Ruleless World

A deceptive status quo.

“Rule-based Order”. That is what we have been told for decades on end. That the current international order will guarantee that life and dignity will be secured. That no harm will come to anyone anywhere in the world.

It is only now that fate has revealed otherwise. The carnage that lords over the Gaza Strip is hard proof that this so-called order has the legitimacy of a crooked casino. And the name of its manager is the United States. All their preachings of defending liberty and freedom across the world pale when compared to facts on the ground. Their true message to anyone willing to make a Faustian bargain with them is this:

Do what we say and let us plunder you, or face destruction.

So it was the case for poor Chile. On September 11th, 1973, the government of one Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup orchestrated by Augusto Pinochet, with tacit support from America and other powers. His crime: refusal to kiss the blood-soaked ring of the Dollar. What followed was the darkest chapter in the Andean nation’s history. Internments, torture, executions, disappearances. And it had sown the seeds for the vile fruit of neoliberal economics. Its economy was run like a chop shop. Sections of it were auctioned off to the highest bidder and the common folk were left with the worthless scraps, or even nothing at all.

The Chicago Boys. Acolytes of Milton Friedman.

The same story had played out in Bolivia under Banzer. Argentina under Videla. Paraguay under Stroessner. When the West sees a democratically elected leader who doesn’t toe their line, it either kills or exiles him (if the victim is lucky), then it replaces him by a brutal dictator under its payroll.

Some attempts of “regime change” by the plutocrats had less success. Fidel Castro’s Cuba repulsed the American Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. But what they cannot subdue with force, they can starve them out with sanctions and all-out economic warfare. The Cuban embargo being the chief example. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR did nothing to lift it. Hopes for repeal were raised, then destroyed. Over and over again.

Another “benefit” of their economic wars is that it allows the oligarchs to retain their power and wealth. Giving them the supreme right to gouge people’s wallets, demolish livelihoods, and grow fatter whilst draining the common people dry. In truth, this so-called “rule-based order” is nothing more than a worthless scrap of paper constantly thrown our way to justify heinous crimes of every scale and complexity.

We live in a ruleless world, where the strong are free to bully and bludgeon the weak, and those who fight for the weak are mercilessly crushed.