US 'Diplomacy' in Venezuela: Same Old Gunboat, Different Century
The FT headline on 'America's risky gunboat diplomacy' around Venezuela is a classic of the genre, presenting ongoing US military interventions in Latin America as some novel, isolated incident. 'Risky'? For whom? For the US, whose long history of regime change operations in the region—from Guatemala in '54 to Chile in '73, and countless others—has consistently destabilized sovereign nations while
enriching US corporations? Perhaps the 'risk' is that the playbook is now so transparent, even the casual observer might connect the dots between resource-rich nations and American 'concerns' for 'democracy.' One might ask when 'mainstream' media will finally admit that 'gunboat diplomacy' is less a 'risk' and more a long-standing, brutally effective feature of US foreign policy in its own
backyard, rebranded for a new century.