now we go to our final speaker uh final speaker is benjamin norton uh who is uh well known he has also given me a very modestly short uh bio uh benjamin is a independent journalist and editor of the anti-imperialist news outlet multi polarista he lives in latin america ben please go ahead thank you for having me it's always a real pleasure being here everyone can hear me well right um yep this event is framed around the idea of the monroe doctrine and i think it's really important to interrogate what exactly the monroe doctrine is to understand the mechanisms of u. s imperialism and neo-colonialism in latin america and next year 2023 is the 200th anniversary of the monroe doctrine which is going to be a very significant anniversary one because we see that as the the new cold war the second cold war that washington is waging on both china and russia as that heats up latin america is becoming a major battleground and we see more and more overt us meddling imperialist aggression in the region but it's also important to discuss discuss the 200th anniversary of the ron rome doctrine because when we when we frame it in that context of the monroe doctrine dating back to 1823 we can very clearly see that the legacy of european colonialism has its direct parallel in u. s colonialism and neo-colonialism in the americas and in the caribbean at the same time when the british empire was colonizing south asia and large parts of africa and asia as the french were colonizing north africa and other parts of west asia the this moment in which there were the rise of the classical european empires the united states declared the americas you know south america central america and the caribbean to essentially be its colonial sphere of influence and yet the u.
s empire i think one of the things that's most unique about it is that unlike empires before it it pretends to not be an empire the united states always claims that it is not an imperial power that it's a democracy that its colonies are not colonies they are common wealth you know similar to this kind of british idea of the commonwealth but that they're you know uh protectorate you know countries that uh you know supposedly aren't colonies so puerto rico is a good example i mean it's this administrated territory it's not actually a colony uh they're clearly colonies i mean the united states has multiple colonies and some of those colonies actually became states you know hawaii uh the reality is that the united states has always been at least for for 200 years at least and from its very origins of course in cellular colonialism it has always been an empire similar to the european style colonial empires and barack obama claimed that the united states is unique because it doesn't have you know european style empires while ignoring blatantly you know the oppression of puerto rico that barack obama personally oversaw with the passage of promesa which is basically a neo-colonial uh unelected fiscal control board that prevents the people of puerto rico from exercising sovereignty over their own economic fairs puerto rico's finances are controlled by this board this unelected board of people from the united states who are not puerto rican some of whom are like right wing think tank operatives at the american enterprise institute so it's really important to understand the history of the monroe doctrine going back 200 years to see that the united states did have this very blatant colonial history similar to european colonial history and while the european colonialists were expanding into asia and africa and also of course latin america the united states with the monroe doctrine and with its war of aggression 20 years after the monroe doctrine to seize and occupy the northern half of mexico you know in 18 1846 to 1848 those were colonialist wars of aggression that were extremely similar to the kinds of european style colonial expansions and it's extremely relevant i also i mentioned the other key point of the new cold war and i want to talk about this for a second here in the past few years we've seen u. s politicians become more and more explicitly neo-colonial in their rhetoric more explicitly neo-colonial and their political actions and more and more blatantly they have been invoking this 200 year-old colonial doctrine to justify the u. s coup attempt in venezuela which never ends i mean it still continues today the united states is one of i think fewer than 10 countries at this point that still continues this farce of recognizing puppet one guayido as fake president of venezuela despite the fact that he never won a single vote in a presidential election unlike the real president of venezuela nicolas maluro who has won millions of votes in presidential elections so of course in the blatant coup attempt in venezuela we see this but we also see that this in u.
s attitude in general toward the region and starting with the trump administration of course the trump administration by no means uh you know began u. s imperialism in latin america it has been consistent for hundreds of years but something there was a shift in the trump administration in that top officials in the state department began openly invoking the monroe doctrine and repeatedly and that includes both secretaries of state so rex tillerson who let's not forget was an oil industry executive who beca who came in to oversee u. s foreign policy and we can't ever forget the key role of the u.
s attempt to control hydrocarbons and other natural resources in the region and being a significant motivating factor in the coup attempt against venezuela the control of lithium in the coup the briefly successful coup in bolivia which of course was back by the united states in november 2019 so uh also you know we've been talking about chile um you know chile also has significant mineral reserves in addition to lithium but copper and that being a significant role in the infamous 1973 coup against salvador allende and the anaconda company so anyway this of course is is very clear um the role of natural resources in these policies but rex tillerson invoked the monroe doctrine and then he was replaced by mike pompeo cia director turned secretary of state which by the way really exposes the myth that debunks the myth that the state department and cia are supposedly you know so far apart and there's this wall separating them no i mean the cia and the state department worked very closely and the fact that the head of the cia mike pompeo was made head of the state department makes that very clear pompeo repeatedly on multiple occasions invoked the monroe doctrine and then of course at the same time donald trump's national security adviser john bolton a neoconservative and architect of the iraq war someone who oversaw he was director of the project for the new american century which was essentially the project for us unipolar hegemony controlling the entire planet a global dictatorship that was the project for the new american century it was that the entire world is going to be the colonial property of the united states and they tried to do that and to an extent there there was there were elements that were true of this uni us unipolar domination although there were always honorable exceptions of nations you know cuba the dprk uh you know um zimbabwe mozambique uh eritrea countries that always were resisting that unipolar domination and today of course we see that the u. s unipolarity is completely dead and that's why the united states is waging this new cold war to try to revive that unipolar order which is never going to happen but anyway continuing with the thrust here of the invocation of the monroe doctrine we saw that john bolton invoked the monroe doctrine many times not just in his speeches publicly but he wrote a book a memoir the room in which it happened and he has an entire chapter dedicated to detailing in a whitewashed way of course his role in organizing the coup attempt in venezuela with one guayido and also many violent coup attempts that were part of that larger overall coup attempt and in that book he repeatedly invokes the monroe doctrine and in what context are these us officials invoking this 200 year old colonial doctrine specifically they're invoking it in the original context the monroe doctrine was if you go back to 1823 was the united states telling the european colonial powers look you have your colonial sphere of influence in the areas of the world you're colonizing latin america belongs to the united states it is the u. s colonial sphere of influence bringing of course hearkening back to this this arrogant racist idea of the u.
s backyard although joe biden flipped that on its head and joe biden recently said latin america is not the u. s backyard it's the us front yard as if that still somehow changes this you know arrogant colonial racist attitude that the u. s sees latin america as its colonial property regardless of whether or not it's the front yard of the backyard they still see the region not as sovereign but as its yard so if you look at the the ways in which the monroe doctor is invoked by these top u.
s officials and that has continued since the trump administration left office the biden administration likewise maybe you know anthony blinken is a little smarter he's a bit smarter than someone like pompeo he understands that it looks bad to invoke this 200 year old doctrine but he's basically saying the same thing without saying the words monroe doctrine we've also seen congress people in the united states for instance matt gates invoke the monroe doctrine on the floor of the u. s congress now in all of these contexts in the past few years of these u. s officials invoking the monroe doctrine 100 of the time it was in the context of the united states saying to latin america you cannot have bilateral bilateral sovereign relations with china and russia and also iran that is always the context that it is invoked in it's the same context as the us telling european colonialists latin america belongs to us of course the difference now is that the european colonials did not have bilateral you know consensual relations with countries they were forcibly colonizing and oppressing countries and nations across the global south the difference now is that countries in latin america and the caribbean have consensual bilateral relations with china and russia that are mutually advantageous chinese diplomats refer to it as the concept of win-win cooperation mutually beneficial cooperation the reason that china can do that is because china has a socialist government governed by a communist party and they're not their foreign policy is not dictated by capital by the interests of capitalists by what its corporations want unlike of course u.
s foreign policy which is dictated by wall street so when we look at the way that the monroe doctrine is invoked today it is clearly being instrumentalized to justify further u. s neo-colonial control over the region in the name of countering the influence of china russia and iran and we see this directly reflected as well in the statements of u. s government officials the pentagon in in so far as their national national defense strategy the pentagon in 2018 published a new national defense strategy that says that china and russia are the main so-called threats to u.
s national security they also added iran and the dprk we also see that this june there was a nato summit in madrid and nato the u. s led imperialist alliance that's aimed at you know um unifying the european colonialists under the leadership of the u. s imperialists and neo-colonialists we see that this this uh nato defense strategy the um strategic blueprint that they documented they called the strategic concept this was the first nato blueprint adopted in 12 years and it says very clearly that russia is the main threat to nato and china is the main strategic competitor so again reaffirming this idea of the new cold war the second cold war on china and russia and in that new cold war the united states is turning latin america and the caribbean into an imperialist battlefield now this is not something that the region has asked for of course the region wants mutually beneficial relations and as you listen to many leaders in the region say of course they deeply oppose u.
s imperialism and its arrogant imposition of policies that they don't support but they do want mutually beneficial consensual relations and if the united states is willing to stop acting as this neocolonial emperor and actually have mutually beneficial relations these countries in the regions would be willing in the region will be willing to have those relations we've seen that repeatedly even from you know revolutionary leaders maluro ortega they've made it very clear they want to develop their countries they want what's best for the peoples of their countries but the united and in st exploitation because it's foreign policy is not dictated by the interests of people it's dictated by the interests of capital so i think it's really important i just wanted to kind of briefly do an overview there of course you know there are historians who understand early 19th century u. s politics much better than i do and can go into much more detail about the the back historical background of the monroe doctrine but i think it's really important to understand the monroe doctrine in the context of the classical european empires and the united states basically saying that we too have these colonial interests we also have a very similar foreign policy just like the colonialist foreign policy of the british empire of the french empire of the german empire while they were carrying out these genocidal actions in africa and asia the united states was doing something very similar in latin america and of course at the same time through manifest destiny the united states was expanding westward at the same moment when it declares the monroe doctrine it is committing genocide against native peoples to create this this empire from the atlantic to the pacific and the fact that u. s politicians cognizant of that history continue to invoke this 200 year old colonial doctrine shows that although there might be a change in in the rhetoric of the us government the actual political and economic character of the united states as the settler colonial construct has not fundamentally shifted i mean of course it's still using the over 200 year old colonialist racist white supremacist slave supporting constitution the united states has never had a constitutional uh you know uh shift a constitutional convention to create a new constitution after more than 200 years so i mean the fact that they're willing to to re re to uh uh you know rehabilitate this 200 year old colonialist doctrine you know the year the 2003 200th anniversary is coming just next year i think it really reflects that neo-colonialist attitude of the united states has and how the new uh tactic that it's going to use to try to justify its exploitation of the region to try to take its natural resources to control its strategic you know access points to prevent nicaragua from building a canal in order to dominate the panama canal in order to monopolize trade the us is going to do that in the way that the u.
