Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n
I understand why you have such antipathy for those of us who are Latino and on the left, so I am not going to take your attempt at personal attacks personally.
I don't have a personal antipathy towards Latin American leftists. My girlfriend is one of them FWIW.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Instead, let us focus on the topic:
None of that contradicts anything I have said.
In terms of objective historical data, it is clear that US involvement in Latin America has been more harmful to Latin Americans than Russian, Soviet, and/or Chinese involvement.
This is true even if we assume (and this is a very plausible assumption) that the Russians and the Chinese are just as imperialist and callous about the lives and rights of Latinos as the USA has been.
Therefore, any reaction on the part of the USA to the Russian involvement mentioned in the OP is deserving of suspicion as it could easily end up in more human rights abuses.
But the US hasn't really done much to get rid of Ortega, Díaz-Canel or Maduro. It
could do so, just send the military in and then deal with the fallout, but it doesn't. They aren't Saddam Hussein, in fact, they aren't even the former US darling turned drug lord Noriega in Panama (who was indeed toppled by the US).
Instead, the US seems to be hoping the Nicaraguans, Cubans and Venezuelans will do so themselves. And if not, it seems to content itself with sanctioning their governments to see if they can be encouraged to change their policies and making sure they cannot interfere in the affairs of neighboring countries.
In reality, Latin America is not particularly relevant for the US in the grand scheme of things. The US priorities lie in East Asia and the Western Pacific in general, then Europe, then the Middle East and maybe, just maybe, Latin America or Africa. The only major importance of Latin America for the US is to stop migrant flows heading up north and making sure China and Russia don't set up military bases and place assets that may harm US national security like ICBMs in Latin American soil.
You may say "what about taking over American assets in Latin America?" and indeed, US doesn't appreciate if Latin American governments confiscate American private and especially government investments (or OPIC insured private investments, since in that case the US government has to compensate the private investors using taxpayer money), but even this isn't all that important and it certainly isn't as important as it was during the Cold War (American businesses are currently a lot less exposed to Latin America in general than they used to at the time), and it's not like it was critical back then. We know this because the US didn't impose sanctions on Venezuela when it naturalized US oil companies back in 1976, because the Venezuelan government was strongly and credibly pro-American at the time so all those things were forgiven - the real issue only arose when anti-American governments went on to expropriate American assets with little to no compensation, and then align themselves with the Soviets which was what truly irked the US. After all, the whole Alliance for Progress included a large increase in American investment in the region as a Marshall Plan of sorts to stop the Soviets, that's why OPIC was created to provide insurance to investors against nationalization to begin with, so those nationalizations were seen as violating existing bilateral agreements with the US to benefit themselves and the Soviets by subsequently aligning themselves with the latter.
Furthermore, those grand nationalization schemes would be far more costly diplomatically for the Latin American governments themselves now than they used to, because the US also represents a far smaller share of the assets that would be nationalized than during the Cold War as a result of the increase in investments by European, Canadian, Australian, Chinese and even neighboring Latin American countries in the region after the end of the USSR so trying to repeat that experience would put them in conflict not just with the US but all these other countries as well. But I digress
All in all, Latin America is just a pain in the ass for the US. Not an opportunity, not a threat, just a pain in the ass to deal with in general. The US doesn't really give a shit about our societies, it doesn't care if we vote right, center or left, nowadays that there is no USSR around it doesn't even care if we remain capitalist or not. The only thing it does care about us is that we don't cause it trouble, be it through migration or large enough government-sponsored drug flows (which are just extremely annoying because they cause internal political tensions, but even this concern has abated since, starting with Trump, the US is doing with Mexico what the EU does with Turkey in this regard, i.e. pay them to stop the migrants trying to cross their territory into their intended final destination so they have to deal with that; as for drugs the Venezuelan government does participate in the drug trade but it's hardly the main source of foreign illegal drugs in the US, and the measures to cut the flows are the same regardless of whether there's foreign governmental involvement or not so it's not like this is such a large factor either, just annoying) and specially through distracting their focus from what the US is currently interested in, which is East Asia and the Western Pacific in general, by doing something stupid like allowing China or Russia station ICBMs in Latin American soil. That's the true American red line and, actually, that's what it has always feared the most about Latin America - that it distracts the Pentagon from the overarching priorities of American national security and foreign policy by serving as a launching pad for whatever adversary the US has to deal with, formerly the Soviets, currently the Russians and Chinese.
So I don't understand why do you fear the US will do anything serious to get rid of the likes of Ortega. Personally, I'd have no problem if it did, but the reality is that it won't because the fates of Nicaraguans, Cubans or Venezuelans are not an American priority at all, realpolitik strongly suggests they shouldn't be, and realpolitik concerns rule when it comes to foreign policy and national security. It's as simple as that.
Most importantly, I also don't understand why do you think opposing people like Ortega, Maduro or Díaz-Canel internationally over what they are doing in their own countries, most of which overlaps with what right-wing military dictators were doing throughout the region in 1960-1990, would somehow be so terrible for their subjects. On the contrary, having a democracy so they can replace the governments that have failed to deliver on their promises by the ballot instead of the bullet should normally be regarded as a good thing.
- By ingliz