By Guillermo Alvarado

The spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of China, Geng Shuang, gave a forceful reply to recent statements by John Bolton, President Donald Trump´s National Security Advisor, recalling that Latin American and Caribbean countries are sovereign nations, and as such, they are able to decide by themselves in total liberty what countries they relate to.

This firm statement by the Chinese Government official came after Bolton, in another of his unfortunate statements over social media, questioned what he described as an “inadmissible intervention” in the internal affairs of Venezuela by hostile countries, alluding to China and Russia.

The declaration by the Chinese official came after the National Security Advisor to President Trump clearly displayed his twisted understanding of international relations in our America, which is based on a trend that began almost two centuries ago when the President of the even then obnoxious and threatening empire imposed the so called Monroe Doctrine, which at its core declares that “America is for the Americans”, meaning of course the US empire.

It is now quite fitting to recall that since its foundation, the United States has called itself “America”, and its citizens “Americans”, just as if they were the owners and sole inhabitants of the whole continent.

Regrettably, many still repeat the word American to describe a US citizen, just as if the Mexicans, Argentinians, Chileans, Panamanians, Puerto Ricans and the rest of the nationalities that inhabit this hemisphere were not good enough to describe themselves as such.

This is another form of colonization, which unfortunately, many repeat without fathoming the ideological side of this term.

But going back to our subject, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry recalled that Latin America is not owned by any country and that it is no one’s back yard.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman recalled that his country always supports the development of friendly relations with all nations, including the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The Chinese official emphasized that the Venezuelan people is the only one entitled to seek the solution to its domestic situation and recover the national stability for its own benefit and that of the rest of the peoples of the Hemisphere.

At this point, I would like to direct your attention to the attitude of the US authorities, who keep a hostile military presence in all continents of our planet and still throw up their hands in horror, when the Nicolas Maduro government in a sovereign decision requests the support of other countries to defend itself.

Thus, the presence at the Caracas Airport of two Russian planes that carried a group of instructors has sparked a hysterical reaction by the United States and its supporters in the Lima group, countries that conveniently forget the scores of US military bases and the tens of thousands of combat troops that plague many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Countries that have forgotten the numerous and successful instances the United States have intervened in the region to overthrow constitutional governments since the end of World War II.

They also forget that Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, South Korea, Japan, Spain and many other nations in our planet host, whether willingly or not, US military bases with many tens of thousands of US combat troops, along with nuclear arsenals stashed in some of them.

Still, with absolute impudence Mr. John Bolton rants about a “hostile foreign military presence in Latin America”, referring to the two Russian planes in Caracas.

As stated by the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, the behavior of Washington is at least cynical if it is taken into account the fact that it keeps undue pressures and threats against that South American nation with the declared aim of recapturing the world’s largest oil reserves and place them back under the control of US companies

For now, it is not preposterous to proclaim that the only aggressive and dangerous power in the Western Hemisphere is none other than the United States of America, which lies north of the Rio Grande and south of Canada.