It is almost the end of
the beginning of the annual debate in United Nations.
Having listened to and evaluated positions on different
world issues debated by the planet and all of humanity,
the delegation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
the South American Bolivarian Republic, has received
for the purposes of sharing with the Governments and
the brotherly peoples of the world through the General
Assembly a letter from the president of our Republic,
Commander Hugo Chávez Frías. This letter contains a
series of comments and reflections that are necessary
and relevant for a democratic debate in our world and,
above all, for the process of the growing empowerment
of the peoples of the world and of transformation and
necessary re-establishment of the United Nations as a
multilateral system that has been with us for the last
six or seven decades.
By your leave, Sir, I will read out and distribute
to delegations the letter from Commander Hugo
Chávez:
“Caracas, 26 September 2011
“I am writing these words to the United
Nations General Assembly, that great forum
where representatives of all the peoples of the
world meet to express the reality of the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and to reaffirm
our unwavering commitment to justice, equality
and peace.
“Peace, peace, peace … let us not look for
peace in cemeteries, as Kant said with irony, but
rather through the most zealous respect for
international law. Unfortunately, the United
Nations, throughout its history, instead of adding
and multiplying efforts for peace among nations,
has ended up by supporting the most ruthless
injustices, sometimes by acts of commission,
sometimes by acts of omission.
“We need to recall the Preamble of the
Charter of the United Nations, which talks of
saving future generations from the scourge of
war. Those are just empty words; since 1945, the
number of wars has continued to grow
inexorably. Let us look once again at Libya in
ruins, covered in blood, because of the powerful
people in this world.
“I call on the Governments of the world to
consider that since 11 September 2001, a new
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imperialist war was started, an unprecedented,
permanent, perpetual war.
“We need to face the cruel reality of our
world. We must make a list of our concerns
stemming from the dangers and threats that are
stalking us. Why is the United States the only
country that sows military bases all over the
world? What is it so afraid of that it must set
aside staggering budgets for constantly increasing
its military strength? Why has it unleashed so
many wars, violating the sovereignty of other
countries, which have the same rights over their
futures? How can we can we use international
law to counter its senseless ambition to militarily
dominate the world in order to ensure access to
the energy sources it needs to sustain its
predatory consumerist model? Why does the
United Nations do nothing to stop Washington?
“If we answer all of these questions with
absolute sincerity, we would understand that the
empire has crowned itself judge of the world,
without anyone bestowing that responsibility on
it and even though, therefore, the imperialist war
is a threat to us all.
“Washington knows that a multipolar world
is already an irreversible reality. Its strategy
consists of halting the sustained rise of groups of
emerging countries at any price, by promoting its
major interests with its partners and followers in
order to direct multi-polarity along the path that
the empire wants. What is more, the goal is to
reconfigure the world so that it sustains Yankee
military hegemony. Humankind is facing a
genuine threat of permanent war. As the case of
Libya shows, the empire is ready, in any scenario,
to create the political conditions for going to war.
In the imperial worldview, Clausewitz’s famous
axiom is being reversed: politics is the
continuation of war by other means.
“What is behind this new Armageddon? It is
the absolute power of the military-financial
leadership, destroying the world in its
accumulation of more profits, a military-financial
leadership that is in fact subordinate to a group of
States. It should be borne in mind that war is
financial capital’s way of life: war that ruins most
people and makes a few unimaginably rich. At
this moment we have a profoundly serious threat
to global peace: the unleashing of a new cycle of
colonial wars, starting with Libya, with the
cynical goal of breathing new life into the global
capitalist system, whose current structural crisis
has still in no way curbed its destructive,
consumerist voraciousness. The case of Libya
should alert us to the desire to practice a new
imperial version of colonialism: military
interventionism endorsed by the anti-democratic
bodies of the United Nations and justified by
prefabricated lies.
“Humankind is on the brink of an
unimaginable catastrophe. The world is marching
inexorably towards devastating ecocide; the
terrifying consequences of global warming
proclaim it, but the ideology of the environmental
equivalents of Cortés and Pizarro, the early
Spanish colonizers who destroyed part of the
American continent — as the influential French
thinker Edgar Morin has said — drives them to
continue their depredations and destruction. The
energy and food crises worsen, while capitalism
still breaches every boundary with impunity.
“As we face this bleak prospect, our way is
lighted by the great American scientist and two-
time Nobel prize winner, Linus Pauling, who
said:
‘I believe that there is a greater power
in the world than the evil power of military
force, of nuclear bombs — there is the
power of good, of morality, of
humanitarianism. I believe in the power of
the human spirit’.
Then let us mobilize all the power of the human
spirit; it is time. We must unleash a great political
counter-offensive to prevent the powers of
darkness finding justification for going to war, so
they can unleash the generalized global war with
which they hope to save the West’s capital.
Venezuela calls for the establishment of a grand
alliance against war and for peace, with the
supreme goal of avoiding war at all costs. The
warmongers and, especially, the military-
financial leadership that sponsors and leads them
must be defeated politically. Let us build the
balanced universe envisioned by the liberator
Simón Bolivar, the balance that, as he said,
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cannot be found in war; the balance born out of
peace.
“Let us take note and remember: Venezuela,
along with the member countries of the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
America, actively advocated for a peaceful and
negotiated solution to the Libyan conflict, as did
the African Union. Eventually, however, the logic
of war decreed by the Security Council and made
a reality by NATO, the armed wing of the Yankee
empire, was imposed, the logic of war whose
vanguard is the transnational media.
“Let us remember that the case of Libya
was brought before the Security Council on the
basis of intense propaganda on the part of the
media, which lied in saying that the Libyan Air
Force was bombing innocent civilians, not to
mention the grotesque media setting of Tripoli’s
Green Square. This premeditated campaign of lies
was used to justify hasty and irresponsible
decisions by the Security Council, paving the way
for NATO’s policy of military regime change in
Libya. It is worth asking: what became of the
no-fly zone established by Security Council
resolution 1973 (2011)? How could the more than
20,000 NATO missions flown against Libya,
many of them aimed at bombing the Libyan
people, not represent the denial of the no-fly
zone? Once the Libyan Air Force was completely
annihilated, the continued ‘humanitarian’
bombing showed that the West, through NATO, is
imposing its interests on North Africa, turning
Libya into a colonial protectorate.
“It is a joke to say that the United Nations
imposed an arms embargo on Libya, when NATO
itself brought in thousands of heavy weapons in
support of a violent insurrection against that
country’s legitimate Government. The embargo,
of course, was there only to prevent the Libyan
Government from defending its sovereignty,
exposing yet again the functioning of the cruel
international system, under which the law applies
only to the weak.
“What is the real reason for this military
intervention? To recolonize Libya so as to take
over its wealth. We have no doubt about that.
Everything else is subordinate to that goal. No
one colonizes innocently, as the great poet of
Martinique, Aimé Césaire, rightly said in his
extraordinary essay on colonialism. By the way,
the residence of Venezuela’s Ambassador in
Tripoli was invaded and looted while the United
Nations stayed mute, guarding a shameful
silence.
“We demand the immediate cessation of the
bombing on Libyan territory. We will also
continue demanding that international law be
respected in the case of this sister nation. We will
not remain silent in the face of evil intentions to
destroy the foundations that endow it with sense
and reason. We therefore put this question to the
Assembly: Why is the Libyan seat in the United
Nations granted to the so called National
Transitional Council while Palestine’s admission
is blocked by ignoring not only its legitimate
aspiration, but also the will of the majority of the
General Assembly? With all its strength and with
the moral authority granted it by the will of the
majority of the world’s peoples, Venezuela
hereby affirms its unconditional solidarity with
the Palestinian people and its unlimited support
for the Palestinian national cause, including, of
course, the immediate admission of Palestine to
the United Nations as a full Member State.
“And the same imperialist formula is being
repeated in the case of Syria. Had not some of the
Security Council’s permanent members stood
firm, it would all have ended with the Council
authorizing NATO to fire its missiles and send its
bombers against Syria. It is intolerable that the
Powers of this world wish to arrogate to
themselves the right to order legitimate,
sovereign rulers to resign on the spot. Having
succeeded in Libya, they wish to proceed in the
same way against Syria. Such are the current
asymmetries that exist on the international scene,
and such are the abuses done to independent
nations.
“It is not for us to pass judgement on
Syria’s domestic situation, first, because of the
inherent complexity of any national reality, and
secondly, because only the Syrian people can
solve their problems and decide their fate by the
right to self-determination of all peoples, an
inalienable right in every sense. But that does not
prevent us from believing that it is 100 times
better to bet on the success of the broad national
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dialogue for which President Basher Al-Assad
has called than to impose sanctions and howl like
hyenas for military intervention. We fully support
the efforts of President Al-Assad to preserve the
stability and unity of his country, which is being
besieged by the West.
“Now let us turn to the Horn of Africa,
where we will witness a heartbreaking example
of the United Nations’ historic failure. Most
serious news agencies report that 20,000 to
29,000 children under the age of five have died in
the last three months.
“The journalist Frida Modak, in her article
‘To Die In Somalia’ reveals the miserliness that
afflicts the major international organizations, first
among them the United Nations, a level of
poverty worse than that ravaging the vast region
of the Horn of Africa.
“In order to confront this situation, we need
$1.4 billion, not to solve the problem but to
address the emergency that Somalia, Kenya,
Djibouti and Ethiopia are going through.
According to all information received, the next
two months will be decisive if we are to prevent
the death of more than 12 million people. That
situation is most acute in Somalia.
“We must also ask ourselves how much
money is being spent on sophisticated weapons to
destroy Libya. Here is the answer of United
States Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who says,
‘This new war will cost us $500 million during its
first week alone. Obviously, we do not have
financing resources for that and we will end up
cutting off other important domestic programs’
funding’. According to Mr. Kucinich himself, the
amount spent in northern Africa during the first
three weeks to massacre the Libyan people could
have been used to help the entire Horn of Africa,
saving dozens of thousands of lives.
“The reasons behind the criminal military
engagement in Libya are not humanitarian at all.
They are based on the Malthusian postulate that
there are simply too many people in the world
and that they have to be eliminated by generating
more hunger, destruction and uncertainty, thereby
creating more financial profits.
“In this regard, it is frankly regrettable that
the opening address of the sixty-sixth session of
the General Assembly did not include an
immediate appeal to solve the humanitarian crisis
in the Horn of Africa, even as it asserted that the
time had come to act on Syria. What criminal
cynicism!
“We also call for an end to the shameful
criminal blockade against our sister republic of
Cuba, imposed by the United States empire for
more than 50 years with gruesome cruelty against
the heroic people of José Martí. By 2010, a total
of 19 separate votes in the General Assembly
articulated the universal demand that the United
States cease its economic and trade blockade
against Cuba.
“Since all arguments of international good
sense have been exhausted, we have no choice
but to believe that such aggravated cruelty
against the Cuban Revolution is the result of
imperial arrogance in the face of the dignity and
courage shown by the defiant Cuban people in
their sovereign decision to determine their own
fate and fight for their happiness.
“In Venezuela, we believe that the time has
come to demand that the United States not only
immediately and unconditionally end the criminal
blockade it has imposed against the Cuban
people, but that it also release the five Cuban
anti-terrorist fighters held hostage in the prisons
of the empire solely for seeking to prevent illegal
actions that terrorist groups are preparing against
Cuba, under the protection of the Government of
the United States.
“We wish to reiterate that it is impossible to
ignore the crisis in the United Nations. In 2005,
before this very General Assembly, we declared
that the model of the United Nations was
obsolete. Back then, we also said that it needed to
be rebuilt from the ground up, and that the
process could not be postponed.
“Since then, nothing has been done. The
political will of the most powerful has prevailed.
Of course, the United Nations, as it continues to
function, docilely serves their interests. If its
Secretary-General, along with the President of the
International Criminal Court, takes part in an act
of war, as is the case with Libya, then nothing can
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be expected from the current structure of this
Organization, and there is no longer time for
reform. The United Nations does not accept any
reform whatsoever. The illness within it is fatal.
“It is unbearable that there is a Security
Council that turns its back, whenever it wants to,
on the clamour of a majority of nations,
deliberately refusing to acknowledge the will of
the General Assembly. If the Security Council is a
kind of club with privileged members, what can
the General Assembly do? What is the scope of
its operation when its members violate
international law?
“Paraphrasing the liberator Simón Bolívar,
who was referring specifically, in 1818, to the
then newborn Yankee imperialism, we have had
enough of laws being applied by the weak and
abuses being committed by the strong. The
peoples of the South cannot be the ones to respect
international law, while the North violates,
destroys and plunders us.
“If we do not commit ourselves once and
for all to restructuring the United Nations, this
Organization will definitively lose its last shred
of credibility. Its crisis of legitimacy is
accelerating toward a final implosion. In fact, that
is what happened to its immediate predecessor:
the League of Nations.
“A crucial and decisive first step towards
restructuring the United Nations would be to
eliminate the category of permanent member
along with the right to veto in the Security
Council. Likewise, the decision-making power of
the General Assembly must be democratically
maximized. A comprehensive review of the
Charter of the United Nations is also urgently
required, with the aim of drafting a new Charter.
“The future of a peaceful, multipolar world
depends on the determination of the majority of
the world’s people to defend ourselves from the
new colonialism and to achieve a balance in the
universe that will be capable of neutralizing
imperialism and its arrogance.
“This broad, generous, respectful and
inclusive call is addressed to all the peoples of
the world, but most especially to the emerging
Powers of the South, which must courageously
rise to the role they are being asked to play.
“From Latin America and the Caribbean, a
powerful dynamic of regional alliances has
emerged that seeks to create a democratic space
that will be respectful of differences and eager to
emphasize solidarity and complementarity in
order to maximize that which unites us and
resolve politically whatever divides us.
“This new regionalism allows for diversity
and respects everyone’s rhythms. The Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America is
growing into an experimental vanguard of
progressive and anti-imperialist Governments,
seeking ways to break with the prevailing
international order and strengthening the people’s
capacity to confront the de facto Powers.
However, that does not prevent its members from
contributing decisively and enthusiastically to the
consolidation of the Union of South American
Nations, a political bloc that federates
12 sovereign States of South America into what
the liberator Simón Bolívar called ‘a Nation of
Republics’. Furthermore, the 33 countries that
comprise Latin America and the Caribbean are
currently preparing to take the historic step of
establishing a single great regional entity that
unites us all, without exception, through which
we will be able to design policies that will ensure
our well-being, our independence and our
sovereignty, based on equality, solidarity, and
reciprocity.
“Caracas, the capital of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, is proud to be able to
host, on 2 and 3 December of this year, the
summit of heads of State and Government that
will definitely establish the Community of Latin
American and Caribbean States.
“The people of Venezuela have placed their
hopes in a broad alliance of regional assemblies
of the South, such as the Union of South
American Nations, the Caribbean Community, the
Central American Integration System, the African
Union, the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations and the Economic Cooperation
Organization, among other regional
organizations, and specifically in interregional
coordinating bodies of emerging Powers such as
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the BRICS group — consisting of Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa — which must
become a focus of attention in coordination with
the peoples of the South.
“I would like to conclude by recalling the
great Venezuelan singer Ali Primera, whose
poetic voice sent a message of life and revolution
to our people. In one of his songs, he asks: what
is man’s struggle to achieve peace? And what
kind of peace would it be, if we were to leave the
world as it is? Today more than ever, the worst
crime against peace would be to leave the world
as it is; if we were to do so, the present and the
future would be characterized by unending war.
Bringing about peace, on the other hand, requires
a radical rejection of everything that prevents
humankind from being human.”