The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire
Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair
Here’s the bullet-point version:
+ It’s imperialism.
+ It’s American imperialism, a bipartisan national project.
+ American imperialism is the global management of capitalist class power.
+ It’s a binary situation in which one side or the other will win via the use and threat of armed force.
+ It’s trouble for Venezuela and for imperialism.
+ There’s no such thing as Progressive Except Imperialism.
Here’s the long rant:
The United States government’s new offensive against Venezuela is an act of naked imperialism.
I predicted last year that Venezuela would be the first new country hit by the Trump administration’s indispensable need to establish its American-exceptionalist, “Presidentialist,” bona fides. It is the Goldilocks target. Not too small:It is, in fact, a significant country with world’s largest oil reserves, and a proclaimed socialist government that’s been a thorn in the gringo boot on Latin America for almost twenty years. Not too big: It’s no military match for U.S. & Latin American proxy armed forces, and nobody will start WWIII to defend it. Just right: A decisive win, at little apparent cost. And just the kind of amuse-boucheneeded to get the U.S. population’s juices flowing for a more costly and difficult attack on the ultimate target—Iran. At least, that’s the way they think.
But I couldn’t anticipate the anger and frustration I would feel, seeing this crock of shit being shoved down the throats of the world, and being swallowed whole by the bipartisan political and media establishment, with nothing more than a few hard gulps from even most U.S. “progressives.”
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