The United States of America's imperialism has systematically and brutally interfered in the affairs of third-world countries to effect regime changes in its own interest; a phenomenon that justifies the appellation, “imperialism”. From Dwight D. Eisenhower’s approval of Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored coups against Mohammad Mosaddegh and Jacobo Árbenz, to his asking the CIA to kill Patrice Lumumba, to Richard Nixon’s approval of the plot to overthrow Salvador Allende, to several US presidents green-signalling plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, to George W. Bush’s ordering of the invasion of Iraq on completely trumped-up charges to overthrow Saddam Hussein, to Barack Obama’s sanctioning an attack on Libya to get rid of Muammar Gaddafi, it is an unending tale of ruthless interference in the affairs of third-world countries.
Until now, however, other than cases of open invasion of countries on some purported grounds that apparently made the need for such invasion compelling, the nefarious role of the US was rarely admitted in public: it had to be established through the publication of doctoral dissertations or of accounts by “insiders”. With Donald Trump, however, matters are entirely different. He openly announces his intentions to interfere even before the event. I am not talking here of the interference through absurdly high tariffs against countries that do not toe the American line; I am referring to military and non-tariff economic threats by Trump against countries, especially in Latin America. This is a geographical area which the US has always considered its backyard and has openly announced this fact through the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
I shall give two recent instances of open, illegitimate interference. The first is Argentina, which has a bizarre currency arrangement called “partial dollarization”, whereby both the US dollar and the Argentine peso function as currencies. Its current president, Javier Milei, had promised “total dollarization” before his election, involving the sole use of US dollars as Argentine currency, and the complete abolition of the peso together with the Argentine central bank; but that still has not happened.
Quite predictably, under this arrangement, in anticipation of the peso depreciating against the dollar, people hold on to dollars, withdrawing them from circulation. This gives rise to an actual depreciation of the peso and hence an acceleration of inflation, which, in turn, is countered under capitalist conditions by a further drastic increase in austerity and unemployment; and so the process goes on.
To get out of this predicament, Argentina has to borrow dollars periodically from the International Monetary Fund. This time, however, Trump has offered to lend twenty billion dollars of US government funds to Argentina that can even be augmented to forty billion dollars. This itself is ironic in view of the fact that private individuals in Argentina reportedly hold $270 billion, stacked away under mattresses, in safe deposit boxes and abroad; doing so is not legal, but hardly preventable, since the law itself, unrealistic under partial dollarization, is difficult to enforce. Trump, however, has a “conditionality” for giving the twenty billion-dollar loan, namely that Milei must be re-elected president of Argentina. If the people of Argentina vote Milei out of power, then Trump will withhold the loan, which constitutes a brazen, though not overtly violent, interference in the affairs of a third-world country, an utterly deplorable attempt to rob its people of their sovereignty. Trump, having a neo-fascist affinity with Milei, would like to see him re-elected as president of a country that has rich primary commodity resources, including minerals like rare earths, and is willing to arm-twist its people openly for this.
The second case relates to Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro, the left-wing president and successor to Hugo Chávez, is being openly threatened with a US invasion. Trump has accused Maduro of heading a drug cartel and has called him a “narco-terrorist”, just as he has called Gustavo Petro, the left-wing president of Colombia, a “drug leader”. He has not, of course, adduced a shred of evidence in support of these outlandish claims which prepare the ground for armed intervention, immediately against Venezuela, and later presumably against other left-wing regimes that have come up in Latin America, including Cuba. He has already announced giving carte blanche to the CIA to carry out its depredations in Venezuela.
Ironically, this person engaged in brazenly establishing the sway of US imperialism over Latin America, through armed might if necessary, wants the Nobel Peace Prize for himself; and ironically, the Nobel Peace Prize jury that by-passed him this year, has awarded the prize to another warmonger, María Corina Machado of Venezuela, who dedicated her prize to Trump and actually wants him to invade her own country to establish “democracy” there.
It is facile, however, to blame a hyper-aggressive Trump for the current threat to the people of the third world, especially Latin America; such hyper-aggressive persons ascend to power only in a particular economic conjuncture, which is really what underlies the threat. Western imperialism today is facing an unprecedented challenge, arising out of the stagnation in which the neo-liberal regimes it had imposed upon the world are currently mired. This stagnation cannot be overcome within the confines of neo-liberalism itself, which constitutes therefore a cul-de-sac for contemporary capitalism. Such a cul-de-sac had been anticipated by Rosa Luxemburg, who had postulated a theory of “collapse” of the system as its ultimate denouement (though she had expected its overthrow long before such a “collapse”). The cul-de-sac of the system, however, leads not to its collapse but to an immense increase in its aggressiveness through the ascent of neo-fascist elements to power with the support of big businesses. Trump is one such neo-fascist and his hyper-aggressiveness is a characteristic of the times.
Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi