Johann Hari: Is the US about to treat the rest of the world better? Maybe... (Independent / UK)

[struggle4progress]

American foreign policy is subject to structural pressure that has not dissolved
Friday, 23 January 2009

The tears are finally drying – the tears of the Bush years, and the tears of awe at the sight of a black President of the United States. So what now? The cliché of the day is that Barack Obama will inevitably disappoint the hopes of a watching world, but the truth is more subtle than that. If we want to see how Obama will affect us all – for good or bad – we need to trace the deep structural factors that underlie United States foreign policy. A useful case study of these pressures is about to flicker on to our news pages for a moment – from the top of the world.

Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America, and its lofty slums 13,000 feet above sea level seem a world away from the high theatre of the inauguration. But if we look at this country closely, we can explain one of the great paradoxes of the United States – that it has incubated a triumphant civil rights movement at home, yet thwarted civil rights movements abroad. Bolivia shows us in stark detail the contradictions facing a black President of the American empire.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has a story strikingly similar to Obama's. In 2006, he became the first indigenous president of his country – and a symbol of the potential of democracy. When the Spanish arrived in Bolivia in the 16th century, they enslaved the indigenous people and worked millions to death. As recently as the 1950s, an indigenous person wasn't even allowed to walk through the centre of La Paz, where the presidential palace and city cathedral stand. They were (and are) routinely compared to monkeys and apes.

Morales was born to a poor potato-farmer in the mountains, and grew up scavenging for discarded orange peel or banana skins to eat. Of his seven siblings, four died in infancy. Throughout his adult life, it was taken for granted that the country would be ruled by the white minority; the "Indians" were too "child-like" to manage a country ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-is-the-us-about-to-treat-the-rest-of-the-world-better-maybe-1513367.html

Ya really oughta read this one ...

[bemildred]

1. President Obama can correct a lot of abuses by simply refusing to sign off on things.

And the emphasis on human rights works in the same way.
This is a good piece.

[Tartiflette]

2. This is a fair piece

It gets to the heart of why there is a disconnect between how much of the American populace perceive themselves as champions of democracy, the shining city on the hill etc, and the harsh reality of American interference in domestic affairs of numerous sovereign countries, including democracies. Unfortunately, there appears to be little of this sort of information which gets out through the MSM in the US (or even in Britain, where Hari is one of the few journalists in a major newspaper that shines a light on such things) and until such information does find a way into the public consciousness, there is unlikely to be a real need for the political elite to change policies.

[struggle4progress]

4. Welcome to DU!

:-) :toast:

[Judi Lynn]

3. Great article. So glad it was written. Thanks. n/t

[MasonJar]

5. But why did he choose this anti-Morales advisor? Sometimes Obama

does not stand for what is fair and right. My query is how does he choose?

[Stevepol]

6. Great article & not long either. K&R

[Mojorabbit]

7. Very good article. nt

[Judi Lynn]

8. Sorry, just discovered struggle4progress got there first with this article. Please look for it there

Johann Hari: Is the US about to treat the rest of the world better? Maybe...

American foreign policy is subject to structural pressure that has not dissolved

Friday, 23 January 2009

The tears are finally drying – the tears of the Bush years, and the tears of awe at the sight of a black President of the United States. So what now? The cliché of the day is that Barack Obama will inevitably disappoint the hopes of a watching world, but the truth is more subtle than that. If we want to see how Obama will affect us all – for good or bad – we need to trace the deep structural factors that underlie United States foreign policy. A useful case study of these pressures is about to flicker on to our news pages for a moment – from the top of the world.


Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America, and its lofty slums 13,000 feet above sea level seem a world away from the high theatre of the inauguration. But if we look at this country closely, we can explain one of the great paradoxes of the United States – that it has incubated a triumphant civil rights movement at home, yet thwarted civil rights movements abroad. Bolivia shows us in stark detail the contradictions facing a black President of the American empire.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has a story strikingly similar to Obama's. In 2006, he became the first indigenous president of his country – and a symbol of the potential of democracy. When the Spanish arrived in Bolivia in the 16th century, they enslaved the indigenous people and worked millions to death. As recently as the 1950s, an indigenous person wasn't even allowed to walk through the centre of La Paz, where the presidential palace and city cathedral stand. They were (and are) routinely compared to monkeys and apes.

Morales was born to a poor potato-farmer in the mountains, and grew up scavenging for discarded orange peel or banana skins to eat. Of his seven siblings, four died in infancy. Throughout his adult life, it was taken for granted that the country would be ruled by the white minority; the "Indians" were too "child-like" to manage a country.

Given that the US is constitutionally a democracy and its presidents say they are committed to spreading democracy across the world, you would expect them to welcome the democratic rise of Morales. But wait. Bolivia has massive reserves of natural gas – a geo-strategic asset, and one that rakes in billions for American corporations. Here is where the complications set in.

Before Morales, the white elite was happy to allow American companies to simply take the gas and leave the Bolivian people with short change: just 18 per cent of the royalties. Indeed, they handed almost the entire country to US interests, while skimming a small percentage for themselves. In 1999, an American company, Bechtel, was handed the water supply – and water rates for the poor majority doubled.

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-is-the-us-about-to-treat-the-rest-of-the-world-better-maybe-1513367.html

[Demeter]

9. It's Not the Government That Started or Supported Civil Rights

at least, not until Lyndon Johnson. And only intermittently, since Johnson, and at the point of a lawsuit. So it's not surprising that the government thought to contain the spread of the disease abroad.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Excellent article! Thank you for posting! This upcoming vote in Bolivia is VERY important

--which is why the Bushwhacks tried to obstruct it and foment civil war.

The UK Independent writer, Johann Hari, exactly pinpoints the fault line in Obama policy--bad appointments, and the heavily destructive pressures of multinational corporations.

You know, few of what used to be called "U.S. corporations" have anything to do with us, any more--except to control our politicians and steal us blind. They have loyalty to no one--to no people, to no country. They are outside our control. The best we could do--if we had a really good government, beholden to "we, the people"--is to rescind their corporate charters, and bust their monopolies, here, or re-write their charters with provisions requiring social responsibility (and paying their share of taxes, and not lobbying our government and writing our laws and buying our office holders), here--for their U.S. affiliates. But they've used our resources, our productive work force, our middle-class-paid for infrastructure, our once honest court system, our once great educational system, and government subsidies and tax breaks, to build themselves transnational empires--floating countries, really--with which they can transfer jobs and wealth out of our country, leaving us with...well, what we have, a non-manufacturing, non-viable, broken economy and financial system. And they couldn't give a fuck what happens to the people of the U.S.A. (let alone the people of Bolivia, or Venezuela). They hold enormous power, they control our government--and we can't touch them.

And neither can Obama, if he wants to live--and get anything done to mitigate our oppression. Understand this: The Bushwhacks and their corporate and war profiteering brethren have stolen billions and billions of dollars from us. They've set up monsters like Halliburton (now headquartered in the UAE) and Blackwater, a private army (operating in Colombia). They have resources for private wars, whether or not Obama agrees. And they still have a lot of operatives, many deeply buried, I'm sure, in our military, in the CIA and throughout the government. Obama's situation is much like JFK's--with the CIA and its secret budgets and illegally obtained funds, operating against his every peace initiative. Read "JFK and the Unspeakable," by James Douglass. See what JFK was up against, and what was going on within our own government. Well, people as bad as those--and worse--have been in charge for eight years. And they have been looting us, hand over fist. They really don't need the CIA any more. They have their own.

I've been following events in South America closely for some time, and I believe there is sufficient evidence to be worried, and even alarmed, about a planned Bushwhack/corporate oil war--a secessionist/civil war scenario like the one they just tried out in Bolivia--primarily to grab control of Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil. We may be looking at Obama's "Bay of Pigs"--a privately instigated military action that attempts to blackmail him into committing U.S. forces, on the wrong side.

I see hope for the survival of this remarkable, peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution that has swept South America, in their own unity and determination, evidenced by their new 'common market,' UNASUR, which does not have the U.S. as a member. UNASUR's very first action was to unanimously back the Morales government in Bolivia, against the fascist/white separatist insurrection that the Bushwhacks instigated. That is why this vote on the new Constitution is even happening (this Sunday). It is one important part of a compromise, in a peace negotiated by UNASUR. Once the U.S. ambassador and the DEA were thrown out of the country (by Morales), peace became possible. Brazil and Argentina were particularly helpful, also Chile (which organized this important UNASUR meeting and its actions). This is an historic development in South America, which has always been so vulnerable to U.S. "divide and conquer" tactics. That shit is not going to work in South America any more. The South Americans have had it with U.S. bullying and interference.

If it's up to Obama, I think he will try to be just and peaceful, but many of his appointments do not have a good record on those scores--in fact, many have very bad records. And, as this writer so correctly points out, Obama is head of an empire that he doesn't really control. I won't say he is a figurehead. I think he was genuinely elected. I also think he's very intelligent, and has a good heart. But with rightwing corporations owning and controlling all the voting machines in the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls, the bad guys have power over him, and I think he knows it. The corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies can also ruin him at any time--five, fatcat, rightwing, multi-billionaires control it all. That is why he was compelled to fill his administration with corporatists and war supporters--and make a deal with the DLCers/DINOS (near Bushwhacks, except for some social issues, such as women's rights). He is hemmed in. He is constrained. And I'm quite sure that they also shaved his mandate (by about 5%), denying him a big landslide, to further hamper him.

If what I fear happens--a move on Venezuela--and Obama gets sucked in, it would be a disaster for him. And if he refuses to get sucked in, he may suffer JFK's fate. (Read Douglass' book.) Bolivia may have been a test run of the civil war strategy--to see how everyone reacts and figure out various ways to do it to the more important oil targets, Venezuela and Ecuador. Bolivia is landlocked, and was sandwiched in between two Bushwhack friendly countries, Peru and Paraguay (--Paraguay is on the border adjacent to eastern separatist provinces of Bolivia). But mid-last year, Paraguay elected its first leftist president, ever--Fernando Lugo--who has said he wants U.S. troops out of his country, and who would not likely collude in destabilizing Bolivia (say, by letting Paraguay be a staging area for U.S. troops, weapons and other resources to cross the border into Bolivia). (This may be one of the reasons the Bolivia coup failed.) Venezuela and Ecuador, however, are both bordered by Colombia--a country that is rife with rightwing death squads, where Blackwater has been operating, where U.S. forces have a heavy presence (and colluded in an attack on Ecuador last year), and which has a government run by narco-fascist thugs (propped up by $6 BILLION in U.S./Bushwhack military aid). And Venezuela has the US 4th Fleet to worry about, in the Caribbean, as well. Venezuela and Ecuador are more vulnerable than Bolivia, and the oil prize is much greater.

Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, proposed a common defense for UNASUR (which was agreed to, and is now being organized), and has said that the U.S. 4th Fleet threatens Brazil's oil reserves on the Atlantic coast. The allied leftist countries are: Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile (center-left), and, to the north, Nicaragua, Cuba and Guatemala (also, possibly El Salvador--leftist ahead, election coming up; with Honduras leaning left as well). The anomalies are Peru (very corrupt 'free tradist' government), Colombia (fascist, highly militarized), Panama (big U.S. military presence), and Mexico (seems to be in full meltdown, with a rightwing government, and big infusion of U.S./Bushwhack military billions--wherever the U.S. "war on drugs" goes, there goes chaos); the leftist came within 0.05% of winning in the last election). I'll leave Costa Rica out of this, for now.

So you see what is happening here: The leftist democracy tide is moving north, and the Bushwhacks have been trying to hold back by the tide, by bulking Colombia and Mexico up with guns and bullets. Ecuador is expelling the U.S. "war on drugs" military base this year. Paraguay wants us out. One of the provisions of the new Bolivian Constitution, that is coming up for a vote, bans U.S. (and all foreign) bases in Bolivia. Bolivia and Venezuela both threw the U.S. ambassadors out, over the interference in Bolivia. Brazil is worried about the situation. And the eight leftist countries in South America are allied against U.S. interference--and have further (and growing) allies to the north.

Upshot: If the U.S. gets dragged into a war for Venezuela's/Ecuador's oil, the U.S. cannot win. It will become Vietnam. And it will only earn the U.S. further disrepute. But when did that ever stop Donald Rumsfeld (whom I have reason to believe is involved in this planning), or any Bushwhack? They win either way. They create chaos and mayhem and even civil disorder for Obama, here--even if they don't end up with the oil. And they create more hardship and cost for Venezuela and its allies, and possibly civil disorder, dissension and destabilization, to further long term strategies. Or so they may fantasize. I think the South Americans will pull together, and will emerge from such a fight even more unified and determined to go their own way. (And they will deal with the menace of Colombia in their own way. The rest of Central/South America will go leftist, and for an all-Latin America 'common market.')

I do think Obama wants peace, and a faction of the corporate rulers wants a nice face on U.S. policy, for the moment. This may mean some years of softening up (as Clinton did to Iraq, preparing the way for Bush's war), before this oil war plan unfolds. A key is the upcoming referendum on term limits in Venezuela (mid-Feb). The Bushwhacks have been pouring millions into the rightwing/fascist opposition, to defeat the amendment (which would permit Chavez to run again in 2012). If Chavez is a lameduck in 2011-2012, that may be their moment to strike, or soon thereafter. If he runs again and wins (and he very likely would win), that would make this war scheme more difficult.