Why We Must Fight US Empire and Defend Latin America

by Dae-Han Song (English Chief Editor, International Strategy Center)

(Source: The Clash of Civilizations)

Presented at the opening ceremony of the Global Peace Center for Justice of Hanshin University, Seoul on Nov. 14, 2019. 

My topic today is Latin America, the United States, and a New Peace Movement. I chose this topic because it lies at the intersection of what the Global Peace Center for Justice is striving for and the work of the International Strategy Center. My talk today will be on:

1. how the greatest cause of war from the middle of the 20th century to today is the United States in its pursuit, maintenance, and preservation of a global capitalist empire

2. how Latin America, particularly Venezuela, is fighting to carve an alternative to such world order and social system. 

3. what a new peace movement based on international solidarity to protect these Latin American projects might look like, along with ISC’s solidarity work. 

US Empire: Global Capitalism and War 
Ever since World War II, the US has waged war on countries and the world’s people to build its global capitalist empire. The US spends more on its military than the next 7 countries combined[1]. To carry its fighter jets everywhere in the world, the US has 19 aircraft carriers, more than the 12 that  the rest of the world possess[2]. In one way or another, most wars in the 20th and 21st Century have involved the US. 

(Source: pgpf.org)

The 1950 Korean and 1965 Vietnam Wars were fought to prevent indigenous Communist Movements from taking power. In Korea, civilians were massacred with US policies of aerial strafing. In Vietnam, tens of thousands still suffer the effects of Agent Orange. 5 million people were killed in the Korean War; over 3 million, in the Vietnam War. And while the Vietnamese won and unified their country, Korea still remains divided and at war, peace held hostage by the United States. 

More recently, the 2003 Iraq War and 2001 War in Afghanistan were fought to establish US hegemony in the oil rich Middle East. As a result of its war on terror, the US has tortured and indefinitely detained people in Guantanamo and CIA black site torture rooms all over the world. It routinely bombs and shoots civilians from drones and helicopters. Both wars drag on to this day with neither stability nor end in sight. 

(Source: truthout.org)

In Latin America, the US hasn’t needed to wage war. From the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba to the CIA and State Department’s support of General Pinochet’s coup d'etat in Chile, to the more recent support of coup d’etats in Honduras, and various attempts in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, the US has intervened militarily, economically, and politically in what it has considered its backyard since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The US’s Plan Colombia which covers South America, trained 72,000 Colombian soldiers and police between 1999 and 2008. From 2000 to 2012, it spent nearly $8 billion. The US’s Plan Merida which covers Mexico and Central America received over $2 billion. President Obama added another $574 million to train and equip police with surveillance equipment[3]. 

The goal of these wars and interventions is to install US style democracy. Lest we confuse it with democracy as power or rule by the people, let us name the devil by his name. To do so, I’d like to introduce William I. Robinson’s polyarchy: a political system limited to people periodically voting for leaders from within the elite and in which democratic control is excluded from the economic sphere[4]. It is this polyarchy the US desires and promotes and not democracy, nor even representative democracy, as can be seen by US backed coup d’etats against democratically elected presidents (from Allende to Maduro). 

These polyarchies prevent real people’s democracies from arising. Once they are established, the United States constricts democratic governance by opening up markets, rules, and regulations through the World Bank, IMF, and WTO. As Professor Ellen Meiksins Woods states, "If globalization is supposed to be preparing the grounds for democracy throughout the world as leaders of advanced capitalist countries like to tell us, it's also making sure that much of economic and social life will be beyond the reach of democratic power and ever more vulnerable to the power of capital[5]." 

The US Empire’s politico-economic interventions have created impoverishment, inequality, and stunted and destroyed democracy around the world. From Venezuela, to Spain, to South Korea, to Iraq, when it comes to key reforms or decisions, elections in these polyarchies often had little impact on the implementation of neoliberal policies. Before Chavez came into power in 1999, regardless of the political party or campaign promise, all administrations faithfully implemented IMF recommendations. Regardless of who came into power, whether the liberal PSOE or conservative PP, the Spanish government implemented neoliberal policies inflicting such austerity pain as to trigger the 2011 Indignado protests. Here in Korea, before the 1997 presidential election even took place, all the presidential candidates already agreed to faithfully implement IMF structural readjustment. After President Saddam Hussein was toppled, in 2003 instead of holding elections as promised, the US appointed Interim President of Iraq Paul Bremer completely privatized Iraq through decree. Only after these important decisions were made were elections held in 2005[6]. 

Thus, these polyarchies serve as trojan horses promising democracy but ultimately carrying neoliberalist mechanisms to better exploit people, enrich corporations, and limit democracy through the privatization of public goods, services, and knowledge, and by granting special rights to investors through extra-judicial investor-state dispute systems. This opening up of markets to the global economy and the privatization of strategic public companies in Latin America resulted in the “lost decades” of the 1980s and 1990s deepening and expanding poverty and inequality while achieving little or negative growth. 

Latin America: Resistance and a New Way
In the 1990s, the people started fighting back with the IMF riots. Out of Venezuela’s 1989 Caracazo protests against the IMF and subsequent massacre, Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999. He was followed by Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner in 2003, Uruguay’s Tabare Vasquez in 2004, Bolivia’s Evo Morales in 2006, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega (re-election) in 2007. 

As Marta Harnecker notes in 21st Century Socialism and Latin America, some of these countries broke with neoliberal thinking (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua) and others, without breaking from neoliberalism, emphasized social issues (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay). Regardless, all of these countries came together in a synergistic combination challenging US Imperialism in the region and seeking regional autonomy through regional bodies like UNASUR, and CELAC. The more revolutionary of these achieved a new regional order based on solidarity and cooperation through ALBA and PetroCaribe. 

It is these ALBA countries[7] that are leading the struggle for regional autonomy and against the neoliberalist logic of development by choosing a new system centered on solidarity and people. Central to this project is Venezuela, which is creating a people centered economy where the economic and political are under the hands of the people by nationalizing the dividends of oil wealth, creating community councils, and repaying social debt through social missions. Furthermore, regionally, Venezuela is showing the possibility of trade not based on competition as with free trade agreements, but through cooperation, coordination, and solidarity: through ALBA, Venezuela provides oil to Cuba in exchange for doctors, teachers, and technical expertise; in PetroCaribe, Venezuela provides subsidized long term loans so Caribbean countries can access Venezuelan oil.

These alternative projects that offer a vision of a better world and global order challenge US domination in the Western Hemisphere and the world. Despite the setbacks that US political intervention, economic blockades, military threats have created, the region is still unwilling to return to the neoliberalism of the 1980s and 90s. Against great difficulties, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua still remain in the hands of left governments. After a temporary detour to the right, Argentina (with the recent presidential victories of  center-left Alberto-Fernandez and Christina Kirchner) is returning to the left. In Chile and Ecuador, mass protests attacked the conservative government’s austerity measures and neoliberal policies. In Brazil, popular movements still fight to return former president Lula. Latin America fights a mortal struggle for that other possible and necessary world against its elite, the global media corporations, and US Empire. History demanded we join with them in this fight.

A New Peace Movement
A new world and global order was born in Latin America. That’s why, in 2012, we visited Venezuela to directly and concretely engage in solidarity activities with the Bolivarian revolution. This was followed by exposure trips to Venezuela in 2014 and 2015. Solidarity has always been about building a better world together. As such, our solidarity trips were as much for Venezuela as they were to directly witness and learn from Venezuela’s revolution. What we witnessed there was completely different from what we’d seen and heard in the mainstream media.

In 2014 and 2015, we met with community councils and communes empowered by the Venezuelan government as spaces for people’s direct participation in community and regional affairs. We also saw how medical care and education — basic rights unavailable before the revolution — were free and universal. Basic stability in life was secured through housing and food missions. Through these processes, people could actually effect change in their lives. Listening to people, we knew Chavismo had transformed people to never allow a return to pre-revolutionary society.

In one of the most powerful moments in our 2014 trip, a middle-aged disabled man participating in the community council shared with us that before the revolution, he had been invisible to society as a man with a single arm. After the revolution, he’d regained his dignity through a system that allowed him to participate in politics, speak out as a member of the community, and lead change.

(Source: International Strategy Center)

The current situation is not the same as we visited Venezuela since the U.S. economic blockade and the opposition’s escalating attempts to overthrow the Maduro government. Faced with economic difficulties and social instabilities, Venezuela continues policies for people such as subsidized food program through CLAP with Venezuelans voting to continue the Bolivarian Revolution in elections. 

In addition, we carried out events with the embassies of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Korean media often uncritically repeats international wire services’ news about these countries. Our events counter this media narrative and expose the economic war and media attacks and threats by US imperialism. In 2016, we hosted an international forum on Latin America with intellectuals to diagnose the situation and explore ways to carry out solidarity. We’ve also published articles based on interviews with the embassy’s charge d'affaires, a member of Venezuela's constitutional assembly, and written by our overseas correspondent.

I’d like to conclude my talk by proposing that we embark in this battle of ideas. In a teleconference we had with the Indian intellectual Vijay Prashad, he noted the importance of the battle of ideas. In an event with the Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Bolivian Embassies, they noted the importance of battling fake news. We too must embark on this battle of ideas.  

As Gramsci stated every class has its intellectuals to justify and analyze the world for it. The mainstream media and their pundits justify the actions of the opposition reiterating the ideology of US Empire. As Gramsci would ask us, “Who do we stand with? Is our goal to justify and refine a US paradigm of competition and the markets? or to stand together with those searching for a new way? 

Secondly, we must be guided by solidarity and humility. The Bolivarian Revolution is fighting to transform Venezuela. From our experience creating change through the candlelight protests, we know too well how demanding even reforms, let alone revolution, can trigger fierce resistance from the elite. No such revolutions exist in South Korea, in the US, or Europe. Latin America’s difficulties are the fierce counterrevolution of the old fighting to survive and the newborn struggling to walk.

Chilean journalist Marta Harnecker said that politics isn’t the art of the possible but the art of making “possible tomorrow that which now seems impossible.” Let us start today by learning, teaching, and building the forces necessary to bring about a world of dignity for all.

1. Lauren Carroll. Obama: US spends more on military than next 8 nations combined. Politico. Jan. 13, 2016. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military-next-8-nations-combi/
2. Brian Jones. One Chart Shows The Magnitude Of US Naval Dominance. Business Insider. Nov. 14, 2013. https://www.businessinsider.com/magnitude-of-us-naval-dominance-2013-11
3. Dae-Han Song. Exposing the Devil: US Foreign Policy Towards Latin America. Sept. 29, 2016. https://www.goisc.org/englishblog/2016/09/28/exposing-the-devil-us-foreign-policy-towards-latin-america?rq=the%20greatest%20trick%20the%20devil%20pulled
4. William I. Robinson. Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony. Cambridge University Press. 1996. p. 49-53
5. Ellen Meiksins Wood. The Imperial Paradox: Ideologies of Empire. Talk given at SOAS, University of London. Oct. 29, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzaAoRx6uH4
6. Ibid.
7. The ALBA member countries are Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Ecuador, one of the core ALBA countries, withdrew after Lenin Moreno came into office.