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Mexico, Nicaragua November 27, 2019
Operation Condor 2.0: After Bolivia coup, Trump dubs Nicaragua ‘national
security threat’ and targets Mexico
After presiding over a far-right coup in Bolivia, the US dubbed Nicaragua a
“national security threat” and announced new sanctions, while Trump designated
drug cartels in Mexico as “terrorists” and refused to rule out military
intervention.
By Ben Norton
One successful coup against a democratically elected socialist president is not
enough, it seems.
Immediately after overseeing a far-right military coup in Bolivia on November
10, the Trump administration set its sights once again Nicaragua, whose
democratically elected Sandinista government defeated a violent right-wing coup
attempt in 2018.
Washington dubbed Nicaragua a threat to US national security, and announced
that it will be expanding its suffocating sanctions on the tiny Central
American nation.
Trump is also turning up the heat on Mexico, baselessly linking the country to
terrorism and even hinting at potential military intervention. The moves come
as the country’s left-leaning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns of
right-wing attempts at a coup.
As Washington’s rightist allies in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador are
desperately beating back massive grassroots uprisings against neoliberal
austerity policies and yawning inequality gaps, the United States is ramping up
its aggression against the region’s few remaining progressive governments.
These moves have led left-wing forces in Latin America to warn of a
21st-century revival of Operation Condor, the Cold War era campaign of violent
subterfuge and US support for right-wing dictatorships across the region.
Trump admin declares Nicaragua a ‘national security threat’
A day after the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, the White House released a
statement applauding the military putsch and making it clear that two countries
were next on Washington’s target list: “These events send a strong signal to
the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Trump declared.
On November 25, the Trump White House then quietly issued a statement
characterizing Nicaragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the
national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This prolonged for an additional year an executive order Trump had signed in
2018 declaring a state of “national emergency” on the Central American country.
Trump’s 2018 declaration came after a failed violent right-wing coup attempt in
Nicaragua. The US government has funded and supported many of the opposition
groups that sought to topple elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and
cheered them on as they sought to overthrow him.
The 2018 national security threat designation was quickly followed by economic
warfare. In December the US Congress approved the NICA Act without any
opposition. This legislation gave Trump the authority to impose sanctions on
Nicaragua, and prevents international financial institutions from doing
business with Managua.
Trump’s new 2019 statement spewed outlandish propaganda against Nicaragua,
referring to its democratically elected government — which for decades has been
targeted for overthrow by Washington — as a supposedly violent and corrupt
“regime.”
Trump White House Nicaragua emergency national security threat
This executive order is similar to one made by President Barack Obama in 2015,
which designated Venezuela as a threat to US national security.
Both orders were used to justify the unilateral imposition of suffocating
economic sanctions. And Trump’s renewal of the order paves the way for an
escalated economic attack on Nicaragua.
The extension received negligible coverage in mainstream English-language
corporate media, but right-wing Spanish-language outlets in Latin America
heavily amplified it.
And opposition activists are gleefully cheering on the intensification of
Washington’s hybrid warfare against Managua.
More aggressive US sanctions against Nicaragua
Voice of America (VOA), the US government’s main foreign broadcasting service,
noted that the extension of the executive order will be followed with more
economic attacks.
Washington’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Carlos
Trujillo, told VOA, “The pressure against Nicaragua is going to continue.”
The OAS representative added that Trump will be announcing new sanctions
against the Nicaraguan government in the coming weeks.
VOA stated clearly that “Nicaragua, along with Cuba and Venezuela, is one of
the Latin American countries whose government Trump has made a priority to put
diplomatic and economic pressure on to bring about regime change.”
VOA’s report quoted several right-wing Nicaraguans who called for even more US
pressure against their country.
Bianca Jagger, a celebrity opposition activist formerly married to Rolling
Stones frontman Mick Jagger, called on the US to impose sanctions on
Nicaragua’s military in particular.
“The Nicaraguan military has not been touched because they [US officials] are
hoping that the military will like act the military in Bolivia,” Jagger said,
referring to the military officials who violently overthrew Bolivia’s
democratically elected president.
Many of these military leaders had been trained at the US government’s School
of the Americas, a notorious base of subversion dating back to Operation
Condor. Latin American media has been filled in recent days with reports that
Bolivian soldiers were paid $50,000 and generals were paid up to $1 million to
carry out the putsch.
VOA added that “in the case of the Central American government [of Nicaragua],
the effect that sanctions can have can be greater because it is a more
economically vulnerable country.”
VOA quoted Roberto Courtney, a prominent exiled right-wing activist and
executive director of the opposition group Ethics and Transparency, which
monitors elections in Nicaragua and is supported by the US government’s
regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Courtney, who claims to be a human rights activist, salivated over the
prospects of US economic war on his country, telling VOA, “There is a bit of a
difference [between Nicaragua and Bolivia] … the economic vulnerability makes
it more likely that the sanctions will have an effect.”
Courtney, who was described by VOA as an “expert on the electoral process,”
added, “If there is a stick, there must also be a carrot.” He said the OAS
could help apply diplomatic and political pressure against Nicaragua’s
government.
These unilateral American sanctions are illegal under international law, and
considered an act of war. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has
characterized US economic warfare “financial terrorism,” explaining that it
disproportionately targets civilians in order to turn them against their
government.
Top right-wing Nicaraguan opposition groups applauded Trump for extending the
executive order and for pledging new sanctions against their country.
The Nicaraguan Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, an opposition front
group that brings together numerous opposition groups, several of which are
also funded by the US government’s NED, welcomed the order.
Trump dubs drug cartels in Mexico “terrorists,” refuses to rule out drone
strikes
While the US targeting of Nicaragua and Venezuela’s governments is nothing new,
Donald Trump is setting his sights on a longtime US ally in Mexico.
In 2018, Mexican voters made history when they elected Andrés Manuel López
Obrador as president in a landslide. López Obrador, who is often referred to by
his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in more than five
decades. He ran on a progressive campaign pledging to boost social spending,
cut poverty, combat corruption, and even decriminalize drugs.
AMLO is wildly popular in Mexico. In February, he had a record-breaking 86
percent approval rating. And he has earned this widespread support by pledging
to combat neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
“The neoliberal economic model has been a disaster, a calamity for the public
life of the country,” AMLO has declared. “The child of neoliberalism is
corruption.”
When he unveiled his multibillion-dollar National Development Plan, López
Obrador announced the end to “the long night of neoliberalism.”
AMLO’s left-wing policies have caused shockwaves in Washington, which has long
relied on neoliberal Mexican leaders ensuring a steady cheap exploitable labor
base and maintaining a reliable market for US goods and open borders for US
capital and corporations.
On November 27 — a day after declaring Nicaragua a “national security threat” —
Trump announced that the US government will be designating Mexican drug cartels
as “terrorist organizations.”
Such a designation could pave the way for direct US military intervention in
Mexico.
Trump revealed this new policy in an interview with right-wing Fox News host
Bill O’Reilly. “Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror
groups and start hitting them with drones and things like that?” O’Reilly asked.
The US president refused to rule out drone strikes or other military action
against drug cartels in Mexico.
Trump’s announcement seemed to surprise the Mexican government, which
immediately called for a meeting with the US State Department.
The designation was particularly ironic considering some top drug cartel
leaders in Mexico have long-standing ties to the US government. The leaders of
the notoriously brutal cartel the Zetas, for instance, were originally trained
in counter-insurgency tactics by the US military.
Throughout the Cold War, the US government armed, trained, and funded
right-wing death squads throughout Latin America, many of which were involved
in drug trafficking. The CIA also used drug money to fund far-right
counter-insurgency paramilitary groups in Central America.
These tactics were also employed in the Middle East and South Asia. The United
States armed, trained, and funded far-right Islamist extremists in Afghanistan
in the 1980s in order to fight the Soviet Union. These same US-backed
Salafi-jihadists then founded al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This strategy was later repeated in the US wars on Libya and Syria. ISIS
commander Omar al-Shishani, to take one example, had been trained by the US
military and enjoyed direct support from Washington when he was fighting
against Russia.
The Barack Obama administration also oversaw a campaign called Project
Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US government helped
send thousands of guns to cartels in Mexico.
Mexican journalist Alina Duarte explained that, with the Trump administration’s
designation of cartels as terrorists, “They are creating the idea that Mexico
represents a threat to their national security.”
“Should we start talking about the possibility of a coup against Lopez Obrador
in Mexico?” Duarte asked.
She noted that the US corporate media has embarked on an increasingly ferocious
campaign to demonize AMLO, portraying the democratically elected president as a
power-hungry aspiring dictator who is supposedly wrecking Mexico’s economy.
Duarte discussed the issue of US interference in Mexican politics in an
interview with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, on their podcast
Moderate Rebels:
Now, a whisper campaign over fears that the right-wing opposition may try to
overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is spreading across Mexico.
AMLO himself has publicly addressed the rumors, making it clear that he will
not tolerate any discussion of coups.
“How wrong the conservatives and their hawks are,” López Obrador tweeted on
November 2. Referencing the 1913 assassination of progressive President
Francisco Madero, who had been a leader of the Mexican Revolution, AMLO wrote,
“Now is different.”
“Another coup d’état will now be allowed,” he declared.
In recent months, as fears of a coup intensify, López Obrador has swung even
further to the left, directly challenging the US government and asserting an
independent foreign policy that contrasts starkly to the subservience of his
predecessors.
AMLO’s government has rejected US efforts to delegitimize Venezuela’s leftist
government, throwing a wrench in Washington’s efforts to impose right-wing
activist Juan Guaidó as coup leader.
AMLO has welcomed Ecuador’s ousted socialist leader Rafael Correa and hosted
Argentina’s left-leaning Alberto Fernández for his first foreign trip after
winning the presidency.
In October, López Obrador even welcomed Cuban President Díaz-Canel to Mexico
for a historic visit.
Trump’s Operation Condor 2.0
For Washington, an independent and left-wing Mexico is intolerable.
In a speech for right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing Venezuelans in Miami, Florida in
February, Trump ranted against socialism for nearly an hour, threatened the
remaining leftist countries in Latin America with regime change.
“The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in
Nicaragua and in Cuba as well,” he declared, adding that socialism would never
be allowed to take root in heart of capitalism in the United States.
While Trump has claimed he seeks to withdraw from wars in the Middle East (when
he is not occupying its oil fields), he has ramped up aggressive US
intervention in Latin America.
Though the neoconservative war hawk John Bolton is no longer overseeing US
foreign policy, Elliott Abrams remains firmly embedded in the State Department,
dusting off his Iran-Contra playbook to decimate socialism in Latin America all
over again.
During the height of the Cold War, Operation Condor thousands of dissidents
were murdered, and hundreds of thousands more were disappeared, tortured, or
imprisoned with the assistance of the US intelligence apparatus.
Today, as Latin America is increasingly viewed through the lens of a new Cold
War, Operation Condor is being reignited with new mechanisms of sabotage and
subversion in play. The mayhem has only begun.
Ben Norton