If you were to check social media and find countless numbers of your friends or news sources exclaiming in terror about the United States entering a path to crisis along the lines of the Cuban Missile Crisis, would you be surprised? This writer certainly would be, as the world has quietly taken such a path in the last year, unnoticed by the general American public.
In December 2018, while you were likely enjoying a hectic Christmas season or panicking over the government shutdown, American intelligence officers panicked over the first deployment of nuclear-capable jet bombers to the Western Hemisphere by a foreign power since the Cold War, when Russia moved two of its Tupolev Tu-160 jet bombers to a base in Venezuela.
Considering Venezuela’s horrifically repressive government and relationship to Cuba, it might appear as though history is repeating itself. The situation has been relatively restrained so far. The Soviet heirship in the Russian Federation is a skeleton of what the Soviets could achieve in power projection, and Russians dare not provoke American belligerence with the deployment of missiles to the country, but the fact that it has hundreds of troops and nuclear aviation present for the support of an illegitimate and cruel dictator in our hemisphere ought to be a cause for concern already.
No matter their stance on American intervention in Venezuela, or even American intervention in general, every politician in our government ought to be making it one of their top priorities to help challenge this transgression of the centuries-standing Monroe Doctrine, which prevents European interference in our hemisphere. To not do so is a dereliction of not only the American government’s duty to protect to its people’s safety, but of its undeniable moral obligations to the people of Latin America.
Consider that what the Monroe Doctrine represents today is not resistance against the old-school gang of colonizers from Europe, but rather American responsibility in the hemisphere. With the end of the Cold War, the United States became the mediator and architect of the mutual growth across Latin America, signing free trade agreements with many of the major countries in the region. However, the benefits of free trade came with the acknowledgment of the costs of the realist foreign policy employed by the United States to guarantee communism did not spread in its metaphorical backyard. Under Bill Clinton, this acknowledgment came with an understanding of a moral debt the United States now had to its neighbors, to ensure that its brothers and sisters below the border were never subjected to tyranny, of both the right and left variants.
Thus, by allowing Russia to continue its aggressive military support for Venezuela inside our hemisphere, not only has the administration allowed a hostile nuclear-capable power easy access to every major population center in the U.S., but it has also allowed itself to break this pact with Latin America.
Rectifying this would not be a trivial matter, as Russia has grown extremely bold internationally, taking actions such as attempting an assassination on an ex-Russian diplomat on British soil with a chemical weapon, forcibly annexing Crime and fighting a destabilizing war in the Ukrainian province of Donbass with disguised troops. Despite its failing economy and dying populace, Russia remains the holder of most of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal and thus has been virtually immune to military challenges on any of these disturbing transgressions of international norms and laws. Furthermore, with the Trump administration growing increasingly stingy with additional sanctions on Russia, and Germany under Merkel growing closer with Russia economically, it has appeared that international pushback on Russian activities has weakened in the last decade. To suddenly reverse policy against a resurgent aggressor would require America to face a clear and imminent crisis for the administration to recognize the urgency required.
Make no mistake, that emergency is exactly what we are facing in Venezuela today. All that needs to be done is to make the administration face it and be given no alternative but to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, and demand an unconditional removal of Russian military assets from Venezuela. Write to your representative and Senator, and urge them to take action if the presidential administration will not.
Neil Singh is a Collegian contributor and can be reached at [email protected].
NITZAKHON • Apr 8, 2019 at 6:55 am
The single biggest threat in the world today is, IMHO, Islam and it’s demographic invasion of the West.
https://redpilljew.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-big-conspiracy-conquest-by-hijra.html
timothy • Apr 6, 2019 at 10:16 am
What an Obama administrator said doesn’t really matter. Obama and his administration was an aberration and they are becoming an increasing footnote in history.
Cristian • Apr 5, 2019 at 12:53 pm
This would be great, if then Secretary of State Kelly hadn’t announced to the OAS in 2013 that the U.S. no longer stands behind the Monroe Doctrine.
timothy • Apr 4, 2019 at 7:03 pm
Venezuela is not a big deal, it is a third-world dump socialist country and will likely collapse because it is a failures. The United States does not have to do alot here except let it happen.
Russia is a formidable nation but one that doesn’t really pose much of a threat to the United States. It invaded and took over small piece of land in Ukraine which is likely the size of Western Massachusetts. If anything it shows how weak and afraid Russia is, it could have easily taken over Ukraine but was hesitant to do so. Russia hysteria is because of liberals/left and their attempt to pin on Russia claims that it mettled in the election in order to undermine president Trump. In reality Russia could make a good ally and in the past 20 years has not killed any Americans as a nation-state as far as I am aware of.
China is a bigger threat, it has around 5 times the military budget, now openly seeks to become an empire, has stolen tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars of u.s ip property, has benefited from an unfair trade relationship and trade benefits as a’ developing’ nation and also has nuclear weapons. China is far more powerful and richer than Russia and seeks to become an empire. It is logical and common sense China is the bigger threat and problem which is why they are being focused on.
The other enemy of the United States is Radical Islam/Islamic Terrorism which unfortunately does not rest in one single country or place, it is amorphous and spread out. Islamic terrorist have killed thousands of americans the past 20 years, have shown brutal barbaric and savage approach particularly in europe and target civilians. In terms of threat to your life, the biggest enemy by far is Islamic radicalism/terrorism. Which hopefully is totally wiped out and Russia could be a partner here and even China. Islam has it’s place in an almost every area in the world and with that comes their terrorism. Islamic terror should be completely wiped out and Islam as a religion should be forced to reform or be excluded from western nations regardless of any ‘civil rights ‘ or laws banning quotas. These laws should be changed, ignored or there should be clear exception for Islam and/or people or cultures that condone terrorism and have shown an unusual propensity for violence.
Regarding South America, I think this author does not understand the monroe doctorine. The united states does not have an ” undeniable moral obligations to the people of Latin America.” It has no obligation to them at all, the only reason we wanted to keep europe out of the Americas and later Russia/Soviet Union is for rational reasons, so that these adversaries wouldn’t be able to set up camp in our ‘back yard’.
If anything Central and to a lesser extent South America poses a serious problem to the United States with illegal immigration and also the fact that central america and Mexico actually encourage their citizens to emigrate, get jobs and remit that money back to their countries, the amount of remittances is huge. These illegal immigrants and some legal immigrants, take from america and give nothing back in return and it is done openly and intentionally.
Let’s not forget the huge drug trafficking, human trafficking and other problems. Central America and Mexico may need to be looked at in the future as national security threats, the united states could easily take over Mexico and Central America and even annex them as territories or future states. If anything we have been very nice to these countries and they were until relatively recently useful allies and in return u.s gave these countries large amounts of aid, but now their relationship with the united states has turned abusive.