Bulletins and News Discussion from May 19th to May 25th, 2025 - The Beginning of the End of the Monroe Doctrine

Or perhaps the end of the beginning, if you're a little more pessimistic.

Image is from this Bloomberg article, from which I also gathered some of the information used in the preamble.

While Trump was off in the Middle East in an incompetent attempt to solve a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis, China has been doing something much more productive.

Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, had a summit with CELAC (a community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries). There, he promised investment, various declarations of friendship, and visa-free entry for 30 days for citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Lula signed over 30 agreements with China. Colombia is joining the New Development Bank and hopes to gain the money for a 120-kilometer railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as an alternative route to the Panama Canal. Even Argentina, ruled by arch-libertarian and arch-dipshit (but I repeat myself) Milei, was uncharacteristically polite with China as he secured a currency swap renewal to shore up their international reserves.

It wouldn't really be correct to say that Latin America is "siding with China over the US" - leaders in the region will continue to make many deals with America for the foreseeable future, and even Trump's bizarre economic strongman routine won't make them break off economic and diplomatic relations. What's significant here is that despite increasing American pressure for those leaders to break off all ties with China, few appear to be listening - and given that China is perhaps the most important economy on the planet right now, that is a very predictable outcome.

As the current American empire takes actions to try and avoid their doom, those very actions only guarantee it. As Latin America grows ever more interconnected with China and continues to develop, America will grow ever more panicked and demanding, and this feedback loop will - eventually - result in the death of the Monroe Doctrine.

Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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743 comments

According to the PFLP, the enemy camp is a triad: The Israeli Entity (Zionist movement), global imperialism, and Arab reactionaries. This, the Front argued, was a precise diagnosis of the conflict. Consequently, it maintained that targeting the enemy should not be restricted by geography, since the enemy itself had made the entire world a battlefield.
Behind the Enemy Everywhere: Return of Palestinian External Ops? by Moussa al-Sadah
- That is essentially a call for 9/11 style actions
  The question that needs to be answered before considering that is whether or not doing such a thing will harden global support for Israel destroying Palestine completely, or whether it will scare global supporters into wanting it over so such attacks do not happen. It could go either way.
  With that said though... Does hardening of their support even matter? They already support it completely.
  
  That is essentially a call for 9/11 style actions
  Couldn't it just as well be a call for military operations against genocide-related infrastructure outside of Palestine, such as arms manufacturers or zionist "diplomatic missions"?
  
  Yes part of it is but naming global imperialism screams "finance" at me which just brings WTC and wall street to mind.
  
  Yeah... They're not exactly wrong about that. I do share your concerns about the tactical utility in attacking Wall Street though.
  
  Did you read the article?
  
  This is frustrating to read (the PFLP statement) because the idea that regional partners of Israel (the GCC, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan) needed to start paying a price for their support of Israel, explicit or implicit, seemed obvious 12-18 months ago. The Biden admin was very clear that they didn't want this to escalate into a regional conflict, and the Resistance met them on those terms instead of forcing the US/EU into the exact situation they didn't want. Arab/Muslim countries that had signed the Abraham Accords and were housing US bases should have been made to pay cost, and they were let off the hook instead.
  MBS can give lip service to a Palestinian state all he pleases, but when he allows US naval vessels that attack the Resistance to sit off his coast and resupply from his ports, that makes him an ally of Israel. When that British manlet who rules Jordan shoots down Iranian missiles fired at Israel, that makes him an ally of Israel. When the UAE acts as a makeshift land bridge for Israeli logistics and houses US military bases, that makes them an ally of Israel. When Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan supply Israel with oil and Turkey acts as Israel's gas station, that makes them allies of Israel.
  The Western elite only understand money. If you want to make them hurt, you hurt their bank accounts. Europe is pretty much incapable of fight any war right now, and any expansion of the conflict in the Middle East would have stretched the US very thin supporting both Israel and a GCC that can barely fight as it is. The only reason any of these people are saying anything now is because the images of starvation lay bare how full of shit they are in a way that actually might give them political ossues. And I frankly can't shake the feeling that liberals only give a shit now because Palestine seems like a hopeless cause, similar to the argument laid out in that Red Sails essay about the influence of Christianity on Western Marxism.
  Maybe it's still worth making someone pay a price, especially after they all just spent turns sucking Donald Trump off on public television and he just fucked over Palestine in return for it, but it's frustrating to even think about it now.
  
  Ya, seems a little late now that Syria has fallen into a pro-Israel war zone.

743 comments