By Pablo Ruiz *
The new president of the United States, Joe Biden, will have a difficult mission that is to try to «normalize» the internal relationship with the majority of American citizens, as well as in international politics.
Donald Trump not only fractured the «American unity» accustomed to alternating power between Democrats and Republicans, without major crisis or trauma, but from the White House he promoted hatred, racism, white supremacy, as well as the distancing of diplomacy in an alarmingly high and with a much more violent discourse than we knew until then.
The Biden administration will have to work, if it wants, of course, to build a new narrative that goes beyond the Trump era and where the values of peace, justice, democracy, human rights, and diplomacy should be above the political violence that former President Trump was so criticized for when he ruled the US.
In Latin America, US interventionism and militarization has continued, we could even affirm that it increased under Trump’s mandate due to the geopolitical changes that the same US favored; not to say they promoted, financed, and conspired to power Jair Bolsonaro, Lenin Moreno in Ecuador; Mauricio Macri in Argentina; Sebastián Piñera in Chile; whose countries lived or live neoliberal governments with the disastrous consequences we can see. Nor can we forget the coup d’ état in Bolivia, where the role of the military trained at the School of the Americas was significant and the various violent attempts to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela.
If it is true that President Joe Biden comes with a new spirit to govern the United States and wants to overcome the discourse of hate and white supremacy, he should also put an end to the “manifest destiny” and stop the intervening in Latin America.
Our demands remain the same:
1 – An end to military and police training on Latin American troops at the School of The Americas or WHINSEC or at any other U.S. military academy that continues to promote violence and war as a means to resolve conflicts.
2 – The withdrawal and closure of all U.S. military bases in Latin America, including the military base at Guantanamo and wherever there is U.S. military equipment, weaponry, personnel. The territories usurped by the U.S. in Guantanamo should be returned to Cuba as soon as possible.
3 – The closure of all research centers where biological weapons can be developed; among them, the US Navy’s Center for Tropical Disease Research (NAMRU-6) located in Peru, and which recently opened a new “branch” in Honduras, at the Soto Cano’s military base.
4 – The end of the arms and a nuclear arms race that endangers the existence of all humanity. Our entire continent must be a Zone of Peace.
5 – An end to the persecution of refugees and migrants fleeing poverty and violence caused by the same economic and security policies promoted by the U.S. throughout Latin America.
6 – An end to the border wall. The world does not need more walls but bridges of solidarity.
7 – An end to policies of sanctions, interventionist threats and interference in the affairs of other countries. Especially against Venezuela where economic sanctions are a real war and affect the life and development of the Venezuelan people.
8 – Respect for the self-determination of peoples and respect for the sovereign decision of each nation in the world to establish the social regime it freely determines to have.
In defense of world peace
Likewise, in recent years, the danger of a world war and the threat of the use of nuclear weapons has increased due to the irresponsibility of the United States and its eagerness to impose its will on other nations.
In this sense, it is very true what the Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Chile, Arévalo Méndez Romero, pointed out some time ago at a meeting in Santiago, at the Le Monde Diplomatique bookstore, that: “The US does not respect today, or the imperialism does not respect today, countries that do not have nuclear capability”.
There we have the example of North Korea that forced former US President Donald Trump himself to “talk” and Iran’s response attack on a US military base in Iraq.
Therefore, the U.S. must respect international law and the self-determination of the peoples.
In international policy, the US must return to various treaties for the control and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. In this regard, Joe Biden recently took a significant step forward by calling the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and renewing the Start 3 Treaty for the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons.
However, it should be remembered that Trump withdrew the USA from the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, pulled out of the INF (Intermediate – Range Nuclear Forces) treaty with Russian Federation, the Open Skies Treaty, and caused a significant estrangement with Europe and especially with Germany, where political scientist Christian Hacke, in his article “Why Germany should get the bomb” pointed out that “the question of getting nuclear weapons for the Germans will be a national security issue”.
Brazilian Physicist Luiz Pinguelli Rosa told DW that Germany could build a nuclear bomb today. They have all the conditions to do so”.
For all the above, it is essential to return to diplomacy, to resume relations with Cuba, with Venezuela, to return to the Nuclear agreement with Iran, to respect North Korea, to get out of Syria, to have good relations with China and Russia and to continue advancing in talks with all the countries of the world for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and to make a route for the total elimination of existing weapons.
The world would be a better place if we lived together in peace, with respect for the self-determination of the peoples, with diplomacy, and not with the brutality and threat of the strongest.
*Pablo Ruiz, is part of the Observatory for the Closure of the School of the Americas.
