THE COUNTRY WHERE LIBERTY IS A STATUE
By Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
January 15, 2021 Popular Resistance
On 6 January, the world witnessed an interesting spectacle, an assortment of
what appeared to be characters from fantasy television shows taking
possession of the US Capitol, where the legislature sits. Despite spending
more than $1 trillion on its military, intelligence services, and police,
the United States government found itself overrun by a horde of Donald
Trumps supporters. They came without any precise programme and were not
able to elicit a serious revolt around the country. What they showed clearly
is that there is a serious divide in the United States, which weakens the
ability of the US elites to exercise their domination over the world.
Around the world, people gaped at the bizarre pageant of Trumps army
running riot in the chambers of the body that calls itself the worlds
oldest democracy. With precision, Zimbabwes President Emmerson Mnangagwa
sent out a tweet that tied the US economic sanctions against his country to
the chaos in Washington, DC. The events at the Capitol, he wrote on 7
January, showed that the US has no moral right to punish another nation
under the guise of upholding democracy. These sanctions must end. The
government of Venezuela offered its concern about the political
polarisation and the spiral of violence and explained that the United
States now experiences what it has generated in other countries with its
policies of aggression.
President Mnangagwas use of the term moral right has echoed across the
world: how can a society that faces such a severe challenge to its own
political institutions feel that it has the right to promote democracy in
other countries, using the various instruments of hybrid war?
The United States like other capitalist democracies has struggled with
insurmountable challenges to its economy and society, with high rates of
wealth inequality crushed by large-scale precarity and income deflation.
Between 1990 and 2020, US billionaires saw their wealth increase by 1,130%,
while median wealth in the US increased by only 5.37% (this increase was
even more marked during the pandemic). Exits from this social and economic
crisis are simply not available to the US ruling class, which seems not to
care about the great dilemmas of its own population and of the world. An
example of this is the meagre income support provided during the pandemic,
while the government hastens to protect the value of the wealth of the small
minority that holds an obscene share of national wealth and income.
Rather than seek a solution to the economic and social crisis which it
cannot solve the US ruling class projects its problem as one of political
legitimacy. There is now a false sense that the main problem in the United
States is posed by Donald Trump and his rag-tag army; but Trump is merely
the symptom of the problem, not its cause. The constituency that he has
assembled will remain intact and will continue to flourish as long as the
social and economic crisis spirals further out of control. Large swathes of
the US elite have rallied around Joe Biden, hoping that he as a
representative of stability will be able to maintain order and restore the
legitimacy of the United States. Their view is that the US is currently
facing a crisis of political legitimacy and not a socio-economic crisis for
which they have no answers.
The January dossier from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research,
Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future, broaches the
question of the decline of US authority. Since the US war on Iraq (2003) and
the credit crisis (2010), there has been the anticipation of the decline of
the power of the United States and its project. At the same time, the United
States continues to exert immense power through its military superiority,
its control over large sections of the financial and trade system (the
Dollar-Wall Street Complex), and its command over information networks.
Since the late 1940s, the United States has declared that anything less
than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. This political aim has
been repeated in each National Security Strategy of the United States
government. The socio-economic crisis over the past two decades has weakened
US authority, but it has not eroded US power. This is why our dossier is
titled Twilight: we are in the midst of a process of the whittling down of
US authority, but not of the loss of US power.
During the last two decades, China has developed its scientific and
technological prowess, which has resulted in rapid advances for Chinas
development. Over the past few years, Chinese scientists have published more
peer-reviewed papers than scientists from elsewhere and Chinese scientists
and firms have registered more patents than scientists and firms from
elsewhere. As a consequence of these intellectual developments, Chinas
firms have made key technological breakthroughs, such as in solar power,
robotics, and telecommunications. A high savings rate by the population has
enabled the Chinese state and private Chinese capital to make considerable
investments in manufacturing; this has propelled Chinas high-tech
industries, which have seriously threatened Silicon Valley firms. It is this
challenge, we argue in this dossier, that has provoked the US ruling class
to instigate a dangerous confrontation against China; Obamas pivot to
Asia and Trumps trade war have both had a military component, which
includes the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads into the waters around
Asia.
Rather than tackle the great social and economic challenges within the US,
its ruling class has taken refuge in anti-Chinese rhetoric. Why is the
employment situation so bad in the United States, the people ask? Because of
China, say the elites whether those who support Trump or those who look
back nostalgically to Obama. Why did COVID-19 create such havoc in the
United States, which continues to have the highest death toll in the world?
Because of China, says Trump. Biden, in a softer way, makes similar noises.
The general orientation of the US ruling class is to blame China for every
problem within the United States, to make Chinas rise the excuse for any
failure in the United States.
Trump used the Obama-era Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United
States) against China, while Biden promises to build a wider coalition of
democracies (the Quad plus Europe) against China. Regardless of which
fragment of the US ruling class governs the country, these leaders will seek
to shift all responsibility for their failures onto China. This is a cynical
and dangerous strategy because as we point out in the dossier the US
elites well know that Chinas economic development poses a serious challenge
to the US, but that China does not have any military or any significant
political ambitions to dominate the world. The US ruling class, however, is
willing to risk a cataclysmic war to protect its preponderant power.
In 1972, when the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile came
under murderous pressure from the United States, the poet Nicanor Parra
wrote:
United States: the country where
liberty is a statue.
A year later, the US government told General Augusto Pinochet to leave the
barracks, overthrow Allendes government, and inaugurate a dictatorship that
would last for 17 years. Three years before the coup took place, the CIAs
director of plans wrote, It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be
overthrown by a coup. It is imperative that these actions be implemented
clandestinely and securely so that the [United States government] and [the]
American hand be well hidden. This policy of making sure that the American
hand be well hidden is part of the hybrid war techniques, which we outline
in the dossier.
Brave women and men fought and died to overthrow the Pinochet dictatorship.
Amongst them were people like Ricardo Silva Soto, a young man who liked to
play football and enjoyed his studies at the Faculty of Chemical Sciences
and Pharmacy at the University of Chile. He joined the Communist Party of
Chiles Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), which operated against the
tentacles of the dictatorship. In June 1987, Silva Soto and others were
killed in cold blood in Operation Albania. The Chilean Human Rights
Commission and Vicaría de la Solidaridad found that no bullets had been
fired from inside their safe house at 582 Pedro Donoso Street in Santiago;
the bullets were fired at close range at the militants. In Recoleta, there
is a peoples pharmacy named for Silva Soto. It was opened in 2015 by the
mayor Daniel Jadue, who is now a candidate for the Chilean presidency. The
creation of this pharmacy led to the establishment of the Chilean
Association of Popular Pharmacies (ACHIFARP) and to the opening in 94
municipalities across Chile of such establishments, which have played a key
role in the fight against COVID-19. Ricardo Silva Soto was killed to stop
the world from breathing; his name now sits atop a process that helps the
world survive.
The global reaction to the events of 6 January shows that the authority of
the United States is greatly dented. Biden will use any method including
hybrid war to revive this authority. But it is unlikely to succeed.
Parras poem was written in 1972 with bitter irony; today, due to the
worldwide interest in Black Lives Matter and the public appearance of the
white supremacist Trump-supporting hordes, Parras statement is seen to be a
description of reality.
The US has considerable resources to reassert its authority. The struggles
ahead in the name of people like Ricardo Silva Soto will be difficult
and perilous. But for the sake of humanity these struggles are
essential.
