Originally, the term “banana republic” literally referred to some countries whose livelihoods depended exclusively on banana cultivation. Later, this concept was expanded to define nations without democratic institutions, governed by a primaryized economy, with corrupt officials and fragmented societies.
In America, this banana equation has been completed by the figure of a law enforcement power such as the United States, capable of intervening politically, economically and militarily in any country.
It is this tragicomic cocktail that Woody Allen was able to portray so well in his 1971 film Bananas.
Authoritarians don’t like that
The practice of professional and critical journalism is a mainstay of democracy. That is why it bothers those who believe that they are the owners of the truth.
Even today, the banana industry is still associated with farce: caricatured leaders, unprofitable economies, grotesque initiatives, populism of various kinds and a hegemonic power that has once again taken on the role of regional gendarme.
Big stick. US military interventions in the region date back to the 19th century. Sometimes these were direct armed invasions, sometimes by allied dictatorships.
The US National Security Strategy plan that became known in the last few hours…
Completely in line with the Monroe Doctrine, summarized in the formula “America for the Americans” (its critics said: “America for the Americans”), which aims to block the expansion of other powers on the continent. To this doctrine was later added the “Roosevelt episode,” known as the “Big Stick Policy,” which extended the rationale for military interventionism to cases where domestic order needed to be “restored.”
But from the 1990s, with the onset of globalization, a new international political correctness (on human rights, minority protection and climate change) and conflicts in other parts of the world, the world’s greatest power abandoned its role as regional gendarme and focused its war challenges on the Middle East. Especially after the 2001 attacks.
But in this second term of Donald Trump, America regained importance for Washington, likely out of interest in stopping China’s commercial advances and concern about oil reserves in countries like Venezuela that are flirting with Russia and others in the Middle East.
Trump episode. International diplomacy is still amazed after learning in the last hours of the “National Security Strategy”, which provides a legal and theoretical framework for what Trump has put into practice since his return to power. A sort of “Trump episode” to the Monroe Doctrine.
It makes clear the priority over military control of the continent, “rewarding and encouraging governments, political parties and movements in the region that are consistent with our principles and strategy,” ending mass migration and protecting Western values.
Trump translates this last point as a European failure and is the most surprising thing about the document. For the first time, the United States’ historic turn against its traditional allies on the Old Continent is made official.
Now Washington is warning that it will support those who “oppose Europe’s current course,” putting the European Union almost on a par with what the Soviet Union represented during the Cold War. He maintains “the real prospect of the demise of Western civilization” and that “if current trends continue, Europe will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
And just as he promises to support allied parties in regional affairs, he reiterates that he will do the same with the European “patriotic” parties (the so-called “ultra-right”), which counter the policies of “the EU and other transnational organizations that undermine sovereignty with an immigration policy that is transforming the continent.” He also predicts the possibility of “certain NATO members becoming largely non-European” and supports the conspiracy theory of a plan to replace white people with non-white immigrants.
…shocks Europe and restores the role of regional gendarme that it had
had in the past
Neo Club. These eccentric and extreme postulates are consistent with a man who is also eccentric and extreme.
Unlike United States presidents after the 1990s, Trump returned to the stick policy introduced by Theodore Roosevelt (“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” he said) and which endured for nearly a century.
Except Trump takes this premise to the extreme.
As in the past, the USA once again used its military power in the region. Basically near the coast of Venezuela. There have been 22 attacks since September 2, destroying 23 boats and killing 87 people, suspected drug traffickers. The same accusation that also weighs on Maduro. It is the same one that landed former Honduran President Juan Hernández in a North American prison, where he was sentenced to 45 years in prison and pardoned by Trump a week ago.
This Thursday, the Congress of this country opened a criminal investigation into one of the attacks: after a first bombing that left people alive, a second bombing was authorized that killed the survivors.
This “overloaded stick” is keeping the world in suspense and, according to polls in the country, is being rejected by over 70%.
Javier Milei not only accompanies Trump’s same speech to Europe (albeit with a focus on the famous communist threat), but also encourages him to invade Venezuela. In fact, he offered to include an Argentine ship in the offensive, breaking Argentina’s historic principle of non-intervention.
Banality. In the process of normalizing the exceptional, both here and in the world, the silence of the democratic and republican leaders who once defended international law and its institutions can be heard. Perhaps they remain silent out of fear of brutally confronting those who wield power, or they do so because they value ends over means.
But the fact that Venezuela is in the hands of an authoritarian populist who claims to have direct contact with God and to hear voices from beyond does not justify allowing a military power to violate international law to intervene in countries or kill people without providing reliable evidence and giving them the right to defend themselves.
A year ago, this newspaper honored opposition leader Corina Machado with the Defense of Democracy Profile Award “for her defense of democratic values and human rights in Venezuela, despite the ban and political persecution.”
In a video that managed to break through censorship, Machado declared: “This fight lasts until the end. Until the end, it is about building a nation with ethical, republican and liberal pillars. Thank you for this enormous recognition and I sincerely thank you for continuing to accompany this fight that has only one goal: the freedom of Venezuela.”
It is precisely “the ethical and republican pillars” that distinguish a democratic leader from authoritarian bananimen of any kind.
Hanna Harendt claimed that evil could hide mere banality. Not necessarily the monstrosity of the person doing harm, but the simple stupidity of people who are powerful in their circumstances and do evil.
American history, which could be both tragic and ridiculous, is now repeating itself as both tragedy and farce.
We Argentines, specialists in pretending that this is all normal, can perhaps advise the world that the best way to naturalize Trump is to look the other way and remain silent.
This is another form of banality. That we act as if we had nothing to do with what happened to us.