Castrochavism, Russia’s partner and accomplice in the Americas of crimes against Ukraine and all mankind

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The invasion of Russia into Ukraine is a “war crime of aggression against peace” determined by international common law, the international tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, based in the United Nation’s Charter and established in Article 5 of the Rome Statute. This flagrant crime, aggravated by crimes against humanity that is perpetrated by Russia’s holders of political power, has confessed accomplices in Castrochavism’s regimes in the Americas, namely the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and the governments from Argentina and Mexico.

The war of aggression unleashed by Russia, under the command of Vladimir Putin and his group of power, against Ukraine is a war against all mankind. It is not that this could produce the “third world war” because real facts show that “this is the third world war” because it has ignited -in this 21st century- the worldwide confrontation of “dictatorship against democracy”.

In this third decade of the 21st century the dispute for power in mankind is not happening around the “what”, instead it is a fight for the “how”. What today’s world is, is determined by capitalism, globalization and technology. Our world is “capitalist, globalized and in a technological revolution” that no one can pretend not to be a part of, or be influenced by, so this is why the “what” is not being disputed. The axis of confrontation, therefore, is “how” our world is organized, controlled, and how it develops society and power within this capitalist, globalized, highly technological world, and the two forces that clash are dictatorship against democracy.

To organize and to manage 21st century’s society, there are two options that -throughout mankind’s history- are recurrent. One, that is based on freedom and respect for the human being and the other based on the concentration of power in a person or a small group of people who suppress freedom and violate human rights.

Today, the dispute for power is between dictatorships and democracies that is seen throughout the world, with the block of nations that Russia pretends to lead, against the United States and the European Union. All regions, throughout the world, are aligned with one of the disputing parties and in the Americas, we now see Castrochavism or 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships from Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and the governments from Argentina (Fernandez/Kirchner) and Mexico (Lopez Obrador) who comprised one block and are under the leadership of Cuba’s dictatorship.

The invasion of Russia into Ukraine is absolutely unjustified especially when everything seems to indicate that Putin was repeating his 2014 ploy when he annexed Crimea and Sebastopol and he did not need any more violence. It is an aggression to the world, a milestone that will determine the future of the 21st century as a time for peace or war, a time for the advancement of international rule of law or the failure of a bureaucratic system that has been neutralized -up to now- by compromising principles at the expense of temporary and false pacifications.

This is not about a territorial dispute of two or more provinces, it is not even about the reconstruction of Russian imperialism. Ukraine is about the effectiveness or the destruction of an international system created after the second world war for the “maintenance of international peace and security”. This invasion creates a crisis in the entire universal mechanism created to prevent such actions with which Putin repeats the agenda that at-a- time Hitler’s Nazism used. This takes us back nearly 100 years reminding us of historical passages and personalities that we thought were ended with sentences handed down by Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals.

If the Russian invasion is successful or remains unpunished, the fall-out on the Americas will be devastating due to the legitimization of the terrorism of State, crimes against humanity, construction of narco-States, the creation and sustainment of terrorism as a methodology of 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships who -sheltered by their violent control of the government and the violation of human rights- oppress the peoples from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua in the face of an international system that, up to now, is defeated and cornered with declarations, protests, and sanctions without any real effect.

That the law is not enforced or complied with, does not mean that it is useless or inexistent, it meets its first function; to place the culprit in evidence and then stop the damage, restore the preeminence of the law and prevent impunity. The crux of the matter regarding Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is that it places at the center of the worldwide crisis the same juristic-democratic question that the peoples of the Americas are the victims of in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua whose dictatorships are partners and accomplices of the Russian aggressor.
*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.