It May be too Late for Africa and the Caribbean

As the world marches uncertainly into a new era of great power politics, leaders of small, weak states should be shuddering in their boots and high heel shoes. This trepidation would not be unfounded given the rapacious tendency of the great powers in the past and the current military ambitions of the Trump administration. The ‘capture’ (wink, wink) of the President Maduro, the seizure of six oil tankers transporting oil from Venezuela, the threats being issued by President Trump against Cuba, Columbia, Mexico, Nigeria and Greenland, all seem to be pointing to the genesis of a new wave of global colonization.

The inability of the United Nations or any individual nation to end the killing and forceable removal of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza and the West Bank may very well prove to have been the miner’s canary that should have warned us that the world had reverted to the ethic of the law of the jungle. The nation of Israel, with the full support of the United States and to a lesser extent the European Union, unleashed its death machine on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Not even the rhetoric about genocide, ethnic cleansing and a new holocaust orchestrated by Jews in Israel was sufficient to deter Israel from its malevolent military goals in Gaza and the West Bank. The tone deftness of both Joe Biden and Kamalia Harris played out in their unwavering support for Israel may very well have cost the Democrats the presidency in the US and unleashed Trump 2.0 on a world that was still trying to recover from Trump1.0.

Israel and the US have set the precedent for the other nations of the world. Both Israel and the US have undermined the rules-based order and have made it abundantly clear that the US and its allies can do whatever they like without suffering any significant repercussions. The nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), especially Russia, understand only to well how the US and its allies can impose crippling sanctions and seize the foreign exchange of countries using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system of international payments.

The weaponization of the SWIFT system has forced the BRICS nations to come up with alternatives to the SWIFT system. China’s Cross Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) are two of the largest alternates to the SWIFT System. China is also experimenting with the Digital Yuan which is a Chinese Central bank digital currency that enables transactions to be completed in seven seconds.

These alternatives to SWIFT enable BRICS nations and others to bypass the SWIFT system and significantly reduces their need for acquiring the US dollars (USD) to engage in global trading. In 1944 the USD became the reserve currency of the world This was followed in 1974 by an agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia which translated into all oil sale being denominated in USD.

These two developments proved to be a tremendous economic boon to the US economy. The petrodollar and having the USD as the global reserve currency have benefited the US in many ways inclusive of the strengthening of the USD, the lowering of interest rates in the US, an increase in the economic influence of the US, and have given the US a strangle-hold on all countries that embraced the USD as their reserve currency.

The challenges being mounted to SWIFT, the petrodollar, and the USD as the reserve currency of the world have the potential to divide the world into two or more blocks in the near future. It is very clear that the US has no intention of letting resource rich countries in Latin America and the Caribbean fall into the hands of economic and military rivals. This may explain why Trinidad and Guyana have not been snagged in the US visa net. Caribbean leaders with strong economic ties to China should be preparing for a US reprisal.

Cracks in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are already beginning to appear as the US resorts to the true and tested technique of divide and conquer that has proven to be so successful in the Caribbean and on the African continent. The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persaud-Bissessar, may be in the cross-hairs of other CARICOM leaders for her unequivocal support of the US military operations to destroy boats and kill alleged drug traffickers in Caribbean waters. This may be an added reason why Trinidad is not among the seventy-five nations affected by new US visa restrictions.

Currently, the US is involved in conflicts in several African nations including Nigeria, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and West Africa. The most recent US aggression on the African continent was the Christmas-day bombing of the Sokoto state in Nigeria. President Trump, acting in his assumed or assigned role of protector of Christendom, threatened to rain fire and fury down on those responsible for killing Christians in Nigeria.

The dozen tomahawk missiles fired into Nigeria were a choreographed message to all enemies of Christendom, warning them to sleep with one eye open. The face-saving statement by the Nigerian government claiming that the attack was a joint maneuver was laughable since there was very little the Nigerian government could have done to prevent the attack once the decision was made by President Trump. Nigeria, the supposed elephant of Africa, is as impotent as were the military forces of Venezuela when the president of that country was ‘captured.’

It should be clear by now that no Latin American, Caribbean, or African nation has the wherewithal to withstand a military campaign by the US and her allies. This means that we all have become sitting ducks for what will come next in global international affairs. Israel and the US have set a precedent for the other great powers who when faced with existential threats to their own survival will resort to the rule of might is right. Africa and the Caribbean should have listened to our esteemed ancestors who warned that we will either learn how to swim and survive together or we will all drown separately.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Future of Africa and the Caribbean: Challenges and Possibilities.