By Arnaldo Musa on March 2, 2021
Cuba conference calling for the closure of Guantanamo and all US military bases abroad. Photo: Bill Hackwell
At the time of this writing, the Joe Biden government has not yet officially made any pronouncement concerning the policy they will follow regarding Cuba, but they have said that they will again seek the closing of the prison that the United States maintains on the naval base that the U.S. illegally occupies in Guantanamo, something that was unsuccessfully attempted during the two presidential administrations of Barack Obama, whose vice-president is the current U.S. president.
This is the closest any U.S. government has come to approaching this issue, something imposed in the beginning of the previous century, which hangs like a sword of Damocles over Cuban sovereignty.
It is no secret to anyone that the Pentagon makes use of any unscrupulous means in order to plant this type of enclave around the world, as they did when they supplanted their French ally and established military bases in African countries that had formerly been French colonies, by means of manipulation of illegitimate governments on a continent rich in mineral resources, but whose population is overwhelmingly poor.
Something similar has been happening on our continent, which the U.S. still considers its “back yard,” with the same old thing as always; while the story and methods may change, they still try to carry out the implementation of their National Security Doctrine.
During the Trump administration, this had rough edges, but now with Biden, it is thought that he will implement an Obama-style approach, always seeking to reinforce “soft power” with the hope of maintaining their dominance while quietly subverting – with a “silencer” – those governments that they do not like. I can remember only one occasion when a South American government rebelled against the presence of a U.S. military base and was able to evict it from its territory; that was the base at Manta in Ecuador, during the Rafael Correa presidency.
What is absolutely certain is that the U.S. maintains its presence in Latin America with more than 70 military bases, and with a number of bilateral and multilateral security agreements: Plan Colombia, Andean Regional Initiative, Merida Initiative, and the Central American Regional Security Initiative, among other pacts that include training programs, courses of instruction, and sales of arms and equipment.
The industries providing these materials are involved with all of this, as are the U.S. security agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, (supposedly to combat narco-trafficking) and the FBI, as well as the governments, businesses and police forces of Latin American countries.
The reason for this presence is “the security of the United States” which implies, by definition, the security and “stability” in those regions that may represent a threat to the U.S. This is nothing new; it dates back to the 1960s when a U.S. training manual read that “lack of political stability and socio-economic order in a Latin American country puts U.S. national security in jeopardy. Therefore, the U.S. should adopt, in training materials and military aid programs, tactics designed to avoid risks of instability, through economic development and by imposing order.”
This is how stability becomes part of the narrative that is used to legitimate interventions that violate the sovereignty of other nations.
Currently, on the web page of the U.S. Southern Command, one can read that one of the objectives of UNITAS (sea exercises and in-port training involving countries in North, South, and Central America, conducted by the United States since 1959 in support of U.S. policy) is “the continuation of commitment to the region, oriented to strengthen joint work and preserve hemispheric stability.”
It is clear that this joint work is carried out with regimes that do not deviate from Washington’s dictates, such as Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, as well as Brazil, where U.S experts train in the areas of combat in electronic warfare, as well as in aerial and submarine warfare, among other joint exercises.
But we know that the imperialists continue to have in the crosshairs of their gun sights, to a greater or lesser extent, the governments of those countries not in line with the Empire, such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico.
Source: Cuba Si, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau