By Stephen Sefton on December 14, 2025
The argument that the criminal US government is now focusing its attention on Latin America and the Caribbean after having forgotten about it for many years does not correspond to the reality. In fact, this is a natural escalation of already long-standing policies of aggression. The government of President Trump is desperately besieging Venezuela now because the constant regional US offensive since the start of the new century has not achieved its objectives. It has not been able to overthrow revolutionary governments in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela or prevent progressive governments in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, nor has it been able to curb China’s growing economic influence in the region. As in Europe, the US government wants to subject the entire region to its unquestionable domination through the collaboration of local oligarchies, as always,
Fantasy and reality
The recently published US defense strategy document deserves to be evaluated more than anything for its obvious fantasies and falsehoods. Against all the evidence, the US government continues to claim that it serves the interests of its people when everyone can see with absolute clarity that it serves above all the criminal interests of its corrupt ruling elites. In the new document, as in so many others, multiple false beliefs are asserted, for example that the country has the largest economy in the world, that it is the most advanced in technology and innovation, that its armed forces are the most powerful and the best, that its financial system is indispensable. Apparently, the US ruling classes sincerely believe these outdated statements when the reality is completely different.
In fact, for several years now, China has been the largest economy in the world. China and Russia have proven that their technologies are superior and more innovative than those of the US in practically all scientific and technological fields. In Ukraine, Russia has defeated the combined military effort of all the NATO countries by killing more than a million soldiers from an army fully trained, armed, equipped and supported by the US and European governments. More and more countries of the majority world exchange their trade in national currencies without using the US dollar and use their own financial services, such as insurance companies or rating agencies, instead of their Western equivalents.
Twilight of a Myth
It remains to be seen how the US elites will adapt to the strategic defeat they have suffered in Ukraine and how they will be able to assimilate their increasingly marked disadvantage before the commercial and technological power of China. The response under the Donald Trump administration has been a counterproductive tariff war, the delegation of militarist build-up to its allies in Europe and East Asia and the criminal aggression underway in the Caribbean against Venezuela. Essentially a zombie mentality continues to direct US foreign policy based on dead ideas such as US Manifest Destiny or outdated hollow slogans such as Ronald Reagan’s phrase, “America is, and always will be, a shining city on a hill.”
Far from that outdated myth, for many years the US population has lived a nightmare of bad faith, abandonment to the corporate extortion of the “free market”, unaffordable living costs, mismanagement and blatant official lies, injustice and systematic corruption. The fascist fusion of state power with corporate power relegates the well being of US families far below corporate profits in virtually every sphere of national life, be it health care, education, environmental care, defense and national security, the media, scientific research or public infrastructure. This progressive socio-economic deterioration in US society is faithfully reflected in the criminality and corruption of its governments. The administration of President Donald Trump differs from the previous administration only in its outright brazenness.
Similarly, the foreign policy of the US government continues the priorities of the previous administration of President Joe Biden, while using different nuances and modalities. President Trump’s administration pretends to seek peace in Ukraine but what it is asking for is merely “an expeditious cessation of hostilities” when Russia has always insisted on achieving indivisible security for all of Europe. In fact, although he criticizes and despises his European vassal country governments, at the same time President Trump demands that they become more militarized, which only makes sense in order to threaten Russia. The same is true in the case of US vassals in East Asia such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. There, too, the US government insists on militarist policies which only make sense in order to threaten China.
In West Asia, the US commitment in support of the genocidal state of Israel continues as always, based on insane statements such as “Iran – the main destabilizing force in the region – has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions.” In fact, it is Zionist expansionism which constantly undermines and destroys stability in the region, while the Islamic Republic of Iran is now better prepared and stronger than ever after defeating the treacherous US and Zionist attack in June of this year. Throughout this period, the US government repeatedly demonstrated its bad faith by supporting and itself launching deadly surprise attacks after pretending that it sought dialogue and peace.
Obama and Trump
In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the continuity of US imperialism is equally evident and predictable. It is worth remembering the comment in 2008 of the former US ambassador to Nicaragua, Robert Callahan, veteran coordinator of US dirty wars from Honduras to Iraq. On the night of Barack Obama’s first electoral victory that year, a reporter in Managua asked Mr. Callahan what difference the election of the new president would make in relation to US foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean. Robert Callahan replied that “US foreign policy towards the region has not changed in more than 50 years and will not change with the new President Obama,” a categorically correct assertion.
At the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009, President Obama declared “I promise you that what we are looking for is a partnership between equals. (Applause.) In our relationships there are no first-class partners and second-class partners; there are relationships based on mutual respect, common interests and shared values. Therefore, I am here to start a new chapter of those relations, which will not be closed as long as my government lasts.” Thus, Barack Obama gave yet further proof that the word of any US government is worth absolutely nothing, since, a few weeks later, in June of the same year, his government facilitated the coup d’état in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya.
If anything characterized the two periods of President Obama’s administrations, it was the relentless search for and application of more effective modalities to weaken progressive political movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, undermine integration initiatives such as UNASUR and CELAC and overthrow progressive and revolutionary governments. Certainly, to date, US policy has always been the same, starting in this century from the failed coup of 2002 in Venezuela against Eternal Comandante Hugo Chávez, the successful coup in Haiti against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and the violent right-wing protests against the government of Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2008. US influence was behind the coup attempt against the government of Rafael Correa in 2010 and the parliamentary coup against Fernando Lugo in Paraguay in 2012.
The impeachment of President Lugo marked the beginning of a pattern of deliberate abuse in the countries of the region where the legal systems, dominated by local oligarchies with constant US advice and supervision, have been corrupted to overthrow progressive governments. This coup mechanism was perfected in 2016 in Brazil with the parliamentary coup that overthrew Dilma Rousseff, while the highly politicized legal system sought to imprison Lula da Silva. Equally crude and unjust outcomes have followed against Jorge Glas in Ecuador, Cristina Fernandez in Argentina and now against Luis Arce in Bolivia. When unable to obtain its objectives by manipulation, bribery, or abuse of the justice system, the Obama administration applied systematic subversion and political violence.
In 2014, the fierce guarimbas of the coup-promoting opposition in Venezuela caused dozens of deaths and economic losses of more than US$15 billion. While pretending to be open towards Cuba in order to better meddle with similar subversive purposes, the Obama administration intensified the unilateral coercive measures against the Bolivarian government of President Nicolás Maduro in large part to hinder Venezuelan solidarity with the people of Cuba. The continuity of these cynical interventionist policies continued in 2017 under the new President Donald Trump who reversed the less stringent measures against Cuba because they had not given the expected results and further intensified the criminal US economic aggression and political destabilization against Venezuela.
Continuity and escalation
In 2018 Donald Trump promoted the failed coup attempt in 2018 against the revolutionary government of Nicaragua causing hundreds of deaths and US$ billions in economic damage. In 2019, he facilitated more failed coup attempts against the Bolivarian government in Venezuela and promoted the successful military coup during the elections that year in Bolivia. On the other hand, that aggressive US foreign policy could not prevent the electoral victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in 2018 or Alberto Fernández in Argentina in 2019. But sinister US interference has been permanent in all Latin American and Caribbean countries via its diplomacy, its financial system, its military presence and, at different moments, the aggressive imposition of its extraterritorial jurisdiction.
The fundamental contradiction for the US ruling elites is that their economic system does not meet the needs and aspirations of their people. China’s highly efficient and productive economy generates wealth used for poverty reduction, economic democratization and the creation of a modestly affluent society. By contrast, the US economy privileges a parasitic financial élite extracting wealth from its population, pushing the majority ever further into poverty and immiseration. In the context of foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean, this strong contrast translates into the contradiction between extortionist, destructive Yankee imperialism and China’s offer of productive investment, equitable financing without conditions and mutually beneficial commercial and technological exchange.
In this context, the resistance and solidarity between our revolutionary countries combines with the dignified defense of national sovereignty by progressive governments, like those of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, to counter U.S. aggression in the region. In addition, throughout the region, the commercial and financial interests of the right-wing oligarchies of countries like Peru and Chile, for example, respond more to advantageous Chinese initiatives than to domineering US imperialism. It is not possible to stop the development of the region’s countries’ trade with the huge Eurasian region, nor to prevent the interoceanic connections underway from Mexico to Brazil and the Southern Cone that will greatly facilitate that trade.
Compared to the cooperation and trade initiatives of the People’s Republic of China, India or the Russian Federation, the US elites offer only greater impoverishment and underdevelopment. Over the last few days, our Comandante Daniel has summed up the US obsession with the Monroe Doctrine as follows, “If they want America to be for the Americans, then they should distribute their wealth to help these Peoples escape from poverty, to escape from hunger, from misery. But no, they mean America for them, and not even for the US people, but for the US oligarchs.”
And as our government explained on the fourth anniversary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, “This occasion is also conducive to reaffirming our recognition of China’s undeniable global leadership, the greatness of its People and the great economic, technological, political and social advances in favor of a Community of Shared Future, a World of Peace, Security and Solidarity… We will continue to strengthen our bilateral relations and actively cooperate in international arenas to ensure respect for international law, the defense of sovereignty and the desire of our Peoples to live in a secure world, without impositions, without hegemonies and free of threats.”
Source: Tortilla con Sal