by
Wouter Hoenderdaal
U.S.
foreign policy tends to follow a highly rational and well-calculated
pattern. This makes it effective, and also ruthless. The U.S.
government’s hostile attitude towards leaders like Hugo Chavez and
Nicolás Maduro certainly fits this pattern, and time will tell
whether the failed assassination attempt on President Maduro on
August 4 is a part of this. While many news reports now focus on what
exactly happened that day, it can enlightening to step back for a
moment and put this event in a much broader context. Such an exercise
reveals the origins, consistency, effectiveness and, perhaps in a
somewhat sinister way, the beauty of U.S. foreign policy planning and
execution in the Western Hemisphere.
A good
place to start is WWII. Even before Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan
had been defeated, U.S. strategic planners realized the United States
would emerge from the war as a global superpower. They subsequently
laid out plans for a new world order in which the United States would
wield “unquestioned power”. U.S. planners created the concept of
the “Grand Area”, a region under U.S. control that consisted of
Western Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Within
the Grand Area every country was given a “function”. East Asia’s
function was to be a “cheap source of vital raw materials”, an
“economic and strategic prize”. The oil reserves of the Middle
East were not only regarded as “one of the greatest material prizes
in world history”, but also, if the U.S. managed to control it, as
a “stupendous source of strategic power”, something that has
guided U.S. policy towards the Arab world ever since. In the case of
Latin America, George Kennan, one of the leading architects of the
post WWII world order, simply described its resources as “ours”.
Besides control over resources, other important functions were to
provide markets and cheap sources of labor for U.S. corporations and
investors. Because industrial development and modernization was not
among the functions of the Third World, U.S. planners anticipated
popular resistance, and invented ways to deal with it.
Resistance
from the Latin American population was described by the State
Department as the “philosophy of the New Nationalism”. This
sentiment of economic nationalism emphasized that “the first
beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be
the people of that country” – not U.S. corporations. To deal
with this threat, Washington responded in February 1945 by declaring
a New Economic Charter of the Americas. One of its expressed goals
was the “elimination of economic nationalism in all its forms.”
And although the methods used might by “unpleasant”, George
Kennan stated, they are necessary to ensure that Latin America’s
resources remain “ours”. What followed was a series of U.S.
interventions that continue until this day, Venezuela being just one
case on a by now long list.
Interestingly,
U.S.-Venezuela relations used to be good. For instance, Marcos Pérez
Jiménez, who ruled Venezuela as a military dictator between
1950-1958, ensured his country carried out its function. For this
loyalty, he was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Eisenhower
in 1954. In the 40 years following the overthrow of Pérez,
subsequent Venezuelan governments kept conforming to U.S. political
and economic interests. Venezuela, for instance, accepted
Washington’s Neoliberal agenda of the 1980s and 1990s and provided
lucrative contracts to U.S. oil corporations. The election of Hugo
Chavez in 1998, however, was a game changer.
Chavez,
who together with Maduro won 15 out of 18 major democratic elections,
attempted to bring more economic benefits to his supporters, which
mainly consisted of the working class and the poor. This not only
gave him continued strong support from large sectors of the
population, it also resulted in Venezuela’s rise in the UN’s
Human Development Index score between 2000 and 2012. In the process,
however, Chavez went after U.S. oil concessions, rejected the
Neoliberal agenda and expressed his disapproval of the way the U.S.
responded after 9/11, such as the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
After Chavez’s death, Maduro was democratically elected to continue
these kind of policies. When considering U.S. Grand Area planning,
Chavez and Maduro pose an obvious threat, for two simple reasons.
The
first reason has everything to do with Venezuela having the largest
proven oil reserves in the world. Just like in the Middle East, this
enormous amount of oil is a great “material prize”. U.S.
corporations and investors want themselves to be the “first
beneficiaries”, something that Chavez, Maduro and their supporters
try to prevent.
The
second reason has everything to do with the demonstration effect,
sometimes called the “domino theory”. Anyone who understands
power will quickly realize that if the U.S. stands by quietly and
allows one disobedient government to remain in power, one that does
not carry out its function, it may motivate other populations and
governments to try the same. Therefore, no matter how insignificant a
country, the U.S. has to make it suffer and try to remove its
government in order to demonstrate to the rest of the world what
happens to disobedience.
Among
the “unpleasant” methods the U.S. has employed on numerous
occasions to overthrow a government (called “regime change” in
Western propaganda) are military coups that bring into power a more
obedient leadership, economic sanctions and assassinations. Allende’s
Chile provides a good example of how this can play out. Economic
mismanagement by Allende laid the basis for an economic crises that
was purposefully exacerbated by U.S. economic sanctions aimed to, as
Richard Nixon put it, make the Chilean economy “scream”. The
logic behind this is easy to understand. Economic misery most likely
will result in public dissatisfaction with the government, which
helps to create what the CIA calls a “coup climate”. In this
context, U.S. encouragement of the Chilean military to get rid of
Allende resulted in a military coup, the death of Allende and the
rule of the dictator General Pinochet, who proved to be everything
U.S. leaders had hoped for.
Venezuela’s
economy, due to a period of low oil prices and Maduro’s
mismanagement, has been screaming for a while, and the economic
sanctions that President Trump has implemented, have made the economy
scream some more. Perhaps, although there is no conclusive evidence
so far, U.S. officials judged that the “coup climate” was
sufficiently advanced enough to attempt a military takeover. U.S.
officials have already admitted to have secretly met with Venezuelan
military officers who were plotting a coup. What followed was a
failed assassination attempt aimed at Maduro using two commercial
drones armed with explosives. It is to early to tell whether, and if
so to what extent, the U.S. government was involved. Considering the
pattern of U.S. actions in Latin America from 1945 onwards, however,
it would fit in nicely, just as the failed U.S. supported coup to
oust Chavez in 2002 is consistent with the way the United States
government tends to act.
One
could actually go further back in time than WWII in order to shed
light on U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America. In the early
years of the United States existence, a time when Latin America was
still a Spanish and Portuguese colony, Thomas Jefferson already
expressed his vision, or perhaps his hopes, that as the U.S. would
continue to grow stronger, it would eventually be in a position
strong enough to take Latin America away from Spain “piece by
piece”. In 1898, the U.S. seized the opportunity to first assist
Cuba in its liberation struggle against Spain, only to then occupy
the island and turn it into a defacto U.S. colony.
In the
following decades, the U.S. Marine Corps spread U.S. dominance across
the Caribbean and into Central America through a multitude of
invasions and occupations. The overall goal was, besides projecting
U.S. power into the region, to facilitate the rise of pro-U.S.
leaders who would create conditions favorable to U.S. corporations
and investors. What this meant for the Caribbean and Central American
population was mostly a continuation of colonial-style economic
systems, such as Cuba’s plantation economy that became mostly owned
by U.S. businesses.
The
biggest threat to these practises was the usual, namely economic
nationalism. In order to suppress nationalist movements, one of the
techniques U.S. strategic planners eventually came up with was the
establishment of military rulers supported by national guards. U.S.
government officials referred to this process as bringing “order
and stability”, a description obediently taken over by the media.
Substitute these words with “democracy and freedom”, and one has
a fairly accurate picture of today’s propaganda.
During
this pre-WWII period, Venezuela was praised by the United States as a
role model other countries in the region ought to follow. Venezuela’s
dictator Juan Vicente Gomez not only ruled his country with an iron
fist and an ideology expressed in the phrase “Gomez unico” (Gomez
alone, nothing but Gomez), but he also opened up the economy to U.S.
investors and gave U.S. corporations access to Venezuela’s rich oil
supplies. All in all, Gomez provided a “strong and stable
government, one which maintains order”, according to a U.S.
representative.
It is
possible to go back even further in time, all the way to the age of
colonialism, to gain more insight into the origins of today’s Latin
America and its relation to the West. European colonialism, as
elsewhere, created an underdeveloped economy based on the production
and export of raw materials and agricultural goods. Within this
economy a small group of native local elites, who collaborated with
the Spanish and Portuguese colonists, prospered. This landowner and
merchant elite, to further their own interests, organized the
movement for independence in the 1820’s and then, while Western
countries industrialized, continued to run colonial-style economic
policies based on agriculture and raw materials.
The
superpower of the time, Britain, was very pleased with this
development. British manufactures and investors did not want an
independent Latin America to industrialize and turn into a powerful
competitor. They wanted the local elites to keep things as they were.
It resulted in a mutually beneficial relationship. Latin American
large landowners and merchants who dominated the political scene
would continue to focus on producing and trading agricultural goods
and raw materials; and they would open up their markets to the West.
This allowed British businesses, merchant houses and investors to own
many of the valuable export trades, be it in Brazilian coffee,
Chilean nitrates or Argentinian beef. It firmly kept Latin America in
its Third World position. Later the U.S. simply replaced Britain as
the dominant foreign power and established the same sort of
relationship with the Latin American elites. The result was a
continuation of similar colonial-style economic policies, leaving
similar consequences.
The
obvious conclusion based on the history discussed above, one that is
not allowed to enter the mainstream media, is that the U.S. does not
care what kind of government is in power, as long as it is obedient
and subordinate. The U.S. has worked with democratic leaders and with
dictators, and the U.S. has overthrown democratic governments and
dictatorships. Overall, however, because of the sentiment of economic
nationalism among the Latin America people, the U.S. has usually
prefered authoritarian military rulers. If Maduro would succumb to a
military coup, or if Maduro’s failing economic policies and his
increased authoritarianism alienate his supporters, it is not at all
unlikely that his successor will be a pro-U.S. right wing
authoritarian, perhaps related to the military, someone who knows how
to bring back “order and stability” to Venezuela, or as is said
nowadays, “democracy and freedom”.
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