Straws In The Wind: August Edition

Although Asia, Africa and the Middle East seem to be slowly removing neo-colonial domination, the Southern Cone of Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay) seems unable to end the cycle of progressive governments snuffed out by the local landowning and financier elite aligned with the US. The compradors continue to rule supreme outside the small enclave of Uruguay, as both Argentina and Chile seem set for a turn to the right. The progressives are either too corrupted, or too scared of a return to the 1970s, to gain real power for the majority.

West Africa and the Sahel Strive to Remove Neo-Colonial Exploitation

Morocco gained its independence in 1955-56 from France and Spain through war, as did Algeria from France in 1962. Tunisia also gained independence from France in 1956. For many other previous French colonies freedom would be extremely limited, with widespread French influence and an economic relationship tilted heavily in the favour of France. After the Western destruction of Libya, both France and the US have used the excuses of “Islamic terrorism” to involve their military in the Sahel region. A “threat” both greatly exacerbated by the collapse of Libya, and possibly supported by the very powers that purport to fight it (as with ISIS in the Middle East). Libya had acted as a block to US influence in the region, and once that was gone the US rushed in with new bases.

In recent years, a number of nations have striven to throw off both the old (French) and the new (US) neo-colonialism. Mali’s government has asserted its’ independence from French influence and has engaged Russian Wagner forces to help it defend the nation’s territory. Mali’s main export is gold and its main export partner is South Africa. In 2021 Guinea, an important exporter of the bauxite from which aluminum is produced, underwent a coup. The new government continued the friendly relations with Russia. In September 2022, Burkina Faso underwent a coup and the new leaders ordered French forces to leave the country, which they did. The coup was welcomed by Russia, and the new leadership stated that Russia was a strategic ally. Russian forces have also successfully supported the government of the Central African Republic, where the French forces left in 2017. Russian forces have also supported the government of Sudan, and Russian mercenaries are active in Libya. Together with Mauritania, that has friendly relations with Russia, this represents a line of countries between the East and West coasts of Northern Africa that are aligned, or friendly with, Russia. Added to by the loss of the US-supported government in Ethiopia and the emergence of a much more independent leadership. The only exclusions were Niger and Chad.

The coup in Niger is therefore critical for the West and Russia with respect to the region. Additional importance stems from Niger’s role as a major supplier of uranium to France for its nuclear reactors, and the planned natural gas pipeline that will traverse Niger as it travels from Nigeria to the Mediterranean coast. Both are vital to the energy supply position of a Europe that has cut itself off from cheap Russian hydrocarbons. Together with gold exports, France has exploited Niger for its resources while leaving the Nigeriens in deep poverty. The regime in Niger has ordered the French troops in the country to leave, but the French government has ignored the request and has not recognized the new regime as legitimate.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has suspended Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger, has announced that it will put together a force to intervene in Niger. Mali and Burkina Faso have not only refused to allow ECOWAS troops to travel through their territory but have threatened to intervene on the side of Niger against any ECOWAS action. Chad and Algeria have ruled out any role, and Libya is beset with a civil war. With Nigeria’s government also not willing to support military action, the actual possibility of ECOWAS military intervention is near zero. France has about 1,000 military personnel in Niger, as does the US, but with a majority of the Nigerien population seeming to support the new government these forces would have little prospect of overthrowing it. Unless France and the US are ready to commit large scale forces to an intervention in Niger, with difficult supply routes, they will have to negotiate with the new regime.

This will involve France having to pay much more for its yellow cake, and Niger receiving significant fees for the gas pipeline to pass through its territory. The times of the West gaining access to the Rest’s resources at pennies on the dollar prices may be coming to an end. It is a marker for the declining power of the West, even in the Sahel region where the West looked triumphal after the destruction of Libya. Their celebrations lasted only a decade, and their gains are turning to ashes.

Argentina Travels Toward Anarcho-Capitalism

Once again, a “progressive” government that would not do what was necessary has led to a lurch to the far-right, to a fake “outsider” who is really very much a representative of the ruling elite insiders – the major landowners, financiers and foreign capital. In this I covered the history of Argentina, with the overriding fight between the landowner/financier/foreign elite Conservatives and the bourgeois Liberals wanting to establish an industrial economy.  In the post-WW2 years, the latter had grown considerably, but were decisively beaten back with the “lost decade” of the 1980s and the continued neoliberalism of the 1990s.

After the economic and social crisis at the turn of the century, the progressive Kirchner and then his wife Christina, led Argentina until 2015. The massive foreign debt was substantially reduced and restructured, the dollarization of the economy stopped, and the economy grew vigorously due to the China-driven commodities boom. Little was done though to rebalance the underlying political economy which was still dominated by the landowners, financiers and foreign capital. The one attempt to break the power of the landowners, through agricultural export taxes that would have supported production for local markets and allowed funding of social and development programs, was defeated by her own traitorous vice president and the economic warfare of the landowners. If ever outright class war needed to be unleashed by the state on behalf of the working class, this was the time. The opportunity was lost, and the right-wing businessman Macri was elected in 2015, acting as the economic hooligan that he was chosen to be. He immediately facilitated massive capital flight by ending capital controls while defending a fixed exchange rate, funding that elite capital flight through a massive new IMF loan. In addition, he rolled back many of the progressive policies put in place by the Kirchners.

After his single term of chaos and hooliganism, the Kirchnerite Fernandez was elected with Kirchner as the vice president. Again, the Kirchnerites failed to do what was required; an immediate repudiation of what was odious and corruptly taken IMF debt (including IMF officials going against their own guidelines and placing conditions to facilitate the capital flight), and the arrest of the previous president and his administration for treason and corruption; outright class war was required in the same way that Macri had unleashed outright elite class war. Taxes were at last placed on agricultural exports, but it was now too late after the destruction of Macri and now the impact of COVID. This is how the “pink tides” in Latin America are defeated again and again, slowly but surely the elite turn the screws and undo all of the gains made during progressive rule. Of course, in the background always sits the security forces and the US if a true working-class hegemonic project ever seems to be near a reality, as with the Dirty War of 1974 to 1983.

Argentina now stands on the precipice as a Trump-like fake “outsider”, who calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist”, just won the presidential primary of the Argentinian presidential elections (which will take place in October). Hopefully, the voters will reject him for the progressive candidate in October, but even that will just be stop-gap while the elites plan their next assault.

Javier Milei is a strange outsider, having served as chief economist at more than one financial institution (including HongKong and Shanghai Bank Corporation), acted as a consultant to the corporate-tool International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) which manages disputes between corporations and states and is funded by the World Bank and situated in Washington, and currently serving as a member of the advisory group to the International Chamber of Commerce, and the World Economic Forum. He has “international finance operative” written all over him and promulgates the extreme neoliberal policies that international capital wants. He also serves as an adviser to the Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian, a native Armenian, who owns the radio station that hosts his radio show that has been a base for his political rise. The parallels between the Ukrainian President Zelensky and the oligarch Kolomoisky are ripe. He mixes neoliberalism with cultural conservatism, including regular rants against “cultural Marxists”, “lazy politicians and bureaucrats”, those supporting abortion rights, and anthropogenic climate change.

He very much resembles Carlos Menem, the utterly corrupt and disastrous Argentinian President of the 1990s, whose economic policies led to the turn of the century Argentinian financial collapse. Milei even considers Cavallo, Menem’s economy minister, to be Argentina’s best economy minister. A claim that clashes directly with historical reality, unless you are a member of the elite who benefitted from the corruption, deregulation, privatization and capital flight of that period. Milei wants to surrender the control of Argentina’s currency to the US, through dollarization, just as Menem wanted. As a Rothschild stated in 1815, "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls the British money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." Dollarization is treason, as it gives control of the country over to a foreign power. If elected, Milei will complete the returning of Argentina to the outright dominance of the landowners, financiers, international capital and the Yankees. The nightmare (for the working class) that is Argentina’s history will continue. Progressive may come and go but without more fundamental change; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

This is why the Latin American and US elites hate Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia so much. These nations successfully carried out a working-class revolution and have resisted in some cases for decades the attempts of the elites to crush the revolution. In Cuba, the capitalist elites were fully removed through land reform and nationalization. In the other nations, the elite still exists to bide its time and conspire with the US again and again against the will of the people. At least Nicaragua has taken a step further to protect its revolution, by legalizing the stationing of Russian troops and cruise missiles on its territory. The US has been bent on overthrowing the Sandinista government and creating a Yankee free-market “paradise” backed up with Yankee-aligned security services.

After the utterly disastrous performance of US weapons in Ukraine, the US may be very wary of poking Nicaragua. It may of course declare economic sanctions, but those can be overcome through a diversification of trade links that has become much more possible in the past year and a half.

The Chilean “Leftist” Progressives Throw the Game

One of the ways in which the US and the West has colonized Latin America is through its schools and universities, embedding neoliberal economics and a woke “critical” theory bereft of historical materialism and any understanding of the centrality of class and the ownership of the means of production. There is no greater an example than the current Chilean president, Gabriel Boric. Coming from a solid middle-class background, Gabriel studied at the British School (teaching the UK curriculum) in his hometown from 1991 to 2003, before attending Law School at the University of Chile in Santiago where he was very active in student politics. The poisoned inheritance of the Pinochet dictatorship years was shown by his far-right main competitor in the presidential election Jose Antonio Kast, whose father was a lieutenant in the Nazi German Army and whose brother was a minister under Pinochet. Boric won 56% to 44%.

Boric’s presidency has been notable by its performative acts linked to notions such as intersectionality and feminism, such as his cabinet being more than half female, with two openly LGBT ministers, together with the granddaughter of former president Allende and three fellow former student leaders. In September 2022 a new constitution was voted upon. This represented an incredible opportunity to undo the embedded neoliberalism and conservatism of the constitution that was implemented by the dictator Pinochet, but the opportunity was wasted through the addition of numerous “woke” progressive sections. It should have been obvious that in a still culturally conservative nation, such sections would lead to the constitution’s rejection by the general populace. His ongoing push for LGBT rights, legal recognition of non-binary personalities and new gender identity laws, and stated agnosticism place him at odds with major parts of the very working class that he needs support from to carry out economic reforms. He also displays a complete lack of understanding of Western imperialism as he denounces the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan governments, the Chinese “dictatorship”, and Russian “aggression”.  He has also stated that he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

His approval rating was at 28% in June 2023, only 15 months after his inauguration. After the failure of the new constitution to gain approval, a new constitutional council was elected to produce another rewrite. It is dominated by the right-wing, so the opportunity to gain a progressive new constitution has been thrown away.

The next elections will take place in November and December 2025, so Boric has two and a half to make some real progress and not end up facilitating the return of the right-wing as the center progressive Bachelet did.

Ecuador After the Moreno Treason

It had looked as if Ecuador had at last escaped the strangulation of the colonial elites with the election of Rafael Correa in 2007. For a decade, nationalist policies that favoured the majority ruled with economic growth and development that lifted up the majority of the population. This looked all set to continue, as Correa’s ex-VP Lenin Moreno won election in 2017, but then Moreno proved to be a traitor to the Ecuadorian people that had elected him. He immediately turned hard-right and neoliberal, in a single term destroying much that had been achieved and leaving office with single-digit approval ratings. After him followed the neoliberal businessmen Guillermo Lasso, after the indigenous leader Yaku Perez proved himself to be a traitor in facilitating the election of the rich people’s candidate.

Much more of Correa’s legacy was rolled back, while drug-related violence in the nation spiked, and Lasso proved himself to be corrupt. To save himself from impeachment, Lasso dissolved the government and ruled by decree until the early elections are spread between the past weekend (the primaries to define the candidate list) and October. The violence in the country, with the death rate quintupling in as many years, reared its head with the assassination of a right-wing presidential candidate that had called for a crackdown on drug gangs.

Its looking more and more likely that the highly corrupt security services were in on the assassination.

With the assassination, Jan Topic a far-right ex-mercenary who fought in Ukraine jumped in the polls and for a while became the main contender to Luisa Gonzalez, who served in Correa’s government.

The results of the first round of voting have Luisa in the lead (33%), but not with enough votes to not have to go into a second round of voting. The second round will pitch her against Daniel Noboa (24%), the son of one of Ecuador’s richest men; a man whose main business is banana cultivation and export. Even if Luisa wins it will take many years to undo the damage done by the traitor Moreno and the rich businessman Lasso. A win for Noboa in October would be a further disaster for the working people of Ecuador.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala Bernardo Arévalo was elected president. He is the son of the president overthrown by the 1954 US-led coup in a surprise result. We will see how long he is allowed to govern.