Maduro and his followers would recognize the loss of their legitimacy. Since this is unfortunately not the case, they must be warned with due seriousness against attacks on the new leadership installed by the US and its various events aimed at asserting its claim to power in the country, because remember: “all options are on the table.”
The sanctions regime is being perfected in order to cut off the old regime from all financial resources. Sanctions against individuals – officers, officials, entrepreneurs close to the Chavistas – are being extended; they are being isolated commercially, and their assets in the US are being frozen. From 2017 onwards, the refinancing of old government debts with new ones has been prevented with threats against any banks headquartered in the USA, and trade in Venezuelan government bonds, central bank bonds, and securities of the state oil company PDVSA is being blocked.[3] Washington is linking its economic destruction to a constructive perspective: Following Guaidó’s self-proclamation as interim president, the US is extending sanctions to the state oil industry, although the purchase of Venezuelan oil remains permitted – not least out of consideration for US refineries specializing in Venezuelan oil – but payments must be made to blocked accounts in the US, to which only Guaidó, the de facto-president legitimized by Washington, has access. This is a dual use of the sanctions regime, which both cuts off the existing regime from its revenues and provides the alternative government with precisely these same funds – while safeguarding the economic interests of the USA in the continued flow of Venezuelan oil to the US.[4]
The third benefit of the sanctions regime against Venezuela is that it permanently cuts off Nicaragua and Cuba, the previous beneficiaries of Venezuelan oil supplies at special rates, from this aid, thereby destroying the already diminished material cooperation within the Troika. The US is extending the sanctions regime to all ships owned or operated by the Venezuelan state oil company, as well as to foreign ships and shipping companies that transport Venezuelan oil to Cuba on its behalf, by freezing their assets in the US and blocking their access to the financial system.
The US sanctions regime is having an impact in the country: the Venezuelan state can no longer maintain its supply services and public infrastructure, public life is largely collapsing, and its plight is being exacerbated by targeted acts of sabotage against the country's power supply. The US is speculating on the productive effects of this chaos and intensifying hardships on the morale of the people: normal life in Venezuela is to be made so impossible that the desire for a return to peace and quiet finally makes even a halfway functioning monopoly on violence seem like a positive living condition. At the borders of the country, which is being deprived of all supplies, the US government is delaying aid deliveries, thus demonstrating to the people that it not only has the power to oppress them, but also to free them from their misery.[5] First and foremost, however, the aid deliveries serve to provoke clashes at the border in order to raise the all-important question of force: the military is being compelled to choose between acting against the masses as they attempt to bring aid supplies across the border or to turn against its government and “side with the people.” Ultimately, the change of power is a question of force, i.e., whether and when the military will abandon the old president. But because loyalty to him is eroding only slowly, the matter drags out, weeks pass, and the military strike by the great ally desired by the opposition is still not forthcoming, so that at some point in May the two Venezuelan camps agree to a mediation event organized by the Europeans, who have been somewhat sidelined until now, and meet in Norway for talks, which Washington promptly dismisses as uninteresting and fundamentally wrong...[6]
2. Nicaragua, the unbearable nobody
Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua does not have a significant source of world money that could be used to basically liberate it from the impoversihed conditions common to states in the region. Nevertheless, in recent years, the country has achieved above-average growth rates with its shabby domestic capitalism, and social welfare programs made living conditions in the country somewhat tolerable for its population, at least in comparison to the hellish conditions in the neighboring states. At least Nicaraguans do not represent a significant contingent in the exodus of those who can no longer endure life in the neighboring countries and against whose onslaught Trump is vehemently positioning himself on the Mexican border. The majority of the population has remained inside the country and, for years, has ensured a relatively stable power base for Daniel Ortega through democratic election victories, despite all the hostility that the Sandinista regime has faced from the Americans for forty years now since removing the US-friendly terror regime of the Somoza family.
It is also well known that Nicaragua did not achieve such exceptional status in the region compared to Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador on its own: since the oil boom in Venezuela under Chávez, Nicaragua has been supported as a political ally by Caracas because its domestic economy does not generate enough revenue for the Sandinista government. Accordingly, the Nicaraguan government is facing severe budgetary problems as Venezuela’s ongoing ruin leads to a loss of additional dollar revenues from the resale of discounted oil supplies.
For Trump, this confirms that a change of government can be brought about in this country, and how. The fight against Chavista Venezuela, thanks to which Nicaragua was able to afford to distance itself from Washington in the first place, coupled with sanctions specifically tailored to the country, is intended to deprive the country of its economic lifeline. Washington anticipates that the worsening economic situation imposed by the US will strengthen the hitherto weak political opposition to the country’s own government and, with its benevolently supported activism, call into question the continued existence of the Sandinista regime.[7] This is confirmed by the increase in protests since the escalation of sanctions. Above all, opposition from the business community in the country, which years ago had come to terms with the Ortega government for its own benefit, is being revived. It blames its own government for the fact that Washington is now undermining the freedom of business in Nicaragua, a freedom that Ortega has respected, and is taking the lead in the anti-government unrest.
3. Cuba – the true imperialist in Latin America
The US is unanimous in its assessment of Cuba: Cuba is the true center of anti-Americanism in Latin America.
“For decades, the socialist dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela have supported each other in a highly corrupt business. Venezuela gave Cuba oil. In return, Cuba gave Venezuela a police state directly from Havana.” (Trump to Venezuelan emigrants, whitehouse.gov) “Cuba is the real imperialist power in Venezuela.” (Secretary of State Pompeo, quoted by CNN, March 11, 2019) “The leaders of Cuba are the real imperialists in the region. While normal countries export goods, Cuba exports tyranny. The moment has come to rid Venezuela of Cuba.” (US Vice President Pence, quoted by amerika21.de, April 9, 2019)
With this slightly paranoid, in-house theory of imperialism, Washington summarizes the current state of Cuba’s crimes in such a way that it alone makes it impossible to continue tolerating these activities, which have been going on for 60 years despite all the hostility from the US. The regime remains so politically consolidated internally that, unlike in Venezuela and Nicaragua, there is no significant opposition within the country for the US to link up with. Instead, the country has always supported “socialist revolutions,” i.e., national emancipation efforts in its neighboring states, and thus has remained a constant thorn in Washington’s side to this day.
Trump blames the fact that this regime has survived all the hostility from the US and is still not thinking of giving up on his predecessor Obama in particular: in view of the fact that Cuba had reoriented toward more private economic initiative and freedoms for the dollar under the pressure of US sanctions, Obama “normalized” relations with Cuba to a certain extent and eased sanctions. By expanding diplomatic, economic, and interpersonal contacts, all aimed at the freer development of a corrosive dollar economy in Cuba, the political command of the ruling party was to be gradually undermined in order to advance the American version of “change through rapprochement.” [8]
The Trump administration learns from this only that the US has allowed the enemy state to survive and does away with this policy of civil conquest: The power of the dollar is being brought into play – not by making it available to the Cuban state for the purpose of undermining it, but by denying as radically as possible Cuba’s access to the dollar and the world market on which the country has become more dependent than ever thanks to its opening up.[9] Trump reinstates and tightens most of the sanctions that Obama lifted or weakened: With the first ever enactment of Part III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, known by the names of its authors Helms and Burton, the former owners of property expropriated in Cuba are granted the right to assert their claims against the Cuban government and anyone who does business with it at the expense of their former property titles in US courts. The Cuban state is thus denied the right to dispose over significant parts of its wealth and business resources without regard to the property rights established by US law; and, like its business partners, it faces the threat of US jurisdiction. The US government defines Cuban assets and the Cuban property system related to them at its own hostile discretion and guarantees with its power the execution of the restituted claims. This significantly tightens the punishment already being imposed on companies that violate the US embargo: Companies all over the world that do business in Cuba are criminalized and confronted with the accusation that they are dealing with “confiscated property.”[10] In doing so, Trump is demonstratively ignoring the interests of states operating there by means of their companies or directly as economic beneficiaries or political supporters of the government. Russia and China in particular, but also the EU and Canada, are not only affected, but are explicitly called on to subordinate their acquired property rights, their economic and other relations with Cuba, to property rights defined by the US and, if necessary, to give them up.
III. Announcement to all
The practical imperialist criticism, which the Trump administration is using to competing against the evil trio, reveals, with its “we kindly inform you” to the hemisphere, the high requirements it sets for what it considers a prosperous coexistence between the American states: decisions by sovereign states in the region regarding the political and economic development path of their nations are in principle subject to approval by the US. Not in the positive sense of being prescribed in detail how they should bring their masses to heel and earn the livelihood of their state authority. Rather, it stipulates in a general sense that such state undertakings must be connected in some beneficial, but in no case detrimental way, with the economic or political interests of the US. This strict standard of assessment implies that national efforts, such as those of the three “troika” states, which pursue an economic and political path of their “own,” i.e., one oriented toward their own national interests rather than those of the US,[11] are rated to be not only incomprehensible, but also as clearly hostile because of their incompatibility with the idea of a fair deal, i.e., one that is also beneficial for the US.
The US has always viewed such efforts, which have shaped Latin American history since the end of the colonial era, with great suspicion. The traditional back-and-forth of many South and Central American states between the struggle to build a national economic base by promoting domestic production, import substitution, and national development on the one hand, and a radical openness to foreign capital and political service to it on the other, has led to the former type of Latin American nationalism being viewed by the Trump administration with the general suspicion of being an obstacle to the US, uncooperative, anti-American, and disrespectful. The Trump administration insists that the national interests and ambitions of the countries of the hemisphere coincide with their service to and subordination under the demands of the USA, as long as its political and economic access to these countries is guaranteed,[12] regardless of how they as nations can live off this and the consequences. The world power has no plans to make any further positive concessions to their nationalism. Those who insist on their own agenda, like the Troika states, must reckon with the irreconcilable hostility of the world power, that is, with the fact that it will unilaterally resolve the contradiction of obedient and subservient sovereigns on a case-by-case basis with its superior force. And that it will keep a close eye on who cooperates sufficiently in its backyard or takes the wrong side.[13]
In the wake of the struggle against the Troika, the remnants of previous efforts by Latin American states to create a counterweight to the influence and dominance of the US through joint alliances and to gain greater economic and political freedom are also coming to an end. Argentina and Brazil in particular have largely brought about their own demise since the victory of right-wing nationalist governments and are now continuing to work on this with Washington’s benevolent support.[14] Thus, Latin America’s reorientation is progressing under the motto “Nuestro Norte es el Norte” (Our compass points north).
The US policy against the “troika of tyranny” also affects its imperialist rivals. Assets, usage rights, and political cooperation agreements that foreign powers have established under the existing regimes in the troika countries are summarily declared irrelevant and ignored, because Trump is resolutely opposed to the economic and political ties of the three false regimes with Russia and China and the associated presence of competing great power interests in Latin America. All of this is due to the political deviations of the three tyrannical states that must be corrected, which is why Trump and his Boltons, in all their imperialist brazenness, assume that the positions acquired by the Chinese and Russians will then also be cleared away along with the three regimes. The Bolton faction recalls the contemporary relevance of the old “Monroe Doctrine,” which previous administrations already declared obsolete, about – once again – enforcing the exclusion of foreign powers from South America, and thereby brings up a fundamental question for American hemispheric imperialism: In this interpretation, foreign powers have no say in Latin America[15]; the US must remain in control and has sole authority over “what goes on here.” The White House will have to decide how to enforce this on the three recalcitrant regimes: whether the US owes itself an ultimate demonstration of its supremacy in the hemisphere, as some are pushing for; or whether, like the president, it assumes the superiority of US power to be self-evident, which permits every freedom in dealing with the troublemakers and, given the destructive potential of its economic weapons, may not even require the use of military force.
[1] Since 1930, the United States and nearly all countries to its south have commemorated Pan American Day, marking the first international conference of American states in 1890, which gave rise to the precursor to the Organization of American States (OAS). On this day, the sitting US presidents issue a proclamation reaffirming and clarifying the nation’s current political stance toward its southern neighbors.
[2] “[Bolton] said Cuban security forces are propping up Maduro to continue receiving below-world-market-price oil. ‘Once that’s broken, it’s going to put real pressure on Cuba, too, because if that authoritarian government had to buy oil at global prices, not the subsidy that Chavez and Maduro gave to Cuba, they’d be in real economic trouble, too,’ he said.” (Bolton in a Breitbart interview, March 21, 2019)
[3] The Latin American Center for Geopolitics (Celag) estimates the direct and indirect damage caused by sanctions against Venezuela for the years 2013-2017 at approximately $350 billion. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told the UN that the assets currently being withheld from the Venezuelan state by foreign banks amount to several billion US dollars. Thus, Venezuela’s diversification of its dollar holdings outside the US is of no help. “However, the unlawful seizure of nearly $30 billion in assets belonging to Citgo, the US subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, by North American authorities has caused particular damage. Furthermore, Citgo has been prevented from transferring profits generated in the United States to Venezuela since 2007. This represents an additional tens of billions of dollars that have been unavailable for investments in modernizing the oil industry and infrastructure.” (Junge Welt, May 3, 2019)
[4] Maduro then cut off oil deliveries to the US – Venezuela’s main customer until then. Since then, the majority of exports have gone to India, China, and Singapore, which serve as storage and transshipment points for re-export. The Russian state-owned company Rosneft acts as a major buyer and intermediary in processing payments for the oil deliveries. The Trump administration has since openly threatened sanctions against Rosneft and against third-party states and companies that continue to trade with Venezuela, in order to close the last remaining loopholes in the sanctions regime.
[5] Maduro responded to the battle for the loyalty of the people with mirror-image counter-agitation, initially sending aid deliveries to Colombia in a demonstrative gesture, but then having to admit that under the current circumstances he can no longer guarantee supplies for the Venezuelan people and concluded an agreement with international aid organizations classified as independent. What remains is the ideological defensive fight against interference from the north, so that the people remain loyal to their leadership and fight for the “achievements of the revolution,” of which nothing remains.
[6] “‘Free elections cannot be overseen by a tyrant,’ declared the State Department in Washington... Therefore, negotiations with Maduro in Oslo could only concern 'the conditions of his departure.” (Junge Welt, May 27, 2019)
[7] More detailed explanations can be found in: “Sandinismo in Nicaragua comes to its forced end” from GegenStandpunkt 2-19
[8] See GegenStandpunkt 1-15: “Amerika reicht dem kubanischen Volk die Hand zur Freundschaft (Obama) – Die USA besinnen sich auf ihren Dollar-Imperialismus” [untranslated].
[9] “The Cuban military and intelligence services must not profit from the United States, its people, its travelers, or its businesses... It is important that our policy includes concrete measures to prevent US dollars from reaching the Cuban military, security, and intelligence services.” (US National Security Advisor Bolton)
[10] “We must hold Cuba accountable, and all US plaintiffs should reclaim the assets seized by the Cuban government. Doing business with Cuba is not worth dealing with confiscated property,” said US Secretary of State Pompeo on March 4. (quoted by RT, March 7, 2019) A “senior official at the US State Department said: We will not allow those who trade in confiscated goods to go unpunished. Any company that deals with such foreign property could be held liable under this law.” (euractiv.de, April 18, 2019)
[11] Detailed accounts of the intentions of these left-wing governments in Latin America, the conditions they are rebelling against, the contradictions they are grappling with, and what has become of their national renewal programs can be found in the articles: “‘Left Turn’ in Latin America: A rebellion in the backyard of the USA” from GegenStandpunkt 1-2007; “Venezuela: The decline of ‘Bolivarian socialism’ and its reasons” from GegenStandpunkt 2-2018; “Cuba’s ‘new path to socialism’: State-Organized Third-World Capitalism” from GegenStandpunkt 1-2012.
[12] In the case of Venezuela, for example, according to Trump’s national security advisor, it is in the immediate strategic and economic interest of the United States to secure control over the oil-rich state and thus unimpeded business access to its oil fields. “We are currently in talks with major American companies... It would make a significant economic difference for the United States if American oil companies could invest in Venezuelan oil capacity and oil production.” (Bolton in a Fox News interview, January 29, 2019) This is how violence and business go hand in hand.
[13] Bolivia may face re-election of the left-wing Morales government in October. The opposition there has already appealed to the US government “to intervene in order to prevent Morales from running again.” (amerika21.de, April 25, 2019)
[14] Amidst the applause of US Secretary of State Pompeo – “This is how prosperity is created, this is how democracies are strengthened – by voters who opt for bolder visions; by countries that combat their own internal enemies and open themselves to new foreign relations. We must not underestimate how significant this moment is for our hemisphere” (US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, April 12, 2019) – the new right-wing nationalist bloc Prosur was founded at the end of March as a declared counter-model to the left-leaning Unasur, which was thus definitively dissolved. Venezuela was denied membership, but Guaidó was offered asylum.
[15] “Our goal is to make sure these foreign influences are not controlling Venezuela and adversely affecting the United States and our interests in our own hemisphere … So we’re talking here about wresting control away from a socialist autocracy and keeping the Monroe Doctrine alive in the Western Hemisphere to have powers outside the hemisphere not dictating what goes on here. I think it’s a very important thing for the United States and really everyone else in the hemisphere.” (Bolton in a Breitbart interview, March 21, 2019)