KAMALIKA  PIERIS

One country, Cuba, positioned in the Caribbean,   right under USA’s nose, managed to withstand the USA. Fidel Castro, leader of the Communist Party, took power in Cuba in 1958. USA tried to strangle Cuba economically with a decade long trade embargo. US tried repeatedly to bump off Fidel Castro, once with an exploding cigar. USA’s attempt to overthrow Castro in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, failed miserably, adding to Cuba’s stature.

Russia supported Cuba from 1960 onwards, otherwise Cuba could not have survived.  Under Castro, Cuba, with generous Soviet aid, provided basic food and housing, cradle to grave health care and free and universal education to its people. Cuban doctors, working all over the world, were considered excellent.  Russian subsidies were withdrawn in the 1990s and Cuba was in difficulty. Then China came to the rescue. Venezuela and Bolivia also became allies.

In 2015, USA re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba. But America still deeply resented the success of Cuba, This was openly demonstrated when Castro died in November 2016  and his life was celebrated. TIME said, inter alia, thousands of dissidents languished in his prisons or were killed. This was a severe price to pay for free doctoring and schooling.     In Sri Lanka it was noted that Castro and Cuba show that a country can face challenges from world powers provided it had a leader of the caliber of Castro.

The first strategy employed by USA in its foreign meddling was direct and brutal Regime Change”.  This was achieved by marshalling opposition political parties, NGOs, ethnic and religious minorities groups, and the English language media to create an ongoing low intensity internal conflict, with the objective of to installing a proxy government.. The regimes it installed were always repressive and corrupt.  The US turned a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in their ‘client states’. The countries governed by these regimes were kept unstable,   so that they could be easily controlled and manipulated.  Regime changes manoeuvred by the US have usually been disadvantageous to the people of the country and have created immense suffering.  Iraq today is far worse than it was under Saddam.  Afghanistan is no better. As a result, USA was hated in the countries it dominated.

In the 21 century however, the US is trying a different strategy, it is going for smooth electoral change. The US has engineered electoral changes in several countries. There was the Rose revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange revolution in Ukraine (2004), Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005).  None of these ‘revolutions’ were genuine, critics say. They were coup d’etats engineered by US.  The new rulers simply shifted their foreign policy towards US interest, without any benefit to the people.  The   uprisings in Venezuela and Thailand in 2014    are also blamed on the US. Venezuela said ‘US wants our oil and that is why they are encouraging a Ukraine like coup’. Hong Kong’s Umbrella movement (2014) is considered another US attempt.     In 2016 China said it would not tolerate any independence movement in Hong Kong directed at damaging mainland stability.

In Venezuela the US moved from supporting opposition parties and NGOs to create new political parties, led by youthful fresh faces. Over one third of US funding was directed towards youth and student groups in Venezuela, including training in the use of social networks to mobilize political activism. Student leaders were sent to US for workshops and conferences on internet activism and media networking. They were    shown   tactics to promote regime change via street riots. Also, how to use media to portray the government as repressive. In 2007 those student groups took to the streets in Caracas. The protests were composed mainly of middle and upper class youth and opposition politicians.

The   second strategy used by the US, is to   break up a sovereign state. Fissiparous separatist organizations are set up in selected countries and financed for the purpose. USA engineered the creation of South Sudan. Sudan’s oil is in the south. A Sudan caucus was set up in USA. Western humanitarian aid groups and American evangelical groups promoted the South Sudan secessionist movement. US provided huge quantities of arms to the rebels through the client states of Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia.   Every step of the process involved ‘carefully managed plots by the US and its collaborators’.  South Sudan achieved independence in 2011 with the help of the US. It is today, an unstable country with fighting between the government and rebel forces.

A third strategy is planned for the near future, ‘Responsibility to protect’. The term Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) was first introduced in 2001, in response to the genocide in Rwanda. The Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State sovereignty (ICISS 2001),   argued that state sovereignty does not mean unlimited power of a state over its own people. States must respect the rights of its citizens and their human dignity.

R2P was included in the annual reports of UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan and Ban ki Moon in 2005 and 2006. It was also pushed at the UN World Summit, 2005, as a doctrine to justify international intervention in domestic affairs of other countries. But member countries did not embrace the idea and R2P has not been formally accepted. ‘R2P is just another pretext to justify neo colonial intervention in the domestic affairs of developing nations,’ they said. The UN Charter   deals with this adequately. Also R2P flies in the face of the founding principles of the UN.  UN declaration of 1970 on international law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among states imposes an almost total prohibition on intervention.

There is no legal basis for R2P either. One of the basic rights of a sovereign state is the right to be and to remain independent. And for this the state is given sovereign rights over its citizens. This includes the right to defend and protect the state against external attack and internal subversion of its authority and protect its citizens. Other states are expected to respect this right and not interfere or intervene in the internal affair of other states, said G.H.Pieris. There was a plan in 2007 to convert Colombo’s International Centre for Ethnic relations (ICES) to the R2P centre for the region. The government stopped this.

The image of USA as a desirable country, perfect in all aspects, has now been dented. US politics is messy. The last Presidential election showed that. US administration is no better.  The Watergate scandal of 1971 showed that CIA and FBI engage in domestic spying.  While President Nixon and Kissinger were eavesdropping on officials, Department of Defence was eavesdropping on Kissinger.  White House and Camp David were also bugged. The President can order the assassination of a citizen without so much as a hearing, said one critic. Government   can spy on its citizens without a court order and its officials are immune to prosecution for war crimes.  The media are not independent either, they support agendas and spread misinformation. This also emerged at the recent Trump election.

The human rights aspect is also not good. Racism has been a major issue in America for almost a century. African Americans were lynched and no one was punished. The Ku Klux Klan   organization specialized in these lynchings and burnings. These killings are continuing. US Police   killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015 and more than 194 black people in 2016. This led to the recent Black Lives Matter” movement. The black minority still live in dilapidated and run down ghettoes in the inner cities. US has a high proportion of prison inmates, mainly drug users. Poor whites in America are called ‘White trash’.What other country labels a segment of its population as ‘trash’?

The US infrastructure is the most backward among the advanced industrialized economies, said TIME, with crumbling roads, highways and ancient bridges, some over 50 years old, in almost all the states. They were not designed to take today’s traffic loads either. US air traffic control relies on a 1960s radar system.  There is not even one high speed train in the entire continent, falling well behind Europe, Japan France, China and even Indonesia. The power distribution systems are still strung overhead.  Welfare expenditure is no better, continued TIME. Federal spending on education has been declining. The funding for the legal system is very low, and cases take many years to complete. National Institutes of Health, USA complained that Congress did not approve sufficient money for research into the Zika virus.

TIME magazine, 2016, has confirmed   that the US economy is in difficulties. Many Americans lost their jobs, pensions and houses in the    financial crises such as the Subprime Mortgage crisis of 2007.  This mostly affected the working class and the lower middle class. Families that earlier had comfortable lives, with cars and houses find that their children ‘now have to struggle’. There is high unemployment,   reduced incomes,   rising inequality and less chance of upward mobility, said TIME. The middle class is shrinking. It has fallen to 27% of the population. One extreme reaction is that California and Texas want to secede from the USA (Texit”).

We are clearly witnessing the demise of the American empire, continued TIME. US does not carry as much weight in the world economy as it used to. When US re-started diplomatic relations with China and Cuba, China and Cuba did not go to US to pay homage. USA went to them.  President Nixon went to China in 1972 and Obama to Cuba in   2016.

US is now losing ground to China and Russia. Russia is challenging the USA in the Middle East by giving support to Assad and Syria.  Russia’s powerful nuclear arsenal could destroy a significant portion of the US with a single attack, observed TIME. US was the single largest contributor to world growth earlier, not now, continued TIME.  The Chinese economy has overtaken US. China has greater economic power than any other country, today. Further, US lacks the strength to deal militarily with its formidable opponents, in one swipe. Even singly, it will be an immense and costly effort. US may have global dreams but its means are limited, said an analyst.

Sri Lanka must understand that the US is an oligarchy not a democracy. ‘Oligarchy’ means    a small group of people having control of the country. This US oligarchy is no ordinary oligarchy.  It is also   a leading global economic power. The whole world, not only the US, is dominated by these global economic elite. This elite includes American billionaires, such as Soros, the big banks such as Goldman Sachs and the big corporations. These are all interlinked. This powerful group also owns the leading media agencies, such as CBS and Time-Warner and these are used to influence public opinion worldwide.  Only about 15% of the elite’s capital actually goes into the US economy.  The rest circulates within global high finance. 

The American public are given a delusion of power and control   but actually, US policy is controlled by this exclusive, high level elite. Decisions that affect the public are taken, in private, behind closed doors by this financial elite. A considerable section of the US public, including the youth, low income groups and minorities are   considered unimportant by this group.   The US cabinet is decided by the leading bankers such as Citibank.

In its foreign policy, America went in for alliances not colonies.  It has the highest number of embassies, consulates and missions. But USA is not liked in the countries where it has a strong presence. The unethical and criminal behavior of the USA has cost them respect of the international community, said   an observer. There has been long standing opposition to the   heavy US military presence in Okinawa, Japan.Philippines president Duterte on a visit to China in 2016, said it was time to say goodbye to the US. He said Philippines had gained little in its long alliance with the US. ‘Your stay in my country was for your own benefit,’ USA   retaliated and said its aid package to Philippines would be withheld, giving human rights as the reason.

Countries coming under US gaze, object strongly to American interference in their affairs. They see it as blatant interference in the domestic affairs of independent countries.  US interest is never compatible with local interests, they complained.   USA has for a long time pursued a foreign policy calamitous to the whole world, including their own, critics said, using bogus reasons such as human right abuses.  America never won its overseas wars. Those wars only devastated countries and created havoc, they observed. Today there is a huge anti American sentiment sweeping the developing world mainly because of its activity in the Middle East. The US has become the biggest source of international uncertainty said TIME. US is so regularly  blamed for any international  destabilization that it had  to actually deny that it had any involvement in the 2016  failed coup in Turkey . (CONCLUDED)