Stephen Sefton, June 15th 2025
The heroic Cuban gesture of solidarity with the African struggle which defeated the racist South African regime towards the end of the last century demonstrated a fundamental truth for our times. Only a strategic military defeat will change the genocidal policies of the imperialist powers. We have seen another demonstration of this fundamental truth in Ukraine where the Russian Federation has defeated the NATO-supported genocide against the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass. And now we are looking at it again in the aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran carried out by the United States and its NATO allies through their genocidal pawn Israel.
To understand the extent of the insane US imperialist psychology, it is necessary to study the statements of its representatives. At the end of last May, the yankee Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth expressed very clearly the psychology of the US elites in relation to China. Speaking at a summit in Singapore, he said his country's armed forces are “increasing security in the Western Hemisphere and recovering the Panama Canal from malign Chinese influence... But beyond our borders, and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting ourselves towards deterring the aggression of communist China...You see it every day. China's military is harassing Taiwan... Being economically dependent on China only deepens its malign influence...”
Secretary Hegseth's speech confirms the insane false beliefs which serve as the basis of neocolonial North American and European foreign policy. In fact, China has not been involved in a war since 1979. The disputes in the South China Sea have for many years been in the process of resolution through a consensual framework agreed by all the affected states. Taiwan is a territory recognized internationally as part of the People's Republic of China, even by the US authorities themselves. Contrary to being “evil”, China's regional cooperation strengthens the economies of its partner countries and allows them to maximize their trade potential and the human development of their peoples.
Such are the irrational US distortions and warmongering interventions that threaten peace in Asia, from Iran to Korea, as well as in Latin America. In our region, the US government has threatened to intervene in Mexico and Panama, while increasing its military presence in all its vassal countries in the region, such as Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay and Argentina. Throughout the majority world, the North American and European powers have always exploited their military capacity so as to advance the interests of their business and financial elites which harm, limit and try to destroy the socio-economic advances of our countries. The criminal aggression underway against the Islamic Republic of Iran is another new chapter in this story.
One is dealing with an endless catalogue of crimes against humanity committed by the US ruling classes and their allies who maintain a racist nostalgia for their historical domination and pillage of the majority world. As Secretary Hegseth's speech demonstrates, faced with their widely recognized decline relative to China and Russia, Western governments still hope to be able to dictate the terms of human development for the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The most extreme expression of this racism is seen openly in Palestine where the Zionist genocide proceeds with the annihilation of the Palestinian population endorsed by the Western elites.
This collective psychological complex of the Western elites is made up of their outdated arrogance coupled with the fear of a new reality. This political-affective psychology underlies the insane instinct driving NATO’s war against Russia, the tariff war waged by President Trump, the Western war against Iran, led by Israel, and the progressively more aggressive measures being developed against China. The same psychology also drives the counterproductive national policies of the North American and European countries seeking to compensate at an internal level, with greater militarism and greater political and economic repression, the consequences of their loss of dominance in the world economy.
There is a tremendous contrast between the volatile, irrational anti-humanitarian motivation of the imperialist leaders and the rational, serene, humanistic psychology of the people who lead our revolutionary countries, focused on the human development of our peoples. Our governments plan to optimize the development of our countries, in most cases with very limited resources and despite constant economic attacks from the imperialist countries. In the case of Cuba, this has meant an intense genocidal blockade that has lasted for more than sixty years.
Like the revolutionary government of Cuba, the bolivarian government in Venezuela has managed to defeat not only the ferocious economic attacks against its country, but also persistent sabotage and terrorism offensives. Nicaragua has been able to overcome not only the unilateral coercive measures and denial of finance of recent years but also the failed coup d'état of 2018. In addition, all of our three countries have suffered the extensive aftermath of devastating natural phenomena, such as Hurricanes Eta and Iota of 2020 here in Nicaragua.
However, international data, for example from the United Nations Development Program, show the progress of human development in our countries. Even with the outdated data that tends to be used in these calculations, they find that the human development index for Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela is above the world average and above many of their neighboring countries aligned with the United States. It is instructive to explore the reasons for this indisputable reality, which includes factors of foreign policy in addition to economic development measures at the national level.
Our socialist countries develop their national human development plans based on the aspirations and needs of their families, of the human person and the democratization of their national economies. They prioritize investment in the productive capacity of their populations and subordinate business and financial interests to the fulfillment of that objective. Our countries have diversified both the sources of foreign investment and also the markets for exports, which has made it possible to overcome in large measure the impact of extortion measures applied by Western countries.
Venezuela closed 2024 with GDP growth of more than 8% due to the successful diversification of its non-oil economy and an important recovery of its oil sector. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez reports that her country has managed to recover from the almost complete loss of foreign exchange between 2014 and 2020, with an average annual growth of more than 8% from 2021 to date and export growth higher than other countries in the region such as Argentina, Chile, Ecuador or Peru. Its strategic relations with the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been key to being able to resist and overcome the imperialist onslaught designed to destroy the country.
For its part, Nicaragua has maintained an average annual growth, from 2021 to date, of about 5%, with a sustained increase year after year in exports. The free trade agreement with China, in force since January 2024, allows progressively greater exports to the Chinese market, which this year will be more than double the figure before the agreement, which was US$48 million. In terms of investment, the People's Republic of China is facilitating not only large port infrastructure projects in Corinto and Bluefields and the new international airport, but also an advanced national logistics center in addition to important housing projects.
Nicaragua has also strengthened bilateral cooperation relations with Russia with recent agreements on the development of nuclear medicine and cybersecurity. In fact, the work of the Intergovernmental Joint Commission of both countries contributes to improving practically all areas of national life. Nicaragua promotes similar cooperative relations with Iran that include not only economic and commercial relations but also valuable cooperation in judicial matters, in science and technology and in public health. As regards India, Nicaragua is the only Latin American country that has recognized the standards oo India’s Pharmacopoeia Commission, allowing the harmonization of pharmaceutical standards between both countries and greater cooperation in health care.
These bilateral cooperation initiatives complement and strengthen the development of our countries' relations with multilateral institutions such as the Eurasian Economic Union and the BRICS+ group nations, among others. It points to the determination of our governments to promote in a practical way new, more democratic international relations, free from the intervention and extortion of the North American and European governments that have so corrupted the United Nations system. For example, on May 30th, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela signed the Convention on the Establishment of the International Organization for Mediation, which includes 85 countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe along with 20 international organizations.
There is a categorical opposition between the insane, sadistic, hypocritical anti-humanist vision of the Western leaders and the strategic aspiration of our revolutionary governments. The vision and practice of our leaders stand out for their humanism and determination to achieve the full human development of their peoples as well as for their resilience to endless aggression of all kinds. The leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela constantly demonstrate this invincible revolutionary vocation.
As our Co-President Comandante Daniel has explained, it is about creating “a Multipolar World where Peoples come together, from the most powerful Countries to the most impoverished Countries, uniting efforts in the struggle for Peace, against hunger, in the struggle for the survival of humanity, in the struggle for the defense of the Environment.” And as Compañera Rosario has affirmed “Here there is a People ready to advance in the Joy of Harmony, in the Values of Family, Faith and Community. A People willing to make a New History every day, in a New World that we are creating All Together. A different World, a World that vibrates, that strive for Peace and Good!”