Forwarded from Nestor (reply to Juan)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Juan F. writes:

> Hope made things neater, not fuzzier.
> Nestor, bromeas?"

(Néstor, are you pulling my leg?)

Yes, I am.

But there are some particularities in Juan´s approach which deserve comment

"I almost laughed out loud at the suggestion that Argentine govt's have 
had a tradition of nonintervention in other nations' internal affairs, 
in part due to the Gulf War, but also because Plan Condor, and 
involvement in supporting juntas in the course of several Central 
American conflicts in the 1980s, selling weapons to Ecuador during its 
recent war with Peru, etc. speak against any such "tradition.""

The latter is questionable, in a long run perspective.

To begin with, Plan Condor was not a matter of intervention in other 
nations´affairs, but an agreement on a quid pro quo basis between 
criminal oligarchies, and in more senses than one the concrete 
expression of a Latin American civil war between imperialism plus local 
oligarchies and their own peoples.

The coordinated efforts by the different military dictatorships during 
the 70s and 80s were a bloody demonstration of the basic unity of the 
Latin American struggle against imperialism (and for socialism). They 
have things clearer than most of us do. Same can be said of the 
intervention in the Central American conflicts.

But both these events were NOT an expression of the usual policies 
followed by popularly elected governments in Argentina, and certainly 
they showed the strong anti-national character of these regimes. No 
Argentinean backed the Condor Plan, except for the minute elites who 
also backed the regimes themselves.

The only serious (and shameful) recent example of a complete breach with 
that tradition was the Menem era, when Argentina, yes, acted as an 
interventionist force (only that on the behalf of third parties) in the 
Gulf and the Balkans, and, in an outrageous and indignant betrayal to 
human decency, to anything held most sacred by the Argentinean people, 
and to the agreements of Rio de Janeiro where Argentina was a warrantor 
of peace between Peru and Ecuador, Menem and his group of maffia 
upstarts decided to smuggle arms to Ecuador in order to make some 
millions. The last precedent in this sense was the Paraguay War, but 
this was also an Argentinean (and Uruguayan) civil war...

The political tradition of Argentina, however, at least the tradition 
that the educational system poses as ours, and (more important) 
Argentineans consider ours -and the tradition which makes all those 
events so hateful for us that even intervention in the Gulf always 
confronted rejection and nobody supported it here- is that of Yrigoyen 
and Perón, but also of the Conservative governments of the 30s and even 
of the military regimes or military-sponsored/limited regimes after 
1955. The 1976 coup and Menemism marked a turning point, but this was 
never made clear, nor did it take root in our population.

That is what I mean by "tradition of non-intervention".

"In any case, I was thinking today that if Duhalde is trying to gather 
support for an anti-war stance among his fellow heads of state in the 
region, he'll have a hard row to plough. "

He does not care. The whole thing is aimed at domestic opinion polls.

"The only ones who could openly defy Washington are those with the 
economic clout to do so, or who are too necessary to the US --Mexico, 
Brazil, Chile.   The Andean Pact could do so if it united but that is so 
unlikely as to be science fiction, what with Chile applying to join 
NAFTA, Colombia being entirely reliant on US military aid for its 
survival as a state, Peru being governed by a neoliberal bootlicker, 
Ecuador feeling too vulnerable between its larger neighbors to risk 
doing without Uncle Sam's aegis, and Bolivia mired in crisis and rebellion."

Bolivia is a bad example. Precisely because it is mired in crisis and 
rebellion even an arch-Sepoy who speaks his own language with American 
accent (their current President) may attempt a milder course by showing 
that Bolivia dislikes any war adventures. But I understand all the other 
examples. However, sometimes tend to have a strange twist. Even very 
weak and subservient regimes may accept Duhalde´s propositions, if they 
fear that intervention in Irak may imply intervention in their own 
country tomorrow. I accept that the current situation does not make this 
possibility very likely, but I would not throw it to the dustbin without 
careful analysis.


--

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