Vietnam and Venezuela
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was brutally gunned down by forces hostile to his truth-telling and opposition to violence, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech titled “Beyond Viet Nam”. In the speech, Dr King warned that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programmes of social uplift is approaching spiritual death”.
Two significant developments occurred early this year. The United States made a crucial name change and crossed a significant milestone. The Department of Defence was renamed the Department of War, and the US military budget, for the first time, exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. To police the entire world, thus making it safe for the American ruling circles, Washington maintains 750 military bases across 80 countries.
Looking at this sad reality, particularly at a time when the United States was labouring under immense social and economic problems, Dr. Martin Luther King declared America to be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. In the same speech, Dr. King warned, “America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”
Fifty-seven years after his assassination, things have only gotten worse with the American leadership becoming increasingly reckless with its military adventures. Over the last three years, both the Biden and Trump administrations, with their European vassals in tow, have inched the world closer to nuclear Armageddon with the provocative adventures in Ukraine by sending military personnel to operate sophisticated military machinery that lobs highly explosive and destructive armaments into Russia.
The escalation began with the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022, the entry of the Abrams heavy tanks, the F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles that strike deep inside Russia. Putin’s idea that there are “red lines” that the West must not cross has become totally discredited. But alas, the world’s peoples may one day come to credit Russian restraint as the most reliable guarantor of peace and the survival of our civilisation.
In our Caribbean, the Trump regime has gathered more than 20% of the US naval power around Venezuela under the pretext of fighting narco terrorism. Under this plan to “fight drugs”, the Americans have murdered about 80 people whose small ships were blown up in the sea near Venezuela. No evidence was presented that any of the destroyed ships contained illegal cargo. Moreover, neither domestic nor international law permits the extrajudicial killing of those suspected of involvement in the illicit transhipment of drugs.
The cynicism of the American anti-narcotics policy was exposed last month when President Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran President, whom a Miami, Florida court convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Trump said his release of Juan Hernandez was intended to “make Honduras Great again”.
All American presidents since the turn of the century have placed Venezuela in their bull’s-eye. In 2002, former president Hugo Chavez, democratically elected in 1999, was kidnapped in an American-sponsored military coup that collapsed after millions of Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracas and other major cities to demand his release. Chávez launched the Bolivarian Revolution and pledged to use the country’s resources to benefit the less fortunate and vulnerable segments of the population.
Millions of homes were built, health care and education became free, and the people’s lives improved markedly. He also initiated the PetroCaribe initiative, which sold millions of barrels of fuel at concessionary prices. The policy allowed CARICOM countries to allocate the substantial savings to social and economic development. Our SVG received more than EC$700 million, which the Gonsalves regime squandered.
The American and Venezuelan political and economic elite who have controlled Venezuela’s oil wealth since its discovery a century ago would have none of it. President Chavez died tragically young in 2012. In 2015, President Obama declared Venezuela a threat to America’s national security, after which America ramped up its regime change operations. It initiated an economic strangulation scheme intended “to make the economy scream”.
The oil sector collapsed primarily because the Venezuelan government was denied access to international credit markets. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund refused to offer loans. Millions of people saw their economic lifeblood sucked out of the economy and fled to “greener pastures”.
In addition, the mainstream media began a campaign intended to manufacture consent for discontent and change. Venezuelan elections, once described by former US president Jimmy Carter as among the fairest and most transparent in the world, are now said to be unfair and undemocratic. By 2019, Juan Guido, a conservative politician with a favourable rating of 19%, was declared president of Venezuela even though he had not contested the presidential elections.
Cigco, the Venezuelan oil-distribution company in the US, was seized and given to Guido and his cronies. Last week, in an act that can best be described as theft, an American judge allowed a group of American businessmen to purchase the Cigco assets located in America for the undervalued price of $5.9 billion. Estimates indicate that the assets have a conservative value of five times the price Cigco was sold.
Add to this the act of international piracy last week, where American naval officers seized an oil tanker carrying 1.9 million barrels of Venezuelan fuel. The fuel was allegedly destined for Cuba, Venezuela’s beleaguered socialist neighbour in the northern Caribbean. Asked what America will do with the tanker filled with fuel, Trump flippantly said, “I assume we’re going to keep the oil.”
The neo-cons around Trump want to destroy Venezuela, to get at Cuba, the most defiant example of resistance to imperial arrogance. Until we understand the world through clear lenses, we are, as Malcolm X said, doomed to follow the mass media and to love our enemies and hate and betray our friends.