The Monroe Doctrine guides Usa’s foreign policy
TORONTO – “What mine is mine” and “what’s yours is an illusion” it remains so until I wake you up. That is the essence of the infamous Monroe Doctrine which guides USA’s foreign policy. A cynic might add that it is a fabricated justification for the exercise of American “muscle” in pursuit of its own material interests – it has nothing to do with “international law”, unless that law is one the “muscle” chooses to recognize. Ancient Rome “insisted” on a similar recognition (“do not provoke us”) after the Carthaginian Wars resulted in Roman authority and dominance in the Mediterranean basin.
It worked. For at least six centuries all wars were localized, commerce flourished. For two centuries a Pax Romana reigned during which there were virtually no wars worthy of note. President James Monroe, in 1823, essentially issued a similar warning and promise to the European powers (Russia, Spain, France and England): the Western Hemisphere is American domain to develop, colonize and defend.
Venezuela is only the latest to discover that the USA takes its policeman role seriously when it sees its interests jeopardized. Those interests are [known] petroleum reserves. Full stop. According to graphics by Visual Capitalist, Venezuela at 309 BB (billion barrels) has the largest oil reserves, followed by Saudi Aradia (267 BB), Iran (209 BB), and Canada (163 BB). These four have over 50% of known reserves. Seventy percent of energy needs, world-wide, are satisfied by fossils fuels.
Canada cannot get its policy re exploitation of their assets off the ground. The middle East is a powder keg. The USA is a significant, but small, player with 45 BB in reserves.
Venezuela’s former regime proved a rather recalcitrant negotiating partner, preferring (or so the USA version would suggest) to focus on opioids distribution in the western world’s rich consumption market. It proved an initially viable pretext for intervention (note estimates of the potency, production and distribution of fentanyl are startling – the consumption of three salt-grain sized quantities of the product can be fatal to adults). The RCMP noted in a recent press conference that one lab in British Columbia produces enough to kill the population of Canada (forty-two million inhabitants two times over). If so, it would be exported to…
What is truly remarkable is the ability of American know-how to devise, practice and execute a plan to invade a country, seize its President as he lay in bed with his wife at 1:00 am on Saturday and whisk both away to a jail in Brooklyn New York incurring any personnel injuries or damages to mechanical assets.
The Epoch Times has a detailed account of the preparations which included practice in a to scale model of Maduro’s residence and compound. That’s a different story. As Francesco Veronesi points out elsewhere in these pages, the Narcos allegations against Venezuela prompting the invasion were secondary to President Trump’s avowed goal: seize control of the petroleum assets and develop them according to American needs. Seems fair… as a timeless Italian adage says, contento lui contenti tutti.
Now we know.
In the pics above and below, a demonstration in front of the US Consulate in Toronto after the American raid in Venezuela (photo: Corriere Canadese)
