Articles by Julio M. Shiling

Biden’s Americas Summit Opportunity

Will Biden stand his ground, or will he give in to socialist regimes and invite tyrants and human rights violators to the Summit of the Americas?

The Biden administration has a great opportunity to emphasize that democracy is the gold standard political system in the Western Hemisphere. The 9th Summit of the Americas, which is to be held the week of June 6-10 in Los Angeles, California, was poised to exclude most of the continent’s non-democratic regimes. Certain Latin American leaders objected to the prohibition of the dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the event and stated that they would boycott the conference if this occurred. The overarching dilemma for Biden is whether he will placate the left and invite these notorious human rights violators or will the U.S. firmly defend stated principles that bind hemispheric cordiality based on the practice of consensual modes of governance and free societies.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Brian A. Nichols stated during a television program on May 2 that “Cuba, Nicaragua, [and] the Maduro regime do not respect the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and therefore I don’t expect their presence.” When questioned on the specific case of Cuba, where during the 2015 Summit the Cuban dictator, Raul Castro, was invited, Nichols commented that, while it will ultimately be Biden’s prerogative, he believes “the president has been very clear about the presence of countries that by their actions do not respect democracy — they will not receive invitations.”

 

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Biden’s Political Prisoners

This is the prelude to derailing the opposition. It is abominable that this could occur in our country

The U.S. has been heading down the wrong path. Obama’s Democratic Party, aligned with elite media, Big Tech, and woke capitalists are seeking to install an authoritarian regime that can enforce their scripted variants of cultural Marxism. Organized “leaks” of Supreme Court proceedings, sanctioning mob rule to undo the checks and balances on the path towards socialism and a Marxist Mickey Mouse promoting Gender Ideology are all symptoms of the targeted undermining of the American Republic. It should surprise no one and alarm everybody that political prisoners exist in the U.S. today.

The Jan. 6 Capitol Building breach was an unlawful act. It was trespassing and there was vandalism. Applicable laws should address these grievances. What we are witnessing, however, is the utilization of the judicial system, facilitated by its jurisdictional geographical location, to clamp down on the opposition. Miles of video surveillance recordings affirms that most of the intruding Americans who entered the Capitol Building that day, did so through open doors and many were met by greeting police officers. While it will take a shift in power in Washington to get to the bottom of what really happened on Jan. 6, one thing is certain, this was not an “insurrection”, much less an attempt to “overthrow” the government.

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Ukraine Is ‘Fighting for Western Civilization’: Ukrainian Activist Halyna Chyzhyk.

While confident Ukraine can win the war against Russia, activist considers it crucial for the West to provide more weapons and anti-aircraft equipment.

Pro-judicial reform activist Halyna Chyzhy of Kyiv’s Anti-Corruption Action Center discussed with El American the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

Chyzhyk said she is confident that Ukraine will win the war against Russia, but explained that for that to happen, more collaboration from allies in the West is urgently needed. Although Ukraine has managed to maintain control over their capital, Kyiv, the activist warned that no one in Ukraine will be safe until they receive “heavy weapons” and equipment to protect the skies from Russian Army airstrikes.

“Now, the battlefield is in the eastern part of Ukraine, so Kyiv and the outskirts of Kyiv are not threatened by the Russian Army at the moment, but only two hours before this conversation, Russian missiles hit areas in Lviv, which is a city in the west of Ukraine,” Chyzhyk said. “[The same] in Odessa, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities. Basically, you cannot be safe in Ukraine. Anywhere in the country, you are threatened because you don’t know where the next Russian missile will point.”

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American Policy Failures with Putin

Relations between democracies and dictatorships should be lukewarm at best, but never one of friendship, trust, or economic entanglement.

Republican and Democratic administrations have misread Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic regime. The West, in general, has diagrammed policy towards post-Soviet Russia under false perceptions. Sun Tzu’s notion that, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat,” (The Art of War) has epitomized the Free World’s course following the collapse of the USSR.

The fall of Soviet communism produced a euphoria in the West. Rightly so. The wholesale theft of Eastern and Central Europe by the Soviet Union following World War II, the ascent of Chinese communism, and the invasion of South Korea by the North, prompted a comprehensive Western reaction to challenge the malignancy of communism. Why did the West assume Russia would transition into a democracy?.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton inherited the dividend of the Reagan Doctrine. Capitalism, as the West’s premier socioeconomic model, played an important role in sinking socialism. However, it was not the only factor. The morality inherent in Western values were paramount instruments. Ideology mattered. America and the international liberal order that emerged after the defeat of National Socialism in Europe was not just about economics. 

The transition following the breakup of the Soviet Union contained suspicious elements from the beginning. The 1990s in Russia witnessed the biggest privatization program in history. The massive transfer of state-owned enterprises (SOE) into private hands proved to be a deceitful ploy. It was legalized theft. The managers of those very SOEs ended up “selling” to themselves these assets. With state subsidized credit, regulated low prices, shares and voucher schemes, a newly formed oligarchic class with political ties to power and the Soviet past was consolidated. Elections lost their competitiveness, as the kleptocracy rigged the political system.

Under these conditions, Clinton signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which made the U.S. a guarantor of Ukraine’s sovereignty, in exchange for the surrender of their nuclear arsenal, then the world’s third largest. How could Clinton trust Russia? After all, it was clear by then that Boris Yeltsin had done a superb job in dismantling the USSR, but a feeble one in establishing a democracy.

The Islamic attacks of September 11 lead George W Bush to see Putin as an ally. He went so far as to publicly say in 2001 that he had seen Putin’s soul and was convinced of his honesty. One wonders if Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 changed Bush’s mind. Judging from the West’s reaction to this brutal aggression, Putin continued to be a stealth thug.    

Barack Obama was, by far, the biggest dupe for the Putin regime. The actions of his two presidential terms empowered the Russian dictator in unprecedented ways. The dismantling of the nascent Europe defensive missile system, denying arms sales to Ukraine and torpedoing its NATO entry, authorizing American uranium access rights, and a “red-line” invitation in Syria, were all overtures to Putin for a failed “reset” policy. In the 2012 elections, as Obama debated, Mitt Romney, he ridiculed the Republican candidate for suggesting Putin was a threat to the West. The Obama Doctrine turned out to be an appeasement treatise that galvanized Russian adventurism. 

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was met with weakness and moral ambivalence by Obama. This validated Russia’s blatant claim that, in some absurd manner, it had a sphere of influence “right” to pulverize Ukrainian sovereignty. At that moment, the Western international liberal order that was built after the Second World War, was formally buried. Russian cyber-attacks, the election meddling, and the Havana Syndrome, were only some manifestations of Putin’s imperialist endeavors that would follow.      

Donald Trump, despite some of his reckless public statements, was the president who caused the most damage to the Putin regime. The bombings in Syria that killed Russian soldiers and arms sales to Ukraine, along with the training of its military, directly challenged Russian dictatorial interests. However, it was the remarkable increase in American oil production that most hurt Putin’s war machine. 

Fossil-fuel sales revenues, as was the case with the USSR, remains Russia’s key to hard currency entry. Collapsing oil prices, resulting from the increase in supply under Trump’s watch, was a financial blow to the Eurasian kleptocracy. Coincidently, this was part of Reagan’s strategy to rollback Soviet communism. Words and symbols, however, are vital in politics. Trump erred by stubbornly refusing to address Putin as a dictator. This played into the Left’s narrative. It also helped Putin. 

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has opened a new chapter in American and European foreign policy. The West must partner with the free exclusively. 

©The Cuban American Voice. Originally published in @El American. All rights reserved.