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*The Lethality of Washington’s Global Monroe Doctrine: The Twenty-Fourth
Newsletter (2022)*
LeRoy Clarke (Trinidad and Tobago), /Now/, 1970.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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This past week, as part of its policy to dominate the American
hemisphere, the United States government organised the 9th Summit of the
Americas
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in Los Angeles. US President Joe Biden made it clear early on that three
countries in the hemisphere (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) would not
be invited to the event, claiming that they are not democracies. At the
same time, Biden was reportedly planning an upcoming visit to Saudi
Arabia – a self-described theocracy. Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel
López Obrador questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s exclusionary stance,
and so Mexico, Bolivia, and Honduras refused to come to the event. As it
turned out, the summit was a fiasco.
Down the road, over a hundred organisations hosted a People’s Summit
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for Democracy, where thousands of people from across the hemisphere
gathered to celebrate the actual democratic spirit which emerges from
the struggles of peasants and workers, students and feminists, and all
the people who are excluded from the gaze of the powerful. At this
gathering, the presidents of Cuba and Venezuela joined in online to
celebrate this festival of democracy and to condemn the weaponisation of
democratic ideals by the United States and its allies.
Next year, 2023, will be the bicentennial of the Monroe Doctrine, when
the US asserted its hegemony over the American hemisphere. The malign
spirit of the Monroe Doctrine not only continues but has now been
extended by the US government into a kind of Global Monroe Doctrine
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In order to assert this preposterous claim on the entire planet, the
United States has pursued a policy
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to ‘weaken’ what it sees as ‘near peer rivals’, namely China and Russia.
Philip Guston (Canada), /Blackboard/, 1969.
In July, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – along with
/Monthly Review/
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and No Cold War
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– will produce a booklet on the reckless military escalation by the US
government against those whom it sees as its adversaries – mainly China
and Russia. This booklet will include essays by John Bellamy Foster,
editor of /Monthly Review/, Deborah Veneziale, a journalist based in
Italy, and John Ross, a member of the No Cold War collective. In the
vein of that booklet, which will be announced in this newsletter, No
Cold War has also producedbriefing no. 3
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/Is the United States Preparing for War with Russia and China?/, on
Washington’s sabre-rattling and alarming march toward nuclear primacy.
The war in Ukraine demonstrates a qualitative escalation of the United
States’ willingness to use military force. In recent decades, the US
launched wars on developing countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
and Serbia. In these campaigns, the US knew it enjoyed overwhelming
military superiority and that there was no risk of a nuclear
retaliation. However, in threatening to bring Ukraine into the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the US was prepared to risk
crossing what it knew to be the ‘red lines’ of the nuclear armed state
of Russia. This raises two questions: why has the US undertaken this
escalation, and how far is the US now prepared to go in the use of
military force against not only the Global South but major powers such
as China or Russia?
*Using Military Force to Compensate for Economic Decline*
The answer to ‘why’ is clear: the US has lost in peaceful economic
competition to developing countries in general and China in particular.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
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in 2016 China overtook the US as the world’s largest economy. As of
2021, China accounted for 19% of the global economy, compared to the US
at 16%. This gap is only growing wider, and, by 2027, the IMF projects
that China’s economy will outsize the US by nearly 30%. However, the US
has maintained unrivalled global military supremacy – its military
expenditure is larger
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than the next nine highest spending countries combined. Seeking to
maintain unipolar global dominance, the US is increasingly substituting
peaceful economic competition with military force.
Ikeda Manabu (Japan), /Meltdown/, 2013.
A good starting point to understand this strategic shift in US policy is
the speech
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given by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 26 May 2022. In it,
Blinken openly admitted that the US does not seek military equality with
other states, but military supremacy, particularly with respect to
China: ‘President Biden has instructed the Department of Defense to hold
China as its pacing challenge, to ensure that our military stays ahead’.
However, with nuclear armed states such as China or Russia, military
supremacy necessitates achieving nuclear supremacy – an escalation above
and beyond the current war in Ukraine.
*The Pursuit of Nuclear Primacy*
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the US has systematically
withdrawn from key treaties limiting the threat of use of nuclear
weapons: in 2002, the US unilaterally exited
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from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; in 2019, the US abandoned
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the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty; and, in 2020, the US withdrew
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from the Open Skies Treaty. Abandoning these treaties strengthened the
US’ ability to seek nuclear supremacy.
Natalia Goncharova (Russia), /Angels Throwing Stones on the City/, 1911.
The ultimate aim of this US policy is to acquire ‘first strike’ capacity
against Russia and China – the ability to inflict damage with a first
use of nuclear weapons against Russia or China to the extent that it
effectively prevents retaliation. As John Bellamy Foster has noted in a
comprehensive study
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of this US nuclear build up, even in the case of Russia – which
possesses the world’s most advanced non-US nuclear arsenal – this would
‘deny Moscow a viable second-strike option, effectively eliminating its
nuclear deterrent altogether, through “decapitation”’. In reality, the
fallout and threat of nuclear winter from such a strike would threaten
the entire world.
This policy of nuclear primacy has long been pursued by certain circles
within Washington. In 2006, it was argued
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in the leading US foreign policy journal /Foreign Affairs/ that ‘It will
probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the
long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike’.
Contrary to these hopes, the US has not yet been able to achieve a first
strike capacity, but this is due to development of hypersonic missiles
and other weapons by Russia and China – not a change in US policy.
>From its attacks on Global South countries to its increased willingness
to go to war with a great power such as Russia to attempting to gain
first strike nuclear capacity, the logic behind the escalation of US
militarism is clear: the United States is increasingly employing
military force to compensate for its economic decline. In this extremely
dangerous period, it is vital for humanity that all progressive forces
unite to meet this great threat.
Shefa Salem (Libya), /KASKA,/ /Dance of War/, 2020.
In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Global South remained
gripped by a never-ending debt crisis, the United States bombed Iraq
despite
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entreaties from the Iraqi government for a negotiated agreement. During
that bombing, the Libyan writer Ahmad Ibrahim al-Faqih penned a lyrical
poem, ‘/Nafaq Tudiuhu Imra Wahida/’ (‘A Tunnel Lit by a Woman’), in
which he sang, ‘A time has passed, and another time has not come and
will never come’. Gloom defined the moment.
Today, we are in very dangerous times. And yet, the despondency of
al-Faqih does not define our sensibility. The mood
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has altered. There is a belief in a world beyond imperialism, a mood
that is not only evident in countries such as Cuba and China, but
equally in India and Japan, as well as amongst the hard-working people
who would like our collective attention to be focused on the actual
dilemmas of humanity and not on the ugliness of war and domination.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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