[News] Chávez, UNASUR and the End of Unipolarity

[Anti-Imperialist News]

venezuelanalysis.com <https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15781>
Chávez, UNASUR and the End of Unipolarity: A Conversation with Judith
Valencia
By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis
June 9, 2023
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[image: image.png]

*Economist Judith Valencia is a professor emeritus at Venezuela’s Central
University and a member of the Network of Intellectuals in Defense of
Humanity. In this interview, Valencia talks about the evolution of Hugo
Chávez’s approach to geopolitics and the **recent reactivation*
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15777>* of the Union of South American
Nations [UNASUR], an institution for continental integration that was born
under Chávez. *

*Can you outline Chávez’s geopolitical perspective and how he came to
assume an anti-imperialist stance?*

When Chávez came to power, he had only Simón Bolívar in his toolkit: his
key concepts were the “Patria Grande” and Bolívar versus Monroe
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15485>. In other words, Chávez's
geopolitics evolved and became more complete during his presidency; he was
in constant dialogue with the Venezuelan people, and he learned from his
experience in national and international politics.

A pivotal event that would push Chávez to proclaim the Bolivarian Process
anti-imperialist (and later frame our project as “Socialism of the 21st
Century”) was the April 11, 2002 coup d'état
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15500> – which involved imperialist
interference – and also the popular mobilization to rescue him and bring
him back to the presidency on April 12 and 13. From that moment on, he
began to purge his government of the conservative and anti-popular elements
in it. He did all this because he was listening and learning from the
people.

In 2004 Chávez declared the Venezuelan process to be anti-imperialist. The
counterrevolutionary offensive led Chávez to understand that Bolívar’s
postulates were important, but that it was necessary to go beyond them,
because the US’ expansionist policy had grown exponentially over time.

The Bolivarian Process is a *constitutive *one. What does that actually
mean? The Constitutive Assembly drafted the text of a new constitution and
the Venezuelan people voted it into law in 1999. Even so, in articles
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution/title/9> 347, 348, 349, and 350,
the country’s *magna carta* states that the constitutive process is ongoing.

In other words, our constitutive process began in 1999 and it’s still
unfolding. The process in which we are participating involves the making of
laws, new ways of doing politics, and the ongoing incorporation of new
elements to the program, including anti-imperialism in 2004 and later, in
2005, 21st Century Socialism.

The internal and external aggression against Venezuela worked as a
catalyst. However, there were other experiences that pushed Chávez toward
assuming an anti-imperialist stance, particularly his work with the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC
<https://www.venezuelanalysis.com/tag/opec>].

OPEC had been dormant for years, and in the early 2000s, Chávez took a tour
through the Middle East to reactivate the institution. This trip gave him a
wider perspective on US meddling that would eventually fuel his
anti-imperialism.

Chávez was not a god. Chávez was a human being – if an exceptional one –
who learned through practice. That is why, returning to your question, I
want to highlight that Chávez’s geopolitical perspective evolved through
time.

*Can you outline the main elements of the geopolitical context in the first
decade of the 21st century?*

If we look back at the geopolitical panorama, we can see that beginning in
the early 1990s a unipolar empire emerged and extended its tentacles toward
Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Having visited Iraq on his OPEC tour,
the 2003 US invasion of that country had a great impact on Chávez.
Moreover, the destruction of Iraq came hard on the heels of the Oil Sabotage
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7527> [December 2002 - February
2003] against Venezuela’s petroleum industry. Like the sabotage, the
bombing of Iraq was carried out in the name of liberty and freedom.

Around that time, Chávez began to reflect on the terrorist character of US
imperialism; he did it hand-in-hand with the people from around the world
who stood up against military invasions, and in collaboration with Fidel
Castro. In fact, during the first decade of the 21st Century, Fidel and
Chávez developed a rich geopolitical program based not only on
recriminating and exposing imperialism, but also developing a
counteroffensive that included promoting international alliances.

Chávez’s discourse around 2005 and 2006 was marvelous. He often talked
about imperialism and its blood-stained actions, but he also proposed an
alternative and promoted laws that would boost national sovereignty.
Additionally, Chávez recovered the terms “democracy” and “liberty,” which
the empire was attempting to co-opt. All this triggered a
counter-revolutionary onslaught around 2007 and 2008, but that didn’t
weaken Chávez or the people.

This is a very condensed history, but I want to highlight once again that
Chávez’s perspective and program evolved based on his lived experience and
his dialogue with the *pueblo*.

*You consider 2015 to be a turning point in the global scenario. Why is
that?*

On September 28, 2015, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the United Nations,
where he invited Barack Obama to join forces with him to defeat terrorism
in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, Obama declined: the US had vested
interests in those terrorist forces, which had become a critical factor in
the US plan to redraw the map of the region.

Two days after that UN address, Russia offered a helping hand to Syria. As
it turns out, the plight of terrorism in the region was actually neither
cultural nor religious. Of course, superficially, cultural and religious
issues had become a sort of social cement in the war, but the logistics and
the objectives had “USA” written all over.

The US attempted to hide from international condemnation by working with
mercenaries in Syria who didn’t wave US flags. In so doing, they avoided
overtly breaching international law. Mercenary armies and proxy wars are
the new modus operandi of the empire. In fact, NATO has become quite
comfortable with the use of such tactics to displace populations and
governments from strategic territories.

Fast forward to 2023 and a similar scenario is unfolding in Ukraine. Since
his famous Munich speech in 2007, Putin has been advising NATO to not
encroach on Russia’s borderline. It was clear already then that NATO, under
US command, was attempting to pull the former Soviet republics away from
Russia and into the North Atlantic bloc. In effect, the objective was to
break the political, economic, and cultural ties of these former Soviet
republics.

Over the years, NATO continued to encroach on the Russian Federation with
terrorist and mercenary practices. That, in a nutshell, is why Russia was
forced to go into Ukraine.

Mercenary terrorism is the currency of the US empire.

*Are we living in a completely new scenario?*

Weberian social scientists will often say that capitalism isn’t rational.
On the other hand, political economists on the left understand that capital
is rational, that those who govern are rational, have intentionality, and
develop their strategies accordingly.

That’s why it would be a good idea to reread the 20th century and study how
(and why) capitalist corporations collaborated with Hitler and Mussolini
and their expansionist project. Almost 100 years later, we can see the same
expansionist logic – and the same terrorist practices – being deployed by
the US. This isn’t new, but it’s becoming more obvious.

The empire’s objective is to exterminate populations and cultures. What
they are doing now is not too different from what Nazi Germany and Fascist
Italy did: corporations are allying with the fascist axis to further their
rational interests.

So, to answer your question, a global reconfiguration is underway, but the
terrorist character of empire is nothing new.

*What consequences does this situation have for the non-aligned countries
and those of the Global South?*

A new global consciousness of the cruelty of the NATO project is emerging.
There isn’t such a thing as the “American way of life.” In its place, we
find expansion and devastation. There is no life and no humanity in their
project. In other words, the imperial drive to destroy life is visible
everywhere you look.

In the current scenario, I argue that there is no Global South or
“periphery.” Instead, there are *pueblos* and governments that understand
that their interests are incompatible with those of the US. The non-aligned
countries know that the battleground is not so much between the worker and
the capitalist, but between survival and extermination.

This doesn’t mean that the current battleground is not class-based as well,
but the key is located in the survival of peoples, their nation-states,
their cultures, and the protection of their resources. Right now the
battleground is not so much capitalism versus socialism, but between an
empire of mercenaries and the peoples of the world.

Many countries desire an alternative and the global correlation of forces
is beginning to change. That’s why Venezuela allies itself with countries
that respect its sovereignty such as China and Russia. The US empire wages
wars against peoples in the name of freedom and liberty… but its objective
is just the opposite! There are governments in this loose bloc that may not
declare themselves communist but they respect the sovereignty and culture
of other nations. Those are our allies.

*This takes us to the South American presidents’ **summit*
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15777>* that took place this May in
Brazil, renewing prospects for continental integration and the reactivation
of UNASUR, an institution that had been dormant for years. Does this point
to a South-South realignment in the region?*

We should cast our lot with UNASUR, but we should pay attention as it gets
reactivated to make sure that it remains true to its original principles,
which are of a piece with Chávez’s geopolitical strategy. That strategy
included initiatives such as ALBA <https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/alba>,
Petrocaribe <https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/petrocaribe>, and the defeat
of [former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique] Cardoso’s plans for
Mercosur <https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/mercosur>. Cardoso’s plan was
about economic convergence or integration but didn’t really break away from
the precepts of the Alliance for Progress. In fact, Chávez didn’t base his
proposal on the convergence of economies, but rather on the need to
overcome weak multilateral institutions that are easily penetrated by US
interests.

President Nicolás Maduro did well at the Brasilia summit. He talked about
regional integration, and he kept the idea of UNASUR as a true “union” in
the discussion. That idea was being challenged by other participants. From
where we are, this makes all the difference: union of the *pueblos*,
integration of our economies, and full respect for each other's borders and
sovereignty.

The issue of the borders is altogether relevant because there are regional
multilateral instances such as IIRSA [Initiative for the Integration of
Regional South American Infrastructure] promoted by Cardoso himself that
have attempted to redraw borders. In fact, in the Venezuelan case, the
country’s map was chopped into two!

Why do I talk so much about Cardoso, a former president of Brazil? Luiz
Inácio “Lula” da Silva has an alliance with Cardoso and Celso Amorim, the
ideologue behind Cardoso’s “map,” is also an adviser to Lula. If their
influence on Lula and UNASUR is felt, UNASUR won’t be the instrument we
need.

At the end of the day, the important thing is for there to be a space where
the *pueblos* and their governments can deliberate on their own and not
with the tutelage that expresses itself in IIRSA or direct interventionism
along the lines of Plan Puebla-Panamá [Mesoamerica Project].

The existing UNASUR charter preamble is beautiful because it centers both
unity and integration; it talks about development but it also talks about
liberty and sovereignty; and it sketches a framework where the continent’s
*pueblos* can be free and respect each other's territories. That’s why some
years ago, when the governments of Brazil and Colombia were cooking up
plans to invade Venezuela, they had to get out of UNASUR.

The language of the preamble of UNASUR’s charter must be maintained.
Colombia’s Gustavo Petro proposed that it be called an “association” and
not a “union.” What is that? We don’t want to be business associates with
our partners in the region! Our aim is much more ambitious.

Let’s stay firm and push for integration and union. If we are able to do
this, UNASUR will be a powerful tool against the unipolar interests of the
US empire.
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