The United States' interventionist course of action


War and not peace


“War and not peace is the norm that rules international issues” recites one part of the document Santa Fe I in which Ronald Reagan developed a political-military strategy of domination of Latin America in the decade of the 80s. Now, at the beginning of the Twenty-First century, George W. Bush, strengthened with the triumph of his party in the parliamentary elections with a deceivingly nationalist and anti-terrorist discourse, ratifies and deepens the orientation of that interventionist and militarist course of action.

Bush does it, taking advantage of the attacks against the twin towers on September 11, 2001 and putting in march a planetary military offensive that seeks, in reality, to control natural resources like petroleum, gas, biodiversity and water, and furthermore seating foundations of commercial integration agreements for the direct benefit of transnational financial capital and large corporations, including at the cost of Asian and European capital.

As is obvious, in the execution of this strategy of world domination, one of the priorities of the White House is the strengthening of its hegemonic presence in Latin America. The programatic foundation for this is found in the document Santa Fe IV, drafted in January of 2001 by intellectuals of the U.S. bourgeoisie, among which were the Lieutenant. Gral. Gordon Sumner Jr, Lewis Tambs and David Jordan. Their two theoretical-operative, military-economic instruments are Plan Colombia and the FTAA.

Plan Colombia – elaborated and presented before the Congress of the United States by senator Dewine in October of 1999 and approved January 11 2000 in a session of the Committee of Exterior Relations with the name of Alliance Law Act. – is a counterinsurgent instrument which obliges the U.S. special operations forces in their intervention on Colombian territory, and in the “front line countries” like Bolivia, Venezuela, Perú, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, Panamá, El Salvador and Brazil.

The case of Venezuela is an instructive one. There is more and more evidence of the participation of the State Department in the failed intent to overthrow President Hugo Chavez on April 11 2002.

The financial and logistical endorsement of those who operate the Yankee exterior politics (adecos, copeianos, Pedro Carmona and FEDECAMARAS, like the unionist aristocracy headed by Carlos Ortega) was made for:

Internal reasons like the restructuralization of the Venezuelan oligarchy’s power in contraposition to the increase in the organizing and anti-imperialist activity of the people.

External reasons like the leadership of the First Mandatory of that bolivarian country in OPEC; the establishment of friendly relations with Arabic countries like Libya, Iraq and Iran; the sale of petroleum to Cuba and the friendship with Fidel Castro; the question of FTAA and the opposition of the bolivarian government to offering aerial space for the passage of U.S. military planes with the base on the island of Curazao.

Colombia is perhaps the only country that permits testing the reaches of the White House’s military plans. Last October 14, the minister of Defense, Martha Lucía Ramírez, throwing the most elemental criteria of sovereignty in the trash, recognized the direct participation of military from the United States in the operations of counterinsurgent war.

The intervention of U.S. military in Colombian territory is not recent and is not owed to the “triumph of the right-wing in the last parliamentary elections in the most powerful country in the world,” as some absent-minded analysts present it.

Republicans and democrats alike are representatives of capitalist interests, which means, ideologically and politically, the right. The antecedents of this counter-insurgency plan date back to almost four years ago, during the presidencies of Bill Clinton in the U.S. and Andrés Pastrana in Colombia. With the recent triumph of Bush’s party there is a deepening of the harshest positions or, you could say, a victory of the ultraright tendency.

Nonetheless, to breathe with a bit of calmness, the U.S. plans of domination are not all smoothed out, even though they also will not sit with their arms crossed. The impossibility of overthrowing Chávez, the triumph of Lula in Brazil, the victory of Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador, plus the increase of rebellion in Latin America, will make the State Department, no doubt, begin to look for other formulas to maintain and continue developing their plans for war in moments of peace.

These are the theoretic and practical antecedents of the ultraconservative plans of action (ultra right-wing) of the Bush administration, which represents and defends, it’s important to underline this one more time, the interests of the renovated military-industrial complex and those of the large U.S. petroleum corporations.