[News] Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Calls For a Global Campaign to Eliminate NATO

[Anti-Imperialist News]

covertactionmagazine.com
<https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/30/former-bolivian-president-evo-morales-calls-for-a-global-campaign-to-eliminate-nato/>
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Calls For a Global Campaign to
Eliminate NATO
Jeremy Kuzmarov - July 30, 2022
------------------------------
Evo Morales [Source: declassifieduk.org
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>]
*In interview with British journalist, Morales says the U.S. uses NATO to
provoke wars and sell weapons. U.S./UK-backed coup against him in 2019 was
undertaken for lithium and because his government advanced an alternative
economic model to the neoliberal “Washington Consensus”*

In an interview with British journalist Matt Kennard
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
at his home in El Trópico, a small town four hours from Cochabamba in the
heart of the Amazon rain forest, former Bolivian president Evo Morales
(2006-2019) called for an international campaign to eliminate NATO [the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization].

According to Morales, this campaign should explain to people worldwide that
“NATO is—ultimately—the United States. It is not a guarantee for humanity
or for life. I do not accept—in fact, I condemn—how they can exclude Russia
from the UN Human Rights Council. When the U.S. has intervened in Iraq, in
Libya, in so many countries in recent years, why have they not been
expelled from the Human Rights Council? Why was that never questioned?”

Morales continued: “We [in the Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS] have profound
ideological differences with the politics implemented by the United States
using NATO, which are based on interventionism and militarism. Between
Russia and Ukraine they want to reach an agreement and [the U.S.] keeps
provoking war, the U.S. military industry, which is able to live thanks to
war, and they provoke wars in order to sell their weapons. That’s the other
reality we live in.”
[image: With the constant shipment of weapons to #Ukraine, the United
States and NATO continue with their policy of "fighting #Russia to the last
Ukrainian soldier". - iuvmpress.news][Source: iuvmpress.news
<https://iuvmpress.news/with-the-constant-shipment-of-weapons-to-ukraine-the-united-states-and-nato-continue-with-their-policy-of-fighting-russia-to-the-last-ukrainian-soldier/>]
*Coup Against Alternative Economic Model *

Morales is one of the most successful presidents in Latin American history
who closed down a U.S. military base in Bolivia, expelled the CIA
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
and DEA, and helped reverse half a millennium of colonial history by
helping Bolivia to industrialize its economy.

In November 2019, Morales was ousted in a U.S./UK-backed coup that
culminated with the army’s massacre of anti-coup protesters. Morales
survived an assassination attempt only because Mexico’s president, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, sent a plane to rescue him.

The beneficiary of the coup, Jeanine Áñez—a conservative Christian who lost
the October 2020 election to Luis Arce of MAS—was sentenced to 10 years in
prison
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/10/world/americas/bolivia-jeanine-anez-prison.html>
in June after being convicted of terrorism and sedition.

Morales—who returned to Bolivia after Arce’s election in October
2020—believes that the coup was prompted by his move to nationalize
Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves.

Morales told Matt Kennard that “I continue to be convinced that the empire,
capitalism, imperialism, do not accept that there is an economic model that
is better than neoliberalism. The coup was against our economic model…we
showed that another Bolivia is possible.”
[image: Bolivia just wants to have friends : r/polandball][Source:
reddit.com
<https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1qehhu/bolivia_just_wants_to_have_friends/>]
*“All For Lithium”*

In 2021, the British Foreign Office released documents which showed
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
that the British embassy in Bolivia had paid an Oxford-based company to
optimize “exploitation” of Bolivia’s lithium deposits the month after
Morales fled the country after being ousted in the coup.

The documents also showed the UK embassy in La Paz acted as “strategic
partner” to Áñez’ coup regime and organized an international mining event
in Bolivia four months after democracy was overthrown.
Jeff Glekin, the UK ambassador, with Jeanine Áñez in January 2020. [Source:
declassifieduk.org
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>]


Bolivia possesses the world’s second largest reserves of lithium, a metal
used to make batteries, which has been increasingly coveted due to the
burgeoning electric-car industry.

Under the traditional imperial dynamic which had kept Bolivia poor, rich
countries extract raw materials, send them to Europe to be made into
products, and then sell them back to Third World countries like Bolivia as
finished products at a mark-up.

With Bolivia’s lithium deposits, Morales was adamant this system was
finished. Bolivia would not just extract the lithium; it would build the
batteries too. He told Kennard
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
that:

“We started with a laboratory, obviously with international experts that we
hired. Then we moved on to a pilot plant. We invested around $20 million,
and now it’s working. Every year it produces about 200 tonnes of lithium
carbonate, and lithium batteries, in Potosí [the capital of the Spanish
empire where the Spanish had undertaken silver mining in the 17th, 18th and
early 19th centuries.]”
[image: Bolivian state firm YLB's plant is seen at the Salar de Uyuni, a
vast white salt flat at the center of a global resource race for the
battery metal lithium, outside of Uyuni, Bolivia March 26, 2022.
(REUTERS/Claudia Morales)]Bolivian state firm YLB’s plant is seen at the
Salar de Uyuni, a vast white salt flat at the center of a global resource
race for the battery metal lithium, outside of Uyuni, Bolivia, March 26,
2022. [Source: learningenglish.voanews.com
<https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/can-bolivia-ever-gain-from-its-rich-lithium-resources-/6586946.html>]


Morales continued: “We had a plan to install 42 new [lithium] plants by
2029. It was estimated that profits would be five billion dollars. Profits!
That’s when the coup came. The U.S. says China’s presence is not permitted
but…having a market in China is very important. Also in Germany. The next
step was with Russia, and then came the coup. Just last year, we found out
that England had also participated in the coup—all for lithium.”
*Colonial Mentality*

When Kennard told Morales that the UK Foreign office had denied that a coup
took place, Morales responded that this was hard to comprehend and
reflected “a totally colonial mindset. They think that some countries are
the property of other nations. They think God put them there, so the world
belongs to the U.S. and the UK. That’s why the rebellions and the uprisings
will continue.”
*With the People or the Evil Empire? *

Morales has great admiration for Julian Assange whose detention, he said,
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
“represents an escalation, an intimidation so that all the crimes against
humanity committed by the different governments of the United States are
never revealed. So many interventions, so many invasions, so much looting.”
[image: The U.S. Is Determined to Make Julian Assange Pay for Exposing the
Cruelty of Its War on Iraq | Sri Lanka Guardian]Morales has great
admiration for Julian Assange. [Source: siguardian.org
<http://www.slguardian.org/2020/09/the-us-is-determined-to-make-julian.html>]


Currently, Morales is working on building independent media in Bolivia,
where he says that most of the media “belong to the empire or the
right-wing.”

Optimistic about the recent victory of left-wing political forces in Peru
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-57492974>, Chile
<https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20211219-leftist-boric-wins-chile-presidential-election-after-far-right-rival-kast-concedes-defeat>
 and Colombia
<https://www.ft.com/content/33d30a93-0f48-41ee-9847-4503c79ca7d9> and
Lula’s expected return
<https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/poll-shows-brazils-lula-maintains-strong-lead-presidential-race-2022-06-08/>
to
the presidency in Brazil, Morales told Kennard that, “in politics we must
ask ourselves: Are we with the people or are we with the empire? If we are
with the people, we make a country; if we are with the empire, we make
money. If we are with the people, we fight for life, for humanity; if we
are with the empire, we are with the politics of death, the culture of
death, interventions, and pillaging of the people. That is what we ask
ourselves as humans, as leaders: ‘Are we at the service of our people?
<https://declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we-lament-the-english-were-celebrating-the-sight-of-dead-people/>
’”

------------------------------
About the Author

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of *CovertAction Magazine.*

He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including *Obama’s
Unending Wars* (Clarity Press, 2019) and *The Russians Are Coming, Again*,
with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2 at gmail.com.
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