Worldwide disorder: the specter of total domination. That is the title of the latest book by Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira (Civilização Brasileira, 2016), our most respected analyst of international politics. The author has had access to the most secure sources of information, to multiple archives, to which he brings a vast knowledge of history. There are 643 dense pages, written with fluidity and elegance that often sound like reading a historical novel.

Moniz Bandeira is, above all, a meticulous researcher and, at the same time, a militant against the imperialism of the United States, whose entrails he cuts as with a surgeon’s scalpel. Not without reason he was jailed in 1969 – 1970, and again in 1973, by the fearsome Center of Information of the Marine (Centro de Informaciones de la Marina, Cenimar), for critically opposing, in the context of the cold-war, the main supporter of Brazilian dictatorship: the United States of Northamerica.

The materials at his disposal permit him to denounce the present imperial logic through the subtitle of his book: “proxy wars, terror, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes”. Those who still nourish admiration for the Northamerican democracy and seek to align themselves with its imperial designs (as Brazilian neoliberals do), will find here vast materials for critical reflection and for a more nuance reading of the world.

Two themes guide the power centers of the Northamerican state, with its countless organs of internal and external security: “one world and only one empire” or “only one project” and “a vision of total domination (full-spectrum dominance/superiority)”. That is, Northamerican foreign policy is inspired by the (illusory) “exceptionality” of the old “manifest destiny”, a variation “of the chosen people of God, the superior race”, called to spread throughout the world democracy, liberty and rights (always according to the imperial interpretation of these terms) and to consider itself (pretentiously) “the indispensable and necessary nation”, the “anchor of global security” or the “only power” (sole power).

Already in the XVIII century, Edmund Burke, (1729-1797), and in the XIX century, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859), had the premonition that the Northamerican President had more power than an absolutist monarch, and that this would degenerate into a military democracy (p. 55). In effect, with George W. Bush as a result of the attack on the “Twin Towers”, a true military democracy was established, with the declaration of the war on terror and enactment of the Patriot Act, that suspended basic civil rights, undermined habeas corpus, and allowed torture. This is certainly a terrorist state.

Several Northamerican scientists, quoted by Moniz Bandeira (p. 470), affirmed: “there is no longer a democracy but an economic elite domination to which the president must submit. Decisions are made by the military-industrial complex (the war machine), by Wall Street (financiers), by powerful business organizations and a small number of very influential Northamericans. To guarantee the “vision of total dominations” they maintain 800 military bases throughout the world, the majority with nuclear installations, and 16 agencies of security with 107,035 civil and military agents. As Henry Kissinger said: “the mission of the United States is to propagate democracy, by force if necessary” (p.443). Under this logic, from 1776 to 2015, that is, in the 239 years the United States of Northamerica has been in existence, there have been 218 years of war, and only 21 years of peace (p. 472).

It was hoped that Barack Obama would bring a different direction to this violent history. That was an illusion. Obama only changed the names, but maintained the spirit of exceptionalism, and the tortures in Guantanamo and other places outside the United States, as in the times of Bush. To the perpetual war he gave the name Oversight Contingency Operation. By personal decision, (penal), he authorized hundreds of drone attacks and with planes without pilots, killing the principal Arab leaders (p. 476).

With certain deception, Bill Clinton said: “The United States has not won a single war since 1945” (p. 312). In the silence of darkness of the night they fled Iraq. (p. 508).

The book of Moniz Bandeira deals with minimal details about the Wars in Ukraine, the Crimea and the Islamic State of Syria, with the names of the principal actors and dates.

The conclusion is devastating: “Wherever the United States intervenes with the specific goal of bringing democracy, that specific objective is comprised of bombings, destruction, terror, massacres, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes… they come to defend their needs, their economic and geopolitical interests; and their imperial interests” (p.513).

The quantity of information presented sustain this claim, regardless of the limitations that may always be adduced.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher -Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
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It probably is too early to draw lessons from the questionable impeachment that has inaugurated a new paradigm of class coups by means of the Parliament. These first lessons could be of service to those who love democracy and respect the sovereignty of the people, expressed through free elections, as well as the Labor Party, PT, and its allies. Those who have the money, power and knowledge that undergirds the golpistas are characterized by their lack of appreciation for democracy and their willful ignorance of the blatant inequalities among the Brazilian people.

The First lesson is to nourish resilience, that is, to resist, to learn from errors and defeats; and to turn them around. This implies a severe self-criticism, never rigorously done by the PT. It is necessary to be clear about what project must be implemented for the country.

The Second lesson: to reaffirm democracy, the kind that goes to the streets and squares, in contrast to the low intensity democracy, whose representatives, with some exceptions, are bought by the powerful to defend their corporate interests.

The Third lesson: to accept that a coalition presidency is a failure, because it distorts the projects and induces corruption. The alternative is a coalition of people in government with the social movements and sectors of the popular parties, and from there to bring pressure on the parliament.

The Fourth lesson: to acknowledge that neoliberal capitalism, in its present phase of the greatest concentration of wealth, is hurting the primary societies, and destroying ours. The attenuated neoliberalism practiced by the Labor Party, PT, and its allies for the last 13 years, helped bring about a great transformation in Brazil’s history, improving the lives of almost 40 million people, with increased salaries, credit facilities, and tax reform, but deep down, it was not enough. The great mistake of the PT was that it never explained that those social actions resulted from State policies. It therefore created consumers and not conscious citizens. It facilitated acquisition of personal goods, but did little to improve the social capital: education, health, transportation and security. Frei Betto put it well: it created «a populist paternalism that began when the No Hunger Program, an emancipating program, was turned into the Family Minimum. It was compensatory; the people got a fish, but were not taught how to fish». In the present post-coup government, the neoliberal economic policy, radicalized by severe adjustments, which are regressive, and harmful to social rights, will certainly throw back into hunger and misery all those who had been lifted from those scourges.

The Fifth lesson: it is urgent that education and health be given centrality. The Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva–Dilma Roussett governments advanced creation of technical universities and schools. An infirm and ignorant people can never make the qualitative leap to a sustainable prosperity.

The Sixth lesson: to stand courageously with the victims of neoliberal greed, denouncing its perversity, dismantling its excluding logic, taking to the streets, supporting demonstrations and strikes by the social movements and other segments of society.

The Seventh lesson: to be suspicious of everything that comes from above, usually resulting from the politics of class conciliation, done behind the backs of, and against the interests of the people. These politics come as more of the same. They prefer to keep the people ignorant, in order facilitate their domination and accumulation, and weaken any type of critical spirit.

The Eighth lesson: it is urgent to project the utopia of a different Brazil, built on other bases, the principal one of which is the originality and strength of our culture, giving centrality to nature, to human life and the life of Mother Earth, the bases of a biocivilization. Development/growth, necessary to attend, not the desires, but the needs of humanity, which must be at the service not of the market but of life and of safeguarding our ecological wealth. Concomitantly, basic reforms are urgently needed, of politics, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, agrarian and urban reform,… etc.

The Ninth lesson: in order to implement this utopia, there must be a coalition of political and social forces (popular movements, segments of political parties, nationalist businessmen, intellectuals, artists and churches), who are interested in inaugurating the new and viable, that gives shape to the utopia of different type of Brazil.

The Tenth lesson: that the new and viable has a name: radicalizing a democracy that is socialism of the ecological brand, thus, ecosocialism. Neither the Russian totalitarianism nor the deformed socialism of China, that, to tell the truth, excludes nature from the socialist project. But an ecosocialism that seeks potentially to realize the noble dream of everyone: to give what one can and to receive what one needs, including everyone, and fundamentally, Nature.

This project must be implemented now. As ancestral Chinese wisdom expressed, and was repeated by Mao Tse-tung: «if you want to walk one thousand steps, start now by taking the first step». Without that we will never walk the path towards the desired destiny. The present crisis offers us a special opportunity that must not be wasted. That opportunity occurs only few times in history, and now is one of them.

Leonardo Boff  Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.