Today, the words of General Laura Richardson continue to resonate at the event held by the NATO think tank Atlantic Council in January 2023 referring to priorities in the region, a dissertation very close to the Monroe Doctrine, which considers Our America as its backyard.
A year after her statements, much has happened in connection with those words, the U.S. military expansion and military repositioning in the region is advancing, the Commander of the Southern Command has extended her presence trying, perhaps belatedly, to counter the advance of China and Russia in the region.
The US and the West have lost positions and dominance in important regions of Africa, Asia and some Latin American countries. It is worth highlighting Saudi Arabia’s recent refusal to renew the inter-party agreement in which the so-called “Petro-dollar” was established, this agreement established in 1973, as the official currency of exchange, the dollar. This was an agreement that fully benefited the United States, as it consisted of Saudi Arabia setting the price of its oil exports exclusively in dollars and the surpluses would be invested in US Treasury Bonds in exchange for security and defense. A circular business that elevated the dollar to the category of the world’s “reserve currency”.
Now, for their part, the BRICS-Plus today manage to advance in a system of commercial exchange in their own currencies, this new dynamic of exchange between member states is increasing. BRICS-Plus is actually a threat to the dollar’s hegemony.
In this multipolar global scenario, the US only has the Latin American region as a direct zone of influence. It is therefore a priority to “do whatever is necessary” to maintain control of Latin America, capture its resources, its assets, keep at bay any action of resistance by the peoples and above all contain the joint advance of China and Russia.
Last March 2024, the document “SOUTHCOM Position Statement 2024” was issued, a report presented to the 118th Congress of the United States, specifically to the House Armed Services Committee.
This document is of special importance as it presents an overview of priorities and strategies to address the challenges, identify threats that put U.S. interests in the region at risk. It also outlines a route of action in which regional partners, military leaders and legislators, among others, are defined to do the job well.
The document highlights the collaboration of allied countries such as Colombia and Panama in trying to stop migration to the United States in the Darién nerve center. In this order, the document states that it works hand in hand with state and private organizations, and the international community, in order to counteract what they consider “malign activities” of powers such as China and Russia in the region.
The actions planned by the U.S. Southern Command seek to expose, counteract what they call “malign intentions” of Russia and China; they refer for example to the dual use of the infrastructure and spatial sites of China and Russia, while the U.S. is working to identify alternative solutions in allied countries, which counterbalance China’s offers in critical infrastructure, cyber-security and telecommunications that seek to improve the collective ability to operate in the face of what they consider China’s “multi-modal threat”.
The text refers to cooperation and collaboration with “partners in the region” to combat criminal and terrorist organizations such as the ELN. This is the concrete basis of why Colombia, its current government, does not want to recognize and name the National Liberation Army (ELN) as an insurgent group, but in official documents continues to categorize it as an Organized Armed Group (GAO), in direct obedience to the provisions of the needs and strategies of the Southern Command.
It is therefore a document that guides actions and the investment of resources to enhance strategies in 2024. That is, to strengthen the U.S. Southern Command in its new stage of defensive and offensive re-colonization.
In this order, regional allies are defined to defend the interests of the United States, this includes NGOs, the private sector, academia and the so-called inter-institutional community of the United States, all, according to the document, to stop the “malign activities” of China and Russia.
That is, they prepare the region to allocate resources, capacity installed, infrastructure, which implies, among others, greater debt, to blindly defend gringo interests over the needs of the peoples, the communities and the real conservation of nature. At this point, it is even necessary to unveil the false military-green discourse that was drawn up by the Atlantic Council as a measure or use of dissuasive language to continue with the dispossession but with a conservation, environmentalist face.
It is in this context that one must read the pre-fabricated instability in Ecuador, Peru, the attempted coups in Bolivia, the irrational military agreements in Argentina and Chile, the expansion of military bases and more recently the demonstration of force and power in the Pacific, today a strategic area, by moving the nuclear aircraft carrier through Argentina, Chile and now in Colombia within the framework of the agreements of the current Petro government with the Southern Command.
The re-engineering of the Monroe Doctrine, now energized and empowered by right-wing and extreme right-wing governments, but also progressive governments, all, without distinction, surrendering sovereignty, returning to those colonial logics that subjugate peoples, destroy the environment and guarantee chaos and instability.
Social and popular organizations must activate their forces to include in their agendas of struggle and dignity the withdrawal of the Bases, of all foreign presence, redirect military investment towards collective well-being. Not to continue being anyone’s backyard, is the slogan of struggle.