One way to understand the Maduro-Trump saga is to put it in historical perspective. To begin with, America is a bully nation. Think of it this way. They begin by taking all the land belonging to Indians and “give” them back 2%. They call it Reservation.
They turn around and say to the European powers in 1800, “whatever possessions you have in our hemisphere, we want it.” At this time, Napoleon Bonaparte’s France owned a huge chunk of present day America which became known as the Louisiana Purchase. It was purchased from France for $15m in 1803.
As a result of this treaty, the nation doubled in size, adding territory that would become the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Minnesota, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.
They did not stop there.
The U.S. acquired Texas through annexation in 1845 and gained California (and much more) after winning the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), culminating in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, where Mexico ceded vast territories for $15 million, relinquishing claims to Texas and ceding California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of other states. This expansion was driven by “Manifest Destiny,” a theory propounded by an American journalist to the end that America should own all the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
Hence, the expression—-Coast to Coast with the acquisition of Oregon from Britain in 1846.
They did not stop there.
In 1867, they moved to purchase Alaska from Russia for $12m.
They did not stop there.
In 1898, the Queen of Hawaii was overthrown and Hawaii became a Republic, later seeking annexation by the United States. It became the 50th State in 1959.
When you combine a visionary mindset of greatness with an underlying philosophy of strength and ruthlessness, add to that, love of country, the reader will be able to see a fusion of Manifest Destiny, (Coast to Coast acquisitions), the Monroe Doctrine, (no European acquisitions in the Western Hemisphere), add to that the Roosevelt Corollary, (1903) which stated explicitly that everything in the Americas would be under the watchful eyes of the United States—- it is only in that context that the reader would be able to situate the Maduro palaver.
America may bully you, but you may not bully anyone else.
When the world started to change with Oil as the engine of industrialization, a tweaking of the Monroe doctrine became necessary. The free flow of Oil must never be tampered with. One may then situate the Iraq invasion of Kuwait into this equation to understand why America had to invade Iraq.
The noise being made now is about BRICS and how it will cause American decline. People who propound those theories seem to be unaware of the balance of economic and military power around the world. Estimates of number of American Military bases run at about 877 in 95 countries with the United Kingdom a distant second at 117 in 38 countries. One more thing. If we were to draw a circle and put every country’s military budget in the circle, the American military budget would constitute half of that circle.
President Maduro should have known that all presidents are not equal.
America is not your run-of-the-mill country. A quick understanding of that is the beginning of wisdom in the Western Hemisphere or anywhere else on the planet for that matter. For those who keep talking about China, we should probably ask one quick question. If China were that strong, why have they not taken Taiwan by force?
O’meekey Ovienmhada
Highly educative.
The historical edge to this piece is the magic sauce.
Thank you