Could this escalate to a true inter-state war like South America hasn't seen in decades? There hasn't been a real high-level conflict between South American states since the Chaco War in the 30's, right? I hope that streak doesn't break and we get the better alternative: an explosion of revolutionary action across the region.
we're only 10 years out from anti-China propaganda in the US being about how they're a completely genderless society where no one is allowed to use gendered pronouns
Reposting myself to demonstrate that Marxism is a science. Some excerpts from that comment above:
The four Andean countries I'm looking at - Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile - are all in a very similar geopolitical position right now. In more or less recent history, each of these countries had a leftist in power. Bolivia for two decades was lead by MAS, carrying out (imo) the most successful electoral socialist project in history [...] Militarism that resembles the late 20th century is being re-imposed on the large indigenous, campesino, and working classes of the Andes.
In each country, to varying degrees, those classes are well-organized along leftist lines. Again, this looks different in each country. CONAIE in Ecuador and the post-MAS Evo-led movement in Bolivia are indigenous driven and, in their ways, committed to a socialist vision.
Socialist consciousness and the failures of electoralism are fresh in the minds of the Andean masses. As long as the US is entangled in West Asia, its ability to project power in Latin America is restrained - if it waits too long to withdraw from the Arab world, things in South America will get out of hand as the Pink Tide reemerges to swallow up the right-wing swing.
In South America, diesel fuel is extremely important to the economy and have a huge political influence. The small farmers across this region rely heavily on diesel for all their transportation. Mass protests in the region are often directly linked to rising fuel prices - not to mention being tied to explicitly political demands for democracy, sovereignty, and socialism. The Iran war is going to massively accelerate this contradiction exactly as right-wing, US-aligned governments crumble in popularity on other political and economic issues.
I see the Pink Tide not as a phenomena that emerged and receded in a narrow time period, but as one swelling in Latin America's long movement towards sovereignty and socialism. While it may have been beaten back in many countries, it left indelible marks, permanent changes, and a lasting new Acutally Existing Socialist state in Venezuela. It remains more or less in power in the regions two largest countries, Mexico and Brazil. It was the successor to the end of the military dictatorships, and it was followed by what Vijay Prashad calls the "Angry Tide", the reactionary movement that we've seen over the last five years or so. The Angry Tide is a temporary condition. When viewed over time, Latin America as a whole has progressively moved left, secured more sovereignty, and asserted more ability to chart its own course forward, and the setbacks have never been able to outweigh to overall trend.
My prediction is that, in the next decade, we see most of the following play out:
A Bolivarian-style revolution in one or two of the Andean states - probably Bolivia and Ecuador, Peru maybe, Chile as a longshot - establish new socialist states that are more resilient to outside influence.
What you're saying was definitely my impulsive response to his statement, but this
No military technology or doctrine stays uncountered forever.
so far is not true for nuclear weapons and there is nothing on the horizon that looks like it will change it. It is possible for technological development to circumvent the drive to war by making it too costly. Drones allow for smaller states or even non-state entities to substantially increase the cost of war. No one has come up with a solution that doesn't cost substantially more than the drones. Even the US, with historically unparalleled long-range destructive capacity and functionally unlimited budget, has been unable to come up with even a halfway solution. And it's not like air defense is a new problem. The realities of projectile interception mean it will always be more expensive to take down a cheap projectile than to launch one. One projectile needs to hit a large, stationary target. One needs to hit a small, fast moving target. That's never going to change. How does that get circumvented? It's also idealistic and undialectical to say things always get solved as some absolute rule.
I'm not saying he's right - he's definitely exaggerating - but I think there is a substantial element of truth to the idea that drones make warfare much more difficult to wage.
This is an extremely good interview! He talks a lot about the centrality of the plurinational state to producing the best outcomes for indigenous people, the power of the popular movement, the significance of the victory of peoples movements in Ecuador and Peru to (re)establish plurinational states there, and the new Operation Condor. He's got a great analysis of the way the US uses Latin America to try and bounce back from its imperial defeats elsewhere.
There's a great deal of commitment throughout the region right now. The youth must identify both the internal and external demons. To me, the internal enemies are the right-wing forces in every country. The external enemies are the agents of empire and the prescriptions of capitalism, governments acting on behalf of transnational corporations through the privatization of healthcare and education. As I have said repeatedly, they are targeting basic services and above all natural resources. They are implementing a new Monroe Doctrine within this geopolitical context as the United States retrenches in Latin America to reassert its dominance. Let me clarify perhaps by repeating myself. In my view, the United States has no military power without NATO. It is no longer the unquestioned global hegemon. It has suffered defeat in Iran. With the political containment of our brother Nicolas Maduro, which amounts to a stalemate, they have secured control over Venezuelan oil. The country is now selling oil to the United States under pressure. A private American company is purchasing it. They seek full control of the oil, yet they have not completely achieved it. Therefore, the youth must identify who the true enemies of life are, the enemies of democracy, and who opposes peace with social justice. As I mentioned earlier regarding Latin America, these forces operate through economic blockades and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. And just as social movements have fought, they have also contributed immensely to the well-being of their peoples. I myself come from that very struggle having risen from the very bottom since I was a young boy. That is all brothers. Thank you very much. I am grateful for this connection and for this interview.
Evo, unsurprisingly, really knows wtf he's talking about. I am so inspired and moved by the courage and innovations of Latin American revolutionary, peasant, indigenous, and socialist movements and he is a critical figure.
Our boy at Inside China Business did a video on drone warfare that's pretty good at demonstrating the technological and industrial gap between the US and China, but that's nothing new to anybody here. What was really interesting is what he said at the very end:
Iran is friendly with China and Iran has a lot of drones. And that is all that matters because drones cannot be stopped. And that could be very good news. Instead of transforming warfare, drones may just end it completely.
Such a grand proclamation obviously causes a bit of eyerolling in an absolute sense, but as indication of a trend it actually kinda passes the smell test. Just like nuclear MAD really does prevent nuclear states from going to open warfare with each other, drones can act as a sort of lower-level MAD that makes any war too costly to actually carry out. That might be in the form of the Iran war being financially impossible for even a massive imperial hegemon like the US to wage or the Russo-Ukraine war being a nightmarish slog where progress on either side is almost impossible. It's moving slower than fucking WWI!
Now, this doesn't prevent war in cases of extreme assymetry, where the US can bomb a distant undeveloped country with impunity, but it lowers the threshold of costly war substantially. If Cuba weren't so incredibly strangled, it could develop the tunnel network and drone production capacity to make a US war against it far too costly just like Iran is.
Yeah but you can't just stick anyone in the job. You need thousands of flight hours before becoming a commercial pilot. The military is the only path for the vast majority of people.
Asked about his comments in the G7 meeting, he said he described "a perception gap in the markets between the physical markets and the financial markets" for oil.
it is easier to fool a market than to convince a market it has been fooled
or
it is difficult to get a market to understand something when its income depends on it not understanding
A six‑day, 188‑kilometer march of supporters loyal to former president Evo Morales arrived near La Paz on Sunday, with plans to join ongoing protests and roadblocks that have paralyzed parts of the country for 12 days, as demonstrators demand the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz.
What does the Bolivian movement need to achieve? What is a successful outcome and how revolutionary can it get?
The simple demand on its face is resignation of the current president, right wing dipshit Rodrigo Paz. That seems inevitable at this point given reports he's filed for asylum in Argentina. Then what? A caretaker president for a few months until new elections that the government can fuck with as they please? It would be a victory, but not sufficient to guarantee lasting popular, democratic sovereignty over Bolivia's development. This is essentially what lead to Evo and MAS winning power in 2005, and we see now both the successes and limitations of that. Can they go further, then?
We could see the establishment of a provisional government that substantially revitalizes or revises the 2009 constitution, which was promulgated by Evo Morales and MAS but is perhaps a bit long in the tooth, given new challenges. A constituent assembly process for a new constitution that grows out of these fresh revolutionary conditions would be appropriate. Or perhaps they could go as far as placing Evo back into power, openly breaking constitutional and electoral norms. That may not be wholly necessary, given that elections were a key role in the revolutionary victories of MAS in 2005 and the Bolivarian Revolution a few years earlier. South American democracies are surprisingly well suited for a mixture of electoral and insurrectionary tactics to secure revolutionary victories, but they always seem restrained in establishing true DOTPs that can withstand the predation of the US.
The best defense, though, is not being alone. If Brazil and Colombia stand with the people's movements of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, if we see a Socialism of the 21st Century domino effect that reestablishes a more unified and lasting Pink Tide, then the continent will be that much stronger. Conditions are optimistic, in my analysis.
edit: another thought: the Bolivarian Revolution and Cuban Revolution are each forced into a desperate defensive posture right now, going into hunker-down survival mode. If they are going to survive, they'll depend on solidarity from their region that can really only be forged by revolutionary movements.
except absolutely nobody supports this war or gives a shit about victory