Above photo: US military presence in Latin America. Granma.
For centuries, the peoples of the Central American isthmus have had to face the consequences of the ambitions of European and US ruling elites for control of the Caribbean region. Since the 16th century, the great maritime powers, Spain, France, England and to a lesser extent Holland, disputed control of the islands and coasts of the Caribbean so as to exploit their natural resources and control the region’s commercial and military strategic points. For Nicaragua, foreign interference intensified greatly in the middle of the 19th century with the rivalry between European powers and North American elites over control of the routes of a possible interoceanic canal.
History
With the construction of the Panama Canal initiated by France in 1881 but completed by the US in 1914, US control of the region was sealed. At the end of the Second World War, the US government consolidated its regional dominance, relegating to the role of vassals the European powers that still had Caribbean colonies. This history helps explain the pattern of US intervention in the region.
European countries allied to the US controlled almost all the Caribbean territories. Apart from the US territory of Puerto Rico, there were the Dutch colonies and territories of Surinam, Curaçao and Aruba, the French colonies of French Guyana, Martinique and Guadeloupe, as well as important British colonial possessions such as Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and several other island nations, now independent. The Turks and Caicos Islands to the north of Cuba and the island of Bermuda further north, remain British territories to this day.
All this points to why US interventions in the region have been focused on those Caribbean islands with independent countries such as Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and, in Central America, Nicaragua. Nicaragua lost its extensive maritime territory in the Caribbean due to a 1928 treaty between Colombia and the US government ratified by the anti-patriotic government of José María Moncada in 1930. So for more than a hundred years the US ruling classes have treated the Caribbean Sea as their own, using the term “Mare Nostrum“, as the Roman emperors called the Mediterranean, ”our sea”.
And since the coup d’état in Guatemala in 1954, the US government and its European allies have maintained constant intervention in the internal affairs of the Caribbean and Central American nations. The 1963 coup d’état in the Dominican Republic was followed by US occupation of the country in 1965, both with the aim of preventing a progressive government on an island adjacent to Revolutionary Cuba. The US government was unable to prevent the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, but in 1983 it again suppressed a progressive Caribbean government in the island nation of Grenada, followed, in 1989, by the US invasion of Panama to overthrow General Noriega.
In Haiti, the end of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986 led to a very unstable political period with the election in 1990 of a progressive government led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This first government of President Aristide lasted only eight months before being overthrown in a coup in 1991. To date, Haiti has continued in an endless spiral of destabilization marked by repeated natural catastrophes, permanent US and European intervention and increasing internal violence. The country’s constant socio-economic and political crisis derives directly from the endless foreign military and political intervention. A culture of corruption, polarization and political violence has been compounded by criminal groups controlled mainly by the same anti-patriotic local elite which has always had the political support of the U.S. government and its allies.
Onslaught of the Collective West
Around the world, countries such as Haiti, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Myanmar show similar outcomes caused by Western intervention. The current precarious and unstable situations in these countries are the Western elites’ preferred model to prolong their political and economic control in the respective regions of the world. Only nations with a strong national political project, led by resilient governments backed by societies with robust social cohesion are able to withstand the onslaughts of the collective West, desperate to maintain its global influence. It is for this reason that the collective West’s constant aggressive policies against Venezuela and Nicaragua and the genocidal blockade against Cuba have failed to overthrow those countries’ governments.
Only a revolutionary government supported by its people could resist the genocidal US blockade as Cuba has done for six decades. And only the resistance of a cohesive revolutionary people could have reversed the sadistic, ferocious political-military and socio-economic assault suffered by Venezuela since 2013. Similarly, only the firm determination of a revolutionary government could have achieved the recovery by Nicaragua in 2012 of its maritime territory usurped by Colombia for more than 80 years. This achievement of our Sandinista government was a serious blow to US control of the Caribbean Sea because it increased the independent sovereign area for an outlet to the Caribbean Sea by the interoceanic railway or canal routes likely to be built through Nicaraguan territory.
Currently, the main reasons for the current US aggression in the Caribbean region are:
* to compensate for its loss power and influence in Asia, reflected to some extent also in regions such as Africa and Latin America
* to counter the growing economic influence of the People’s Republic of China in Latin America and the Caribbean through its Belt and Road Initiative and also bilateral trade and financial agreements
* to ensure access to and control of the region’s natural resources (oil, gas, gold, lithium, rare earths and other minerals, water, biodiversity)
* to dominate the important strategic maritime routes from the southern US, Mexico and the rest of Latin America to Europe and Africa
* to reinforce US economic and financial dominance in the region with a physical political-military presence
Since 1945, US armed forces have maintained a strong presence throughout Latin America, especially in Central America and the Caribbean. Of the 76 bases of the US armed forces and its European allies identified in a recent summary of the foreign military presence in the region, 50 are located in Central America and the Caribbean. The official pretexts for this exaggerated foreign military presence in the region vary from the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking to support for environmental conservation.
Over the last two years, the heads of the Southern Command of the US Armed Forces, previously General Laura Richardson, now Admiral Alvin Holsey, have highlighted the US military mission in defense of US neocolonial domination which they call “democracy”. In October 2024, General Richardson commented at a forum of defense ministers of the region, “Today, democracy is under attack, not only are conflicts at stake but there is an attempt to change the world order, that’s why our countries must be united.”
For his part, Admiral Holsey, this year in Argentina, remarked “The Chinese Communist Party continues its methodical incursion into the region, seeking to export its authoritarian model, extract resources and establish dual-use infrastructure, from ports to space… and it threatens critical maritime access points such as the Panama Canal, which is vital for the economy of every nation.” However, General Richardson, Admiral Holsey and their colleagues have also always strongly insisted on the need to maintain a strong US military presence in the region for access to its natural riches.
During her time as head of the US Southern Command, General Richardson was notorious for her total frankness on this point, repeatedly emphasizing in public hearings the enormous hydrocarbon, lithium and rare earth, water and agricultural land resources in the region. So all the historical US interference in Latin America and the Caribbean plus the contemporary global context plus the very words of the US military chiefs, all demonstrate the reasons for the aggressive deployment of naval, air and special forces in the Caribbean against Venezuela.
In addition, it should be taken into account that, in February of this year, President Trump announced that his government had decided to designate eight alleged drug trafficking cartels as terrorist organizations. His statement alleged that the non-existent Cartel de los Soles was led by President Nicolás Maduro. Based on this demented, arbitrary, fictitious designation the way has been opened up for military action against Venezuela driven in reality by the reasons laid out above..
The US authorities themselves make clear how afraid they are of the new multipolar world that has emerged and of the growing regional influence of the People’s Republic of China. They fear the perceived threat to their control of region’s natural resources and strategic sea routes. Hence their use of false pretexts like the fight against drug trafficking or the defense of democracy so as to deploy their military might. Right now, although one cannot foresee the outcome of the aggression under way against Venezuela and its people, it is difficult to see an outcome that would not be adverse for the US elites.
They still do not recognize that the world is different now, such that, if they want their interests to be respected, they are going to have to respect the interests of others. A destructive regional military conflict is not in the interests of the CARICOM island nations, of Colombia or the other countries of the region. However, the Trump administration’s trade war against China is on the rise and lately includes the application of high port tariffs to Chinese ships to dock, unload and load at US ports.
In this context, the aggressive US stance towards Venezuela threatens tens of billions of dollars of Chinese and Russian investments in the country. And while it may be true that Russia and China are on the other side of the world from Venezuela, it may be worth remembering that it was the help of the Soviet Union that made it possible for Nicaragua to prevail in the counterrevolutionary war of the 1980s. Everything indicates that Russia and China will give all the necessary support to ensure that Bolivarian Venezuela prevails in a war of self-defense on its own territory. Moreover, the nature of modern warfare has changed and every conflict is different from the last. Yemen’s defeat of US air and naval power has shown that sheer firepower is not enough.
The presuppositions of the US and NATO militaries have failed in Ukraine and the political-military situation is very different in Venezuela than it was in Syria. If the naval forces of the collective West feel free to meddle in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait on the pretext of securing freedom of navigation, nothing prevents Russian or Chinese naval forces doing the same in the Caribbean to prevent a possible US naval blockade of Venezuela. Thus, several factors suggest that it is by no means certain that the Yankee elites, this time against Venezuela, will get their way yet again in the Caribbean. They could not defeat Venezuela economically, nor achieve regime change with relentless subversion, sabotage and psychological warfare, nor will they defeat Venezuela in the political-military sphere.
