When a sovereign nation becomes another’s backyard

The political, economic and interest siege on Venezuelan people and its leader have intensified in recent days. The country boils, it’s cooking hard, the vultures are gathering over the cooking pot, readying for a long feast. Some has sent in their A’ list hunters in preparation for the hunt or in support of what they call an ally. Others have their killer machines on the seas bothering the nation in wait for the whistle that would unlock the boom.

The political crisis in the nation heightens. It looks like a script we have read or watched played out before. On the periphery, one can argue that this is a political/economic conflict of interest. But, a more in-depth look, may reveal this as a tussle between two nations: a stronger one, with the belief that the other owns allegiance to it either as a big powerful brother or as a result of the others geographical positioning. A case of a big neighbor, one hell-bent on asserting its influence on the other because it believes and possibly knows it has what it takes to do so.

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To achieve this, game blaming, bad naming has been revealed by history to be the card super nations like the US use to invade and denigrate perceived unfriendly countries or foreign leaders. To have Iraq’s Saddam Hussein killed, the US played the card of a despotic leader, bloodthirsty and in possession of weapons capable of annihilating every being in our good world. Ghadafi of Lybia was a tyrant, a dictator and profoundly undemocratic. How about Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea? A careful observer will notice one trend with all these nations after US intrusion. They have never been the same; they have become more menace to not just to the US anymore but a problem to our world.

Now, one can easily dismiss this as politics, which is said to be a game of interest. But again, if this is so the superpower should come out straight and let us know its interest. But, they should stop flashing to our faces the card of stability and introduction of democratic principles in the nations they invade because they should have known that it has not worked and may never work. What works for one nation may not work for the other. We are all humans, but something makes us different, our environments, our society, and our beliefs. These shape who we are and how we respond to life. If these things were not considered before any form of intervention were made, one ends up creating a disbalance, and such crisis lingers. This was what the British forgot when they came to South Eastern Nigeria during the colonial period.

While we cry wolf, we should pause and make haste to ask Gen. Jack Keane when a sovereign nation like Venezuela became his country’s backyard. Was he speaking for himself or is this an expansionist campaign by his nation’s government?

By Okorie Ignatius Chimunaya

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