The strategic action taken by US forces in Caracas, resulting in the removal of the Venezuelan president and the announced oversight of the country's politics and economy during the transition phase, until the installation of a government less insensitive to US concerns (the tone was deliberately kept as neutral as possible), has monopolized debates and discussions in almost all media outlets in recent weeks.
As is usually the case in these cases, the most controversial aspects of the issue have been avoided, limiting themselves to a superficial analysis instrumentally serving the marketing objectives that media outlets increasingly adopt as the sole standard for their selection, review, and dissemination of news.The extreme polarization between two opposing camps, which merely hurl mutual invective at each other without even delving into the merits of the issue, reflects this logic of seeking, cornering, and growing consensus, which has little or nothing to do with the issue at hand, but which invariably boils down to bending every fact, no matter how global and significant, to local and contingent needs.
This is how, depending on one's political affiliation, the aforementioned "strategic action" becomes either an intolerable act of aggression that threatens the right of self-determination of a sovereign state, jeopardizing global security and violating the most basic rules of international law, or a legitimate initiative of defense against a dictatorial and criminal regime and simultaneously a decisive step forward in the spread of democracy throughout the world.
Without wishing to enter into this type of discussion, it is essential to point out that US foreign policy, inspired by the "Monroe Doctrine," the "Roosevelt Corollary," and "Manifest Destiny," has always been oriented toward hegemony over the American continent and has always considered it its prerogative to interfere, often militarily, with the governments of countries deemed strategic to its own economic interests. Throughout history, this inclination has manifested itself in the direct annexation of territories (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Hawaii), the creation of puppet states (Panama), interference to counter unwelcome governments (Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic), and support for coups d'état (Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile). Perhaps for the first time in history, a US president has candidly admitted, without any kind of diplomacy or ideological shielding, that Venezuela was invaded for its oil fields, much to the chagrin of those in the rest of the world who strive to find nobler and more elevated motives: not all countries are worthy of democracy; it's useful to export it only where it's convenient!
From a certain perspective, the analyses of those who emphasize the future consequences of this affair for global geopolitical balances and those who highlight the dramatic crisis of international law and the need to restore clear rules that prevent such "incidents" from recurring appear to be the product of the same approach. The former imagine the world as a sort of Risk game in which the great powers compete to conquer ever-larger spheres of influence, with the risk of triggering destructive global conflicts, but also with the possibility of reaching a balance that allows for a sort of more or less secure and lasting stability: a reformulation of the old Cold War formula of peace and armed deterrence, with all due respect to Greenland, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine, Taiwan, etc. The latter advocate for international law that is clear and respected by all nations, but in doing so they not only forget, for example, the utter futility and inconsistency of the numerous sanctions imposed by the UN and theoretically still in force, but they also ignore a basic notion: to be enforceable, a legal system requires the capacity to impose sanctions, or, in Weber's words, an entity that "possesses the monopoly of legitimate force," that is, one capable of imposing its will. From this perspective, only the creation of a "superstate" with its own army could guarantee the necessary conditions for the existence of a law, now no longer international, binding and enforceable. We can define both points of view as "state-centric," in the sense that they cannot imagine any kind of global policy or initiative that can ignore the idea of the nation. In seeking solutions to the crisis we are experiencing, they rely on the very entities that caused it and that, in a certain sense, thrive thanks to it. Bureaucratic and authoritarian police apparatuses have always served the defense and interests of the ruling class; at the same time, the state has progressively and inexorably renounced its functions as a partial, and apparent, rebalancer in the distribution of wealth and universal provider of services deemed essential: healthcare, social assistance, and education. The transfer of these prerogatives to the private sector has, among other consequences, definitively transformed governments into gigantic contractors that use public funds to finance private companies over which they have no control. Indeed, these companies impose their agendas, conduct, policies, and direction on governments, leaving the state apparatus with the tasks of ensuring internal security, understood as the repression of potentially destabilizing, or at least critical and non-aligned, movements, and providing massive propaganda support, seizing all possible sources of information, seeking to prevent alternative views from emerging or being presented as biased, childish, and dangerous. Reality cannot be different from what it is; any attempt to transform it and make it more humane is not only doomed to failure, but is an act against nature. From this perspective, war, warmongering policies, unconditional rearmament, and the ever-increasing diversion of resources toward the military sector are inextricably linked to the logic of domination, arrogance, and unconditional aggression, according to which individuals, groups, communities, and peoples (this last term understood in the most general sense possible and not tied to the idea of a nation) are, when necessary, merely consumers, cannon fodder, or a reservoir of cheap labor, expendable to the demands of "progress."
Continuing to think in terms of states, nations, borders, races, armies, and wars rather than individuals, groups, communities, peoples, and humanity, failing to challenge the aggressive economic and military policies of nations, remaining indifferent to the unbearable inequalities, the dire conditions facing the majority of the world's population, and the environmental emergency-the consequences of neoliberalism and a behavior driven exclusively by the logic of profit-is now unacceptable.
Today, more than ever, it is necessary and indispensable to propose an alternative model of development and existence based on assumptions that prioritize the well-being and development of individuals and communities, cooperation and mutual support, sustainability, and respect for diversity, starting from the authentic needs and wills of people who, autonomously and without authority, can be free to decide their own destiny and contribute directly to its realization.
An anarchist approach is equally necessary and indispensable today, for the creation of a humanity focused on overcoming the logic and dynamics that are leading us all toward annihilation and destruction. An anarchist approach capable of addressing the challenges that contemporary society is incessantly throwing up and developing strategies, without abandoning its own presuppositions, to try to overcome them. It means continuing to develop critical thinking, even if elaborate, without distancing itself from concrete reality; knowing how to counteract effective counterinformation in a world dominated by a single, standardized, and banalized way of thinking; seeking to bring more and more people to the anarchist perspective, in all spheres, through example; reclaiming self-managed public spaces; opposing all forms of authority and hierarchy wherever it appears; Maintaining a rebellious spirit and developing a global vision that, starting from local realities, can act as a barrier to the global tragedies we are experiencing, remain some of the essential prerequisites for an anarchist thought and conduct that seeks not to be limited to sterile testimony, a choice of non-complicity, or a distant utopia, but rather sets itself the real goal of building a viable, not temporally indefinite, alternative.
Alessandro Fini
https://umanitanova.org/la-legge-del-piu-forte-quando-lo-stato-e-il-problema-sempre/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #2-26 - The Law of the Mighty. When the State Is the Problem (Always!) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source:A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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