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<h1 class="reader-title">The Troika of Tyranny: The Imperialist
Project in Latin America & Its Epigones</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Roger Harris - November
5, 2018</div>
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<p>Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are today threatened
by US imperialism. The first salvo of the modern Age
of Imperialism started back in 1898 when the US seized
Cuba along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the
Spanish-American War.</p>
<p>The Age of Imperialism, as Lenin observed, is
characterized by the competition of the various
imperial powers for dominance. That inter-imperialist
rivalry led to World War I. Lenin called those
putative socialists who supported their own national
imperialist projects “social imperialists.” Social
imperialism is a tendency that is socialist in name
and imperialist in deed. Imperialism and its social
imperialist minions are still with us today.</p>
<p><strong>US Emerges as the World’s Hegemon</strong></p>
<p>The United States emerged after World War II as the
leading imperialist power. With the implosion of the
Socialist Bloc around 1991, US hegemony became even
more consolidated. Today the US is the undisputed
world’s hegemon.</p>
<p>Hegemony means to rule but even more so to dominate.
As the world’s hegemon, the US will not tolerate
neutral parties, let alone hostile ones. As
articulated in the Bush Doctrine, the US will try to
asphyxiate any nascent counter-hegemonic project, no
matter how insignificant.</p>
<p>In the Caribbean, for instance, the US snuffed out
the leftist government of Grenada in 1983 in what was
code named Operation Urgent Fury. Grenada has a
population smaller than Vacaville, California.</p>
<p>The only powers that the world’s hegemon will
tolerate are junior partners such as Colombia in Latin
America. The junior partner must accept a neoliberal
economic regime designed to serve the interests of
capital. Structural adjustment of the economy is
demanded such that the neoliberal “reforms” become
irreversible; so that you can’t put the toothpaste
back in the tube.</p>
<p>Colombia recently joined NATO, putting that junior
partner’s military under direct interaction with the
Pentagon bypassing its civilian government. The US has
seven military bases in Colombia in order to project –
in the words of the US government – “full spectrum”
military dominance in the Latin American theatre.</p>
<p>Needless-to-say, no Colombian military bases are in
the US. Nor does any other country have military bases
on US soil. The world’s hegemon has some 1000 foreign
military bases. Even the most sycophantic of the US’s
junior partners, Great Britain, is militarily occupied
by 10,000 US troops.</p>
<p>The US is clear on its enemies list. On November 1,
US National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking in
Miami, labelled Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba the
“troika of tyranny.” He described a “triangle of
terror stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua.”</p>
<p>Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are targeted by US
imperialism because they pose what might be called the
“threat of a good example;” that is, an alternative to
the neoliberal world order. These countries are
suffering attacks from the imperialists because of the
things they have done right, not for their flaws. They
are attempting to make a more inclusive society for
women people of color, and the poor; to have a state
that, instead of serving the rich and powerful, has a
special option for working people, because these are
the people most in need of social assistance.</p>
<p><strong>Sanctions: The Economic War against
Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba</strong></p>
<p>The US imperialist rhetoric is backed with action. In
2015, US President Obama declared Venezuela an
“extraordinary threat to US security” and imposed
sanctions. These sanctions have been extended and
deepened by the Trump administration. The US has
likewise subjected Cuba to sanctions in a seamless
bipartisan policy of both Republicans and Democrats
for over half a century. Now the US is the process of
imposing sanctions on Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Unilateral sanctions, such as those imposed by the
US, are illegal under the charters of both the UN and
the Organization of American States, because they are
a form of collective punishment targeting the people.</p>
<p>The US sanctions are designed to make life so
miserable for the masses of people that they will
reject their democratically elected government. Yet in
Venezuela, those most adversely affected by the
sanctions are the most militantly in support of their
President Nicolás Maduro. Consequently, the Trump
administration is also floating the option of military
intervention against Venezuela. The recently elected
rightwing leaders Bolsonaro in Brazil and Duque in
Colombia, representing the two powerful states on the
western and southern borders of Venezuela, are
colluding with the hegemon of the north.</p>
<p>The inside-the-beltway human rights organizations,
such as Human Rights Watch, fail to condemn these
illegal and immoral sanctions. They lament the human
suffering caused by the sanctions, all the while
supporting the imposition of the sanctions. Nor do
they raise their voices against military intervention,
perhaps the gravest of all crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>Liberal establishments such as the advocacy group
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) try to
distinguish themselves from hard-line imperialists by
opposing a military invasion in Venezuela while
calling for yet more effective and punishing
sanctions. In effect, they play the role of the good
cop, providing a liberal cover for interference in the
internal affairs of Latin American nations.</p>
<p>These billionaire-funded NGOs have a revolving-door
staffing arrangement with the US government. So it is
not surprising that they will reflect Washington’s
foreign policies initiatives. But why do some
organizations claiming to be leftist so unerringly
echo the imperialists, taking such umbrage over
Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua while ignoring far
greater problems in, say, Mexico, Colombia, and
Honduras, which are US client states?</p>
<p><strong>Most Progressive Country in Central America
Targeted</strong></p>
<p>Let’s take Nicaragua. A year ago, the polling
organization Latinobarómetro, found the approval
rating of Nicaraguans for their democracy to be the
highest in Central America and second highest in Latin
America.</p>
<p>Daniel Ortega had won the Nicaraguan presidency in
2006 with a 38% plurality, in 2011 with 63%, and 72.5%
in 2016. The Organization of American States
officially observed and certified the vote. Polls
indicated Ortega was perhaps the most popular head of
state in the entire western hemisphere. As longtime
Nicaraguan solidarity activist Chuck Kaufman noted,
“Dictators don’t win fair elections by growing
margins.”</p>
<p>Nicaragua is a member of the anti-imperialist
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America
with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and some Caribbean
states. Speaking at the UN, the Nicaraguan foreign
minister had the temerity to catalogue the many
transgressions of what Martin Luther King called “the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and
express Nicaragua’s opposition.</p>
<p>These are reasons enough for a progressive
alternative such as Nicaragua to curry the enmity of
the US. The enigma is why those claiming to be
leftists would target a country that had:</p>
<p>– Second highest economic growth rates and the most
stable economy in Central America.<br>
– Only country in the region producing 90% of the food
it consumes.<br>
– Poverty and extreme poverty halved; country with the
greatest reduction of extreme poverty.<br>
– Reached the UN Millennium Development Goal of
cutting malnutrition by half.<br>
– Nicaraguans enjoyed free basic healthcare and
education.<br>
– Illiteracy had been virtually eliminated, down from
36% in 2006 when Ortega took office.<br>
– Average economic growth of 5.2% for the past 5 years
(IMF and the World Bank).<br>
– Safest country in Central America (UN Development
Program) with one of the lowest crime rates in Latin
America.<br>
– Highest level of gender equality in the Americas
(World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017).<br>
– Did not contribute to the migrant exodus to the US,
unlike neighboring Honduras, El Salvador, and
Guatemala.<br>
– Unlike its neighbors, kept out the drug cartels and
pioneered community policing.</p>
<p>In April of this year, all of this was threatened.
The US had poured millions of dollars into “democracy
promotion” programs, a euphemism for regime change
operations. Suddenly and unexpectedly, a cabal of the
reactionary Catholic Church hierarchy, conservative
business associations, remnants of the US-sponsored
Contras, and students from private universities
attempted a coup.</p>
<p>Former members of Ortega’s Sandinista Party, who had
long ago splintered off into political oblivion and
drifted to the right, became effective propagandists
for the opposition. Through inciting violence and the
skillful use of disinformation in a concerted social
media barrage, they attempted to achieve by
extra-legal means what they could not achieve
democratically. Imperialism with a Happy Face.</p>
<p>We who live in the “belly of the beast” are
constantly bombarded by the corporate media, framing
the issues (e.g., “humanitarian bombing). Some leftish
groups and individuals pick up these signals, amplify,
and rebroadcast them. While they may genuinely believe
what they are promulgating, there are also rewards
such as funding, media coverage, hobnobbing with
prominent US politicians, and winning awards for
abhorring the excesses of imperialism while accepting
its premises.</p>
<p>Today’s organizations that are socialist in name and
imperialist in deed echo the imperial demand that the
state leaders of the progressive movements in Latin
America “must go” and legitimize the rationale that
such leaders must be “dictators.”</p>
<p>They try to differentiate their position from the
imperialists by proffering a mythic movement, which
will create a triumphant socialist alternative that
fits their particular sect’s line: Chavismo without
Maduro in Venezuela, Sandinismo without Ortega in
Nicaragua, and the Cuban Revolution without the Cuban
Communist Party in Cuba.</p>
<p>The political reality in Latin America is that a
right-wing offensive is attacking standing left-
leaning governments. President George W. Bush was
right: “Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists.” There is no Utopian third way. Each of us
has to determine who are the real terrorists, as the
juggernaut of US imperialism rolls out a neoliberal
world order.</p>
<p><strong>Chaos: The New Imperialist Game Plan</strong></p>
<p>For now, the coup in Nicaragua has been averted. Had
it succeeded, chaos would have reigned. As even the
most ardent apologists for the opposition admit, the
only organized force in the opposition was the
US-sponsored rightwing which would have instigated a
reign of terror against the Sandinista base.</p>
<p>The US would prefer to install stable rightwing
client states or even military dictatorships. But if
neither can be achieved, chaos is the preferred
alternative. Libya, where rival warlords contest for
power and slaves are openly bartered on the street, is
the model coming to Latin America.</p>
<p>Chaos is the new imperialist game plan, especially
for Bolton’s so-called troika of tyranny. The
imperialists understand that the progressive social
movements in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are too
popular and entrenched to be eradicated by a mere
change of personnel in the presidential palace. Much
more drastic means are envisioned; means that would
make the bloody aftermath of the US-backed Pinochet
coup in 1973 in Chile pale by comparison.</p>
<p>In Venezuela, for example, the opposition might well
have won the May 2018 presidential election given the
dire economic situation caused in large part by the US
sanctions. The opposition split between a moderate
wing that was willing to engage in electoral struggle
and a hard-right wing that advocated a violent
takeover and jailing the Chavistas.</p>
<p>When Venezuelan President Maduro rejected the US
demand to call off the elections and resign, he was
labelled a dictator by Washington. And when moderate
Henri Falcon ran in the Venezuelan presidential race
on a platform of a complete neoliberal transition,
Washington, instead of rejoicing, threatened sanctions
against him for running. The US belligerently floated
a military option for Venezuela, stiffened the
suffocating sanctions, and tipped the balance within
the Venezuelan opposition to the radical right.</p>
<p>The US is not about to allow Venezuela a soft
landing. Their intent is to exterminate the contagion
of progressive social programs and international
policy that has been the legacy of nearly two decades
Chavismo. Likewise, for Cuba and Nicaragua. We should
also add Bolivia in the crosshairs of the empire.</p>
<p>We’ve seen what Pax Americana has meant for the
Middle East. The same imperial playbook is being
implemented in Latin America. Solidarity with the
progressive social movements and their governments in
Latin America is needed, especially when their defeat
would mean chaos.</p>
<p><em>Roger Harris is on the board of the Task Force on
the Americas, a 33-year-old anti-imperialist </em><em>human
rights organization, and is active with the Campaign
to End US-Canadian Sanctions </em><em>Against
Venezuela.</em></p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.</em></p>
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