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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Chávez, UNASUR and the End of Unipolarity: A Conversation with Judith Valencia</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 9, 2023<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><img src="cid:ii_lirkltbe0" alt="image.png" width="392" height="221"><br><p><em>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 </em><a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15777"><em>recent reactivation</em></a><em> of the Union of South American Nations [UNASUR], an institution for continental integration that was born under Chávez. </em></p>
<p><strong>Can you outline Chávez’s geopolitical perspective and how he came to assume an anti-imperialist stance?</strong></p>
<p>When Chávez came to power, he had only Simón Bolívar in his toolkit: his key concepts were the “Patria Grande” and <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15485">Bolívar versus Monroe</a>.
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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15500">coup d'état</a>
– 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The Bolivarian Process is a <em>constitutive </em>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution/title/9">articles</a> 347, 348, 349, and 350, the country’s <em>magna carta</em> states that the constitutive process is ongoing.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 [<a href="https://www.venezuelanalysis.com/tag/opec">OPEC</a>].</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Can you outline the main elements of the geopolitical context in the first decade of the 21st century?</strong></p>
<p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7527">Oil Sabotage</a>
[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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>pueblo</em>.</p>
<p><strong>You consider 2015 to be a turning point in the global scenario. Why is that?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Mercenary terrorism is the currency of the US empire.</p>
<p><strong>Are we living in a completely new scenario?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>So, to answer your question, a global reconfiguration is underway, but the terrorist character of empire is nothing new.</p>
<p><strong>What consequences does this situation have for the non-aligned countries and those of the Global South?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In the current scenario, I argue that there is no Global South or “periphery.” Instead, there are <em>pueblos</em>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>This takes us to the South American presidents’ </strong><a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15777"><strong>summit</strong></a><strong>
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?</strong></p>
<p>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 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/alba">ALBA</a>, <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/petrocaribe">Petrocaribe</a>, and the defeat of [former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique] Cardoso’s plans for <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/mercosur">Mercosur</a>.
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.</p>
<p>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 <em>pueblos</em>, integration of our economies, and full respect for each other's borders and sovereignty.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, the important thing is for there to be a space where the <em>pueblos</em>
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].</p>
<p>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 <em>pueblos</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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