War by other means
"America's ignoble isolation of Vietnam for the defeat it sustained in the Vietnam war is coming to an end — and not before time." responded the Australian editorial to the news that the US Senate had voted on January 28 to lift economic sanctions against Vietnam. In a twist of Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum, that war is the continuance of politics by other, more violent means, the US had continued its war against the people of Vietnam by economic means.
Economic strangulation and covert war were employed by the US to set back social reform in Nicaragua; and for 34 years an economic siege, or blockade, has been laid to Cuba and its people by US administrations.
Of course, siege has been employed with devastating effect as a method of warfare for centuries. Employed as it is by the most powerful economic and military nation the world has known against small nations, it is even more reprehensible and cowardly — doubly so when it is recognised that the first victims of this kind of warfare are the aged, infants and young.
Sanctions against Vietnam were never as successful as the blockade of Cuba. A number of countries had participated in a trickle of investment in Vietnam following the changed economic policies adopted by the Vietnamese government. With projections that Vietnam's economy will double in size by the turn of the century, US companies were in danger of being left out of growing and lucrative investment opportunities.
The US economic war against Vietnam has suffered the same fate as its military adventure — it has failed, and that is a triumph for the people of small nations the world over. But the people of Cuba remain under siege.
Cuba, just 90 miles from the US coast, is considered by the US to be in its backyard. For the US, the threat posed by Cuba is clearly not a military one but rather its example: if Cuba is allowed to develop independently of US political and economic influence, might not other Latin countries take a similar course?
It is all well and good for the Australian to be pious after the fact, but where are the editorials condemning the Australian and Papua New Guinean governments for their blockade of Bougainville — a siege which has already cost many hundreds of lives? And is the ongoing blockade of Cuba, which has been condemned by the UN, any less ignoble?
"Economic sanctions" are Big Brother-speak — the language of the new world order — for war by other means against those seeking or defending their right to self-determination. The blockades against Cuba and Bougainville are unlawful and immoral, and should be ended immediately.