By Nico King Gile and Jonah Wurtzel,
Staff Writers.
On Jan. 3 at 2 a.m. PST, American military drones entered Venezuelan airspace and launched a series of strikes on infrastructure across the northern region of the country. Simultaneously, an apprehension force entered the residence of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, kidnapping the leader and his wife and flying them to a New York City detention center in an attack that SRHS English teacher James Kowalczyk said “demonstrated. . . a lack of diplomatic handling” and was “completely against international law.”
In both the bombing’s prelude and wake, President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that access to Venezuela’s oil was the primary motivation for this act of imperial aggression all while still making sure to halfheartedly provide the obligatory rambling about democracy. Trump, characteristically loyal to his class, is hardly claiming that his operation is to take what does not belong to America, and is rather open about the fact that he’s doing a favor for a friend who invested in a Venezuelan oil company. Rarely are the machinations of political corruption visible in such plain sight. The brazen and blatant manner in which Trump is conducting himself is arguably the most unique element of the bombing, as hawkish foreign policy is as American as apple pie.
Perhaps the most obvious comparison to this forceful entry into Venezuela is America’s ill-fated 2003 invasion of Iraq. Widely accepted today as a failure which created a power vacuum in a nation that did not welcome their western “liberators” with tears of joy and gratitude for the democracy apparently brought by the carpet-bombing of their cities (as American politicians and media pundits claimed they would), the invasion led to nearly 15 years of civil war and the discovery of zero weapons of mass destruction, the military operation’s purported reasoning. However, American oil corporations emerged from the conflict as decisive capital-W Winners. Halliburton, for example, received tens of billions in federal contracts for their role in “rebuilding” a nation decimated by American bombs. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why such companies (and their lapdogs in the District of Columbia) are eager for an Iraq redux, even as the stomachs of those with functioning memory spans turn at the idea.
Just like its oil-seeking conquests, American attempts to stifle self-determination in Latin America are nothing new. In fact, during the Cold War, almost every country in the region became the lucky recipient of the foisted gift known as democracy at one point or another. Of course, it lived under a far better supported facade.
In El Salvador, democracy came in the form of CIA-trained and funded right-wing death squads whose indiscriminate massacres left tens of thousands of civilians dead over the course of a 12-year civil war.
In Chile, democracy looked like the deposition of democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende and subsequent support for Augusto Pinochet, a dictator whose regime was responsible for the murder of some 3,000 political dissidents, as well as the brutal torture of tens of thousands more.
In Guatemala, the advent of democracy resulted in the genocidal slaughter of an estimated 150,000 Mayan indigenous people (and the scorched-earth style decimation of their centuries-old civilization) at the hands of various U.S.-funded military governments and fascist paramilitaries following the CIA-sponsored overthrow of populist leader Jacobo Árbenz in a coup spurred by the lobbying of the United Fruit Company.
Looking back, one can see that none of this is new. The defense of U.S. economic interests has almost always served as the primary factor for military and intelligence interventions. Woodrow Wilson, a president who preached freedom, intervened 20 times in South America, mostly to protect U.S. banks from their foreign debtors. Now that’s democracy. But he had the good sense to hide under the guise of freedom.
Overall, the U.S. spreads little in the way of genuine freedom in its perennial global push for liberty. One-third of all countries worldwide house U.S. ambassadors, while special operation forces are in 75% of all nations, a testament to how U.S. international relations lead with force. As the years go by and coups reshape countries overnight and dissidents are dumped into unmarked mass graves, the primary benefactors have always been the same: Wall Street and the billionaire class as a whole. Imperial aggression doesn’t trickle down to the masses any more than tax cuts do. Therefore, no working American should passively accept the oligarchy’s self-serving and morally ludicrous use of their tax dollars to finance these unjustified conquests.
Instead, we must look towards the possibility of a world in which the U.S. uses its hegemony and vast resources to provide humanitarian aid to developing nations and keeps its own corporations out of the political affairs of the Third World. In fact, even amidst the decades of American-sponsored atrocities, there exists a precedent for American involvement across the globe that is not characterized by M16s and Secret Police forces.
Although the agency’s close relationship with the CIA and resulting involvement in regime change sadly cannot be overlooked, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has also accomplished incredible things, such as saving tens of millions of lives through AIDS/HIV medical support. Kowalczyk, while commenting on the history of American foreign policy, said that America is a “superpower,” and coming to the aid of other nations is “our responsibility, almost.” It is evident from the nation’s exorbitant defense spending that America has the resources to address humanitarian crises worldwide instead of focusing on reckless expansionism that only exacerbates inequities and suffering. It is our responsibility to advocate for an America that does the former and not the latter.
