The Global South
American Leftist
"The tragedy of the situation," Baran wrote, has the dimensions of a Greek drama. In Hitler's extermination camps the victims were forced to dig their own graves before being massacred by their Nazi torturers. In the underdeveloped countries of the 'free world,' peoples are forced to use a large share of what would enable them to emerge from the present state of squalor and disease to maintain mercenaries whose function it is to provide cannon fodder for their imperialist overlords and to support regimes perpetuating this very state of squalor and disease.
One can only imagine what Baran would write if he were alive today. A key concept here, a concept that can be easily overlooked, is Baran's contention that the US, along with its other G-8 allies, intervenes covertly and, if necessary, militarily, to stop development within what we now call the Global South. Recall Alexander Cockburn's remark that a journalist friend told him that the need to invade Iraq in 2003 acquired greater and greater urgency precisely because the sanctions were no longer effective in hobbling the Iraqi economy. It sounded rather odd at the time, but, given the consequences of the war and occupation, it no longer does.
Or, consider Iran. With oil selling above $60 a barrel, and the prospect of nuclear power, replete with the capacity to enrich its own fuel domestically, thus releasing more of what remains of its reserves for the international market . . . well, something must be done, and, predictably, the bipartisan American political elite is insistent about the importance of stopping the Iranian nuclear program, even though Iran is a long time signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that, to date, there is no evidence that it has violated its treaty obligations.
Or, let us look to the north, to the Russian Republic. Upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US, by persuading to the Russians to adopt the remorseless economic policy known as shock therapy, turned back the clock, transforming Russia into a state with the social conditions associated with the Global South, with the ultimate goal being the transfer of control of Russia's state controlled resources, especially oil and natural gas, to global transnationals through the intermediary of the oligarchs, who purchased them at fire sale prices when they were privatized. Yeltsin, the man who oversaw this corrupt process, along with the implementation of the increasingly autocratic practices required to pursue it, was, upon his recent death, hailed as a democratic reformer, while his successor, Putin, is perpetually maligned in the US as an incipient authoritarian, even though he never launched a military attack upon his own Parliament, as Yeltsin did, precisely because he has undertaken actions to reestablish Russian sovereignty and economic independence.
And, finally, there is, of course, Venezuela, which I helpfully capitalized in the quote from Bellamy's article. As it became increasingly evident that Chavez was about to assert control over the country's primary resource, oil, and use the proceeds for economic development, the Bush administration did nothing to dissuade coup plotters from going forward, and immediately recognized them as the new government in April 2002 after Chavez had been arrested, as did their friends like the editorial writers at the New York Times. The democratically elected Chavez, it was said, had "brought it on himself", an explanation aphoristically echoed throughout the opinion elite within the US media, but the explanations as to how he had done so rang hollow. By contrast, US intolerance for an alternative development approach in South America, one independent of the neoliberal constraints of US controlled global financial institutions, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, was a much more persuasive one, and, predictably, either ignored or deliberately concealed.