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Daniel, the world and Juan Manuel Santos Printer friendly page Print This
By toni solo, editor
Tortilla con Sal
Monday, Dec 10, 2012

"The trends in Central and South America are towards diminishing poverty and inequality. Latin America and the Caribbean are taking advantage of steadily growing trade and cooperation relationships with Asia and Africa while maintaining stable traditional links with North America and Europe."

Events following the historic judgment of the International Court of Justice on November 19th this year have confirmed existing regional trends and also raised provocative questions. In the recent meeting with President Santos of Colombia in Mexico, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega confirmed his outstanding regional statesmanship. The meeting consolidated the commitment of the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) to peaceful but still revolutionary change in Latin America.

For Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, that meeting in Mexico with President Ortega of Nicaragua represented a first step towards stabilizing his government's confused and maladroit reaction to the recent judgment of the International Court of Justice. That judgment confirmed Colombia's jurisdiction over the island of San Andres and its associated territories but also restored Nicaragua's historic rights over large adjacent maritime areas. The question now is whether President Santos is capable of leading his country to abide in good faith by that ICJ ruling and to thus help consolidate regional integration.

Globally, Colombia has long been aligned with the  powers of North America and Europe. Likewise, successive Colombian governments have cultivated close relations with the genocidal zionist gangsters who have defrauded the people of Israel, denying peace to them and the Palestinians for over 70 years. Some observers refer disdainfully to Colombia's regime as South America's Israel, an outlaw State dependent on US military support to survive.

The United States government, its European allies and servile, perfidious Arab governments in Saudi Arabia and Egypt have made it possible for the zionist mass murderers to sustain their decades-old ethnic cleansing of Palestine. A vast global majority rejects the zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. For decades now Colombia has chosen to ape its US and European overseers, ignoring fundamental principles of international law and human rights both regionally and domestically.

But the international situation is very different now. The United States oligarchy has chosen to promote deeply anti-democratic policies likely to condemn the great majority of US people to permanent subjugation, both politically and economically. That has been clearer than ever in US politics since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and in the US economy since around 2005, when private indebtedness tipped beyond sustainability. In Europe, the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the European Union, implicit in the foundational 1992 Treaty of Maastricht became overt in the Treaty of Nice in the year 2000.

Recent events in the United States and Europe only confirm trends that have become more and more obvious ever since the 1990s. The former dominant powers of North America and Europe are in decisive decline in relation to global rivals like Brazil, China, India, Russia, and independent regional powers like Iran and Venezuela. That is why the US corporate oligarchy  has directed US government foreign policy into alliances with politically dominant regional forces in countries like Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa and elsewhere in order to help stem the decline in its global influence.

The ruling elites of the United States and its decrepit imperial allies France and Britain prefer tyrannies to democracies. For that reason, they support monarchies, despots and oligarchies similar to their own throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. For the same reason, they have armed and funded genocidal terrorism in Libya and in Syria to destroy the bases of power of independent but vulnerable governments sympathetic to China and Russia.The NATO powers are compensating for their relative economic decline by exploiting their huge military capacity for State terror.

All this has been self-evident since the barbaric aggression against Iraq and the sadistic murder of Muammar Gaddhafi and family members during the criminal destruction of Libya. It is blatantly obvious in Syria. What is new is that the economic crisis in North America and Europe raises doubts among the regional allies of those countries over whether or not they can depend on US and European corporate consumer capitalism to recover.  Therein lies the wide geopolitical interest in how Colombia manages Nicaragua's recovery of maritime territory usurped by force by Colombia for over 80 years.

On current trends Central America will deepen its integration over the next couple of decades - with or without the dunderhead oligarchy that has hijacked Costa Rica. That will lead to an economic and political grouping of over 40 million people, similar to the population of Colombia. The trends in Central and South America are towards diminishing poverty and inequality. Latin America and the Caribbean are taking advantage of steadily growing trade and cooperation relationships with Asia and Africa while maintaining stable traditional links with North America and Europe.

In Colombia the position of entrenched imperialist allies like former president Alvaro Uribe is clear. They want to take their country down same the dead end as the United States and Europe - corporate corruption, wasteful militarism, elitist enrichment and majority immiseration. Beyond the cynical elite aligned with former President Uribe, everyone in Colombia capable of thinking for themselves knows better.

Colombia has to change in order to secure a peaceful and prosperous future for its people. Countries in Latin America have no reason to hitch their countries' future well being to the fading stars of North America and Europe. This regional and global reality offers optimism for acceptance by the Colombian authorities of the territorial adjudication made by the International Court of Justice on November 19th this year.

A new constellation is configuring itself internationally by which Latin America is plotting its own course towards a better future for all its peoples. Mercosur is growing and will be transformed with the membership of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador - all countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas. Despite ideological prevarication among their elites, few dispute that the best interests of Colombia, Peru and Chile also lie in consolidating Latin American integration.

Under the leadership of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, Nicaragua has demonstrated to Central America that ALBA can help the region shed its historic patterns of poverty and dependency. The statesmanship of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega has now created a clear opportunity for the Colombian government to set a new direction for Colombia at a time when a real chance also exists for an end to Colombia's civil war.  It remains for President Juan Manuel Santos to show the moral stature necessary to help complete the region's emancipation from the dead hand of North American and European domination.

Source: Submitted to Axis of Logic by the author.

Original publication: Tortilla con Sal

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