The Value Of Venezuelan Lesson

Pushed to the corner too long and too deep, Venezuela has done something unprecedented since the Monroe Doctrine was declared in 1823. For more than a century, the United States had put at bay non-Latin American powers, including Europe, to respect the continent as its backyard. Tacitly or otherwise, the rest of the international community exercised restraint in deference to the US insistence.

Now things have taken a strong twist. Something unprecedented happened when Caracas recently sought the support of China and Russia after American warships flexed their muscles, cruising in the waters not far from Venezuelan shores, amidst media reports of Washington’s preparations for a military intervention. Venezuelan speed boats in the Caribbean were struck and sunk, alleging that they carried drugs destined for the US. No proof was provided to convince the doubting parts of the world community. Critics doubt the veracity of the allegations. They argue the attacks have more to do with oil contracts than with drugs. 

Geopolitics does not always remain the same. Geography stands permanent; not international politics.  There are limits to big power pressure. National pride adds strength, especially when a target is a middle power and with the world’s largest known oil reserves, which are estimated to be four times the American reserves. 

Changed circumstances

Government failing to adopt policies in line with its election campaign. Desperate governments take desperate decisions but not without due calculations. In Venezuela’s case, all three superpowers—the US, Russia and China are engaged. While Washington tightens the screws on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Beijing and Moscow are siding with Caracas in a scenario that many Western strategists and the Pentagon seem not to have foreseen. Complacency infected them, depending too much on the law of improbability, treated as a convenient and comfortable conclusion.  

In a new twist to recent developments, a Russian military cargo aircraft landed in Caracas on November 9, and the Russian contract agency of mercenary fighters, Wagner, is present in Venezuela. It is believed to provide support to Maduro’s inner security ring. Russian presence in what has long been accepted as the American backyard signals yet another dent in US foreign policy. It announces intensified competition between superpowers. If Russia is ahead somewhere, can China be far behind, given the close coordination and cooperation between the two nuclear powers that share a common border stretching more than 3,000 kilometres? 

In the Cold War, there were only two superpowers. China, until the turn of the new millennium, was a developing country. Until the 1970s, its economic pace was sluggish, and food was scarce in many parts of the world’s most populous country. In the first quarter of the new century, Beijing has recorded a massive feat in alleviating poverty issues. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.

Russia is back to business, not by creating satellite states as was the case during the Soviet Union days, when Eastern Europe was under Moscow’s thumb with a vigilant military.  Non-recognition of the government, severe sanctions and considerable isolation in the US and its close allies were wearing down Caracas. Then came the raid on speed boats on what Maduro says are trumped-up charges from the Donald Trump administration. 

The NATO military alliance should have been dissolved after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, since the organisation’s founding objective was to act as a counterweight to the world’s first communist country and with massive military strength. But its leaders not only failed to scrap it but expanded it. While Russia lost some territories on account of new independent states from the Soviet Union map, NATO went on a militarisation thrust, adding new members, including those bordering Russia. This was to tighten the screw on the former communist country, with still vast natural resources and military strength next only to the US. 

Mainstream West considered the unipolar world an opportunity to consolidate its dominance for ages to come, and the original rationale for NATO’s existence was thrown to the winds. Instead of withering away, the defence grouping expanded. For Russia, next-door Ukraine’s bid for NATO crossed the red line. 

Bizarre pretexts

Many powers claim to support democracy movements in other countries, often encouraging and surreptitiously funding the opposition or sponsoring insurgencies. Countries listed as advanced democracies are widely among those involved in such clandestine operations. Every now and then, military operations are undertaken. The purpose: regime change. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Russia. Suharto turned his country into a killing field in the mid-1960s at the behest of the leading capitalist countries that abhorred the prospects of the rise of communists who could come to power and unsettle the legacy world order. 

Ecuador and Peru saw democratically elected governments ousted because foreign forces did not find them inconvenient or not obliging them with proposals pertaining to the use of local resources or defence arrangements, if not both. Egypt and Iran, too, have witnessed similar events. The Shah regime in Iran was patronised and promoted as an oasis of “modernisation” in the West Asian Muslim landscape. 

For that matter, the collapse of Ukraine’s duly elected government led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, who, in a 2014 military coup, was considered to be pro-Russian. Ferdinand Marcos’s regime in the Philippines became increasingly authoritarian and corrupt. News reports in February 1986 indicated that the Marcoses had amassed more than $3 billion during the Marcos rule for 20 years. Although fairly elected the first time, Marcos resorted to unfair means and dubious activities to prolong his stay in power.

Unscrupulous forces engage in media mobilisation to demonise a government, not because of any commitment to upholding and championing the values of democracy in both letter and spirit. They are more interested in weaponising talk of democracy than promoting it in all its universally accepted values.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)