Kassioun Editorial 1259: What the Venezuelan Incident Means

First: The hasty assumption that the kidnapping of Maduro has established US control over Latin America—and the assumption that there will be no resistance to American domination, whether in Venezuela itself or across Latin America—is entirely false; precisely because it overlooks the continent’s history of continuous struggle against Washington, its brutality, and its plundering.

Second: American talk about drugs and dictatorship are pretexts that do not withstand any historical scrutiny and convince no one—especially when they come from Washington, the foremost supporter and patron of dictatorship, military regimes, and the drug trade in Latin America for an entire past century. Nor have the various American pretexts held up in the face of the declared and brazen ambitions to control Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral wealth.

Third: The facts of life are stubborn, and parachute drops and coup landings are of no use against them. America’s economic, political, and military decline is a reality that is expressing itself gradually and increasingly rapidly across various fields—first and foremost through the financial-economic crisis and then the social crisis, which is knocking ever more forcefully at the door of the American interior and which has become virtually certain in the forecasts of the world’s leading economists, including American economists themselves.

Fourth: Washington’s escalation in Venezuela is a concrete implementation of the newly announced national security strategy, whose central title is retrenchment to the Western Hemisphere and an attempt to secure it (that is, to place it under complete US hegemony), in parallel with comprehensive retrenchment and global repositioning, shedding the “burdens of NATO”, and “reversing the direction of globalization”.

Fifth: Retrenchment from global control and from globalization, in its process, means that the US ceases to be a global superpower; it means a gradual descent down the ladder of historical development toward a phase of regional control—namely, the historical phase in which the 1823 Monroe Doctrine prevailed, which stipulated non-interference by European powers in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere in exchange for America’s commitment not to interfere in European affairs.

Sixth: The assumption that the poles opposed to Washington were unable to do anything to save Venezuela or Maduro, and taking that as evidence of weakness, reflects a failure to understand how international conflict unfolds. What the rising poles—primarily, China, Russia, and India—seek is comprehensive American retrenchment, alongside continued global attrition, and continued advance and superiority primarily in the arenas of real material production, upon which financial, political, and military dominance are built. Avoiding slipping into major direct confrontations is a core part of today’s management of international conflict, in which rising states seek to smooth the path of American decline and retrenchment, culminating in a “collapse in place”, whose most dangerous aspect is the dust it raises without causing additional global damage. In short, Venezuela, for Washington, will be akin to Afghanistan for the Soviet Union.

Seventh: Those crushed by American brutality and those terrified by it share have in common jumping over a repeatedly objective historical law: empires collapse precisely at the moment of their maximum military-war expansion and activity; because such expansion has always been an expression of the closing of horizons for resolving internal crises, thus exporting them abroad. The Washington-led Western system reached its maximum possible expansion across the entire world after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Finally: Regarding what concerns us directly in Syria, we should learn the lesson repeated hundreds of times: the US can never be an ally under any circumstances. When Washington praises you or deals with you positively (such as Trump’s call to Maduro hours before the kidnapping operation, or Trump’s reassurances to Iran hours before bombing it), you should “be alarmed”!

(النسخة العربية)